Merry Christmas Y'all!!!

Sav's favorite gift- SNUGGIE!!

We had a wonderful Christmas week with Bree, my mom and her husband Wayne in town! Here we are just before our Christmas Eve feast!

Wayne is CRAZY and provided us with this Santa message to help kick off Christmas morning :)

Hunter was excited to receive this gift! (and using his over the top dramatic skills)

My Mom made this beautiful quilt- notice Savannah in her snuggie in the background :)

We give thanks for the BEACH!!!

Rich took this BEAUTIFUL photo of our favorite beach in Destin, Florida! We spent Thanksgiving for the 8th year in a row there and our friends the Nielsens and the Bridges met us there. We had beautiful weather and spent plenty of time on the beach. We also went to the movies, shopping on Black Friday and played cards in the condo. It was great and we can't wait for next year!!

More pics from Destin!

Even more pics from Destin!

Houston, we have a problem!

The weekend before Thanksgiving, Hunter had a High School soccer tournament in Houston. Here are what the stands looked like for all three games they played! If you notice the umbrella on the right, not only does it have a gaping whole, but it is also blown inside out! Rich's mom met us there for a weekend of wet, windy, COLD soccer! She is the one with the umbrella by the way! I'm talking to her to keep my mind off the miserable weather :)

The soccer wasn't miserable, however, and Hunter (#8) and the Mighty Lions won two games and tied another. They came in second overall just because the other team scored one more point than them against another team. Oh well . . . .

Hunter's team is ranked #4 in the state right now, but I'm sure as time goes by they will move up.

Follow the yellow brick road . . .

. . . to excellence!! This was the theme for an end of the year event for our young women group at church. It was such a cute event that two of the girls planned and came up with on their own. They did a great job so I wanted to post some pics from it.

Here is Savannah (Toto- actually in a cat costume :)) with her friend Sarah (the Scarecrow).

Here are all the girls (characters) after coming in singing down the yellow brick road.

Sarah and Sav again in front of the Emerald City!

Dazed and Confused?!!

Well. . . .I guess we've been a little busy and I know it's Christmas, but here is one of our only pictures from Halloween this year! Savannah and her friends went around the neighborhood (she's a bubble bather in case you couldn't tell - most of her bubbles already popped and she lost her rubber ducky) just for the candy- I guess that's why every kid goes :) and after I took this picture, I dropped my camera and broke the screen! NOT cool! I just got it for my birthday last April. I'm still trying to get a picture of Hunter in his costume to add, but I have to find it. We had our annual neighborhood chili/potluck in someone's driveway and had fun chatting with the neighbors.

The Stewart Curse

A long time ago, a curse was put on our family. I don't know who put it there and I don't know when it started, but it is there. We first discovered it many years ago when our hot water heater (which is located in our attic!?!) burst and it was raining in Breeann's bedroom. This flooded one side of the house. Later, we had a couple of toilet overflowage incidents which also flooded a part of the house. Another year, we had leakage from an air conditioner problem which also led to a flood. The greatest, latest flood in our home was the washing machine that broke and flooded the laundry room, pantry, kitchen and a part of the hard wood floors in the dining room. After replacing the carpet and being flood free for about a year and a half, the curse followed us to a hotel last weekend. Below is a picture of the hallway right outside our room. Yes, that's water!


Let me start by saying that on Friday morning I received a phone call saying that Hunter's tournament in Jackson, Mississippi was canceled. This was very sad for two reasons: 1- I really like to watch Hunter play and the experience of playing harder teams and with college scouts there would have been awesome. 2- Hunter was signed up to take the ACT in Mississippi on Saturday morning since we would be there. Well, since we are a gambling family, Hunter took his chances at getting in to take the test here in Lafayette and he hit the jackpot and got in. Whew! So off I went with Rich and Sav to Mandeville for her tournament instead. Below is Coach Rich getting ready to start a game.

This is Savannah ready to score one of the three goals she scored during the weekend.

Sav is in the middle - you can tell I took these pictures instead of Rich. I guess I don't "handle" Nikki (Rich's camera) as well as he does! Sav's team made it into the finals against a rival Lafayette team and they were tied at the end of the game. They went into overtime and the other team scored (boo!) so they ended up in 2nd place. They played EXCELLENT!

Now you're probably still waiting on the edge of your seat to find out about the flood in the hotel. (Yeah, right) The fire alarm went off at 6:00 am and as we were stumbling, bleary eyed out the door, some lady from across the hall comes running by telling us it isn't a fire, the sprinkler system just started going off in her room and was flooding everything. We found out later that the lady in the room directly below her had called the front desk 20 minutes before the alarm went off because there was a bunch of noise and jumping around going on in the room above. They had two little kids and they most likely hit the sprinkler and set it off. Good thing it wasn't a fire because the fire dept. showed up 30 minutes later to turn off the alarm and water. I think we've lost at least 30 percent of our hearing and the curse lives on!!

Soccer Update

These pictures are from a tournament in Baton Rouge several weeks ago. Part of Hunter's team is above with their 2nd place medals. This was a premiere tournament, so both teams were playing teams (supposedly) above their level. They did well, considering. The highlight of the trip is below- sharing this yummy dessert from Chilis! :) Savannah had a tournament in Alexandria the week after that and her team tied with another to go to the finals, but they had lost to that team so they got knocked out. This weekend Rich will be with Sav's team in a Mandeville, LA tournament and I will be with Hunter in a Jackson, MS tournament. We are hoping for some great competition!
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Hunter plays in the snow

Well, he did for about a month. Hunter got his first job at a snow cone place called "O Sneaux" (you really have to be from here to understand that spelling of snow) and it shut down after he worked for a month. I don't think he was the cause of the shut down, snow cone places around here are pretty seasonal. It will open again in the spring and Hunter will probably get his job back. We are just laughing about it, 'cause he finally went out and got a job and it only lasted a month. I guess he wouldn't have been able to work that much once his high school soccer team starts up which will be at the end of October. Anyway, that's the kind of snow I like.

This is really Scary!!(and it has nothing to do with Halloween)

A while back we kept smelling this funky electrical type smell every time we would run the dishwasher. We just couldn't figure out what it was. I like to run my dishwasher in the middle of the night and we would wake up to this weird smell again. Now, I have been known to ignore things like this and just hope that they'll go away and sometimes they do. But most of the time, I find out what's going on because some major catastrophe occurs due to my ignorance. Well, we ran the dishwasher before we went to bed to try to discover what was causing this nasty smell and Rich opened the cupboard underneath the sink where the dishwasher and garbage disposal were plugged in and he saw a bright red glow. Yes, this is a picture of what was causing the mystery stink. VERY scary!! I really can't believe our house didn't burn down! The plug from the dishwasher was melted onto the outlet so the electrician had to cut the cord! VERY, VERY scary!!

Slip & Slide Dodgeball

These are three not-so-great pictures of a church youth group activity- Slip & Slide Dodgeball. Hunter is in the background of the first one, that would be our bishop in the light blue t-shirt in the second picture, and Savannah in the third. We play this once a year and it's definitely a fan favorite! I've been known to run and slide across this thing- you really can't help yourself. It calls out to the inner child in you :)

Soccer Update: Hunter played his first tournament in New Orleans last weekend and his club team took first place! (Rich was out of town in Nashville so no Nikki pics) Both he and Sav will play in Baton Rouge this weekend. We'll see how it goes.