Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas! Love, Heath, Hilary, Bandit, and Moose

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LONG update

Here is what's been going on lately at the Halford house. Blogger's being dumb so the pictures are all out of order.

We "lost" Moose the other night in the house. Losing a Rottweiler puppy for even a minute can spell disaster, but this is all we found:) The above picture portrays why his nickname is Fat Neck.

Usually Moose goes to bed around 9. He'll just walk back to his kennel and we'll hear him lay down. I guess this night, he saw the door open and helped himself to the bed.

We went to Carol of Lights and in true Lubbock form, it was 20 degrees. We love this tradition.
We went to Austin for Josh Rowan's wedding in November. This is Hilary and Chelsea. Nate and Chelsea live in Ft. Worth and we miss them very much. It was great to hang out with them for a night.

Their wedding was outside and very pretty. My hand was shaking because it was uncharacteristically cold in Austin. The above picture is Josh and Ashley Rowan.

Ashley and her dad.Heath's been traveling a lot lately. At the end of October he was gone for 2 weeks and went to Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama, and ended his trip in Washington D.C. for a conference for ASTD. Last week he was in College Station and Austin and this week he's in Los Angeles and Denver, and next week he's off to Phoenix. It's exciting that he works for a company that is growing like crazy, but we miss him while he's gone :(Here's Heath with our friend Christie Pare and Jim ? Heath has read some of his books and was thrilled that he got to meet him.

Moose and Bandit are still the best of friends. Here's Bandit hiding from Moose.

Hilary graduated from a 13 week class in sign language. It was a lot of fun and she will continue next semester. The kids in her classroom respond to and love all of the signs.Hilary made these cinnamon rolls. It was quite the experience. Just ask Heath. 3 different batches wouldn't rise. Finally we had a winner and it was worth all of the blood, sweat, and tears. Our kitchen will never be the same again, but oh well.

She also made these for the staff at her school. It's a yummy tradition.
Hilary's friend Brandi had baby Taylor this past weekend. She was a little early but absolutely perfect. Brandi teaches across the hall from Hilary and is a very sweet friend.

Hilary made this blanket for Taylor.

We had a good time at the CRS Christmas party on Saturday night.

Moose is learning how to bark on command. We were using the command "speak" but every time we would say it, he would sit and shake so now we use "bark."

Christmas Card Pics

check out our amazing pictures. we had a hard time deciding which ones to choose for our card!!

more updates coming soon!

Dog accessories

Here's Bandito sporting his new Snuggie. Yes, it's a little ridiculous but he really loves it. Bandit will find anything soft to lay on so the Snuggie is perfect.

Moose' accessory is not so much fun. He has a corneal ulcer and has been sporting the lampshade collar for almost a week. Good news is that it's treatable with steroids, bad news is that Bandit could be decapitated and we will have bruises on our legs. Moose is so graceful w/o the collar on, so you can only imagine how lovely it is w/ that thing on!

KIRKPATRICK COMING TO LUBBOCK!!!

The West Texas Chapter of the American Society of Training and Development has a workshop on Tuesday, November 10 that is a STEAL of a deal! Wendy Kirkpatrick will be presenting Training on Trial. Click on the picture below for further details. The ASTD Chapter in Lubbock is relatively small, but we still try to provide big value for our members. As a result, we have booked a noteworthy speaker for our November meeting. Please help support our efforts by passing this information on to anyone you know that is in the Lubbock area and either directly or indirectly involved with training. Please send a link to someone you know in Lubbock NOW!

David Crowder Band Concert

Hilary and I went to see the David Crowder Band in concert last weekend in Abilene. We left early Friday afternoon and came home Saturday in time for the Tech football game. We took the dogs with us and had a FANTASTIC time. We met a couple from our church while we were at the concert. Hilary showed up to pick me up from work to leave for the concert and we both had on our black (matching) Experience Life shirts. I believe it is the first time we have EVER been dressed alike. Anywho, so there were 2 other bands that opened for David Crowder Band. One was pretty good, I didn't care much for the other band's music/style/whatever.


Picture Below: One of the 2 decent shots I got of David Crowder - the guy on the right is Jack - lead guitar and pretty amazing at that and the guy on the left is Mike D the bass guitarist. (If you click on the picture you might be able to make out a little more, surprising how crappy the pics turned out, we were like 30 feet from him...I guess lighting, fog machines, etc. didn't help.)

Picture Below: the second decent shot I got of Crowder - same 3 guys as in the picture above.
(If you click on the picture you might be able to make out a little more, surprising how crappy the pics turned out, we were 30 feet from him...I guess lighting, fog machines, etc. didn't help.)

Picture Below: Pretty awesome picture of the whole band and stage setup etc.

Picture Below: Mark one of the guitarists in the band, behind him with the beard - Bwack and behind Bwack is Steve (you'll probably have to click on the pic to enlarge it to be able to see Steve)
Bwack built Steve, it is a robotic drum machine.
If you look back at our california trip, there are pictures of the guitar hero guitar that David Crowder played at that concert. Bwack made that too.
Video Below: Another one of my favorite songs of theirs - Here is Our King


Video Below: The Glory of It All - one of my favorite DCB songs - click here to listen on iTunes


Video Below: David Crowder is a pretty funny guy - here he was explaining to everyone that the emphasis of group singing at his concerts is more about volume than pitch/actually being able to sing. He also talks about how "we have lost control, its so early in the evening". He is such an entertainer - an absolute BLAST to see live.



Video Below: Fantastic instrumental at the end of one of the songs -

Wichta Falls

That's how we say Wichita Falls around here. Not sure why. It's probably a United thing.
So we left early on Saturday morning to head east for a wedding. Hillary Kuykendall and Heath became friends at United. She's an awesome friend and we are so excited to be with her and her new husband on their special day.
After the wedding, we got in the car and were headed to Ft. Worth. Hilary mentioned to Heath "Wouldn't it be great to just get the dogs and head back to Lubbock?" It took Heath less than a second to say "Call Gail and see if we can!" We were so ready to be home and not really looking forward to staying in a hotel for another night. These puppies were very glad to see us. They slept for 3 days straight when we finally got home! What a wonderful vacation.