Light show

We got about a foot of snow the day after Christmas and this was the view from our porch tonight. If you click on the picture and enlarge it you can see that the snow is glimmering. Sam braved the 6 degree weather to get this picture, so we hope you enjoy it.

Christmas 2012

Christmas was pretty fun this year. There is just something special about having a baby get excited about Christmas for the first time. She finally understood unwrapping gifts, even if every little piece of paper had to go into the trash before she could get any more off of the present.

 We sure do love our little cowgirl!

These are some of our highlights of the day. :) This is a long clip, 2+ minutes.

What to do?

Picture this: you have a community obligation at 5, so you lay your kid down for a nap at 3, she proceeds to holler at the world (not crying, but calling out) for an hour and twenty minutes. She then falls into a very deep sleep ten minutes before it's time to get ready to go. Great! So what do you do? Decide to go late and let her get at least a power nap in, and to kill time, you write a blog post about how cute she is.

She loves to lead the music!

 We may not have a Snowman Village, but we do have a place to put presents that no one (except Sam) can peek at them. Although they are starting to get a little tempting to The Girl, it'll still be quite a few years until she can get to them on her own.

Curls

Over the past week we have found a new joy in our house...sponge curlers! I first put them in a week ago Sunday, but they didn't have time to dry before church. Then on Wednesday The Girl went and got them out and asked me to put them in...sure, Weirdo! So I put in the curlers and she was very happy... (18 curlers on that tiny head of hers!)

 ...She was happy at least until it was time to take the curlers out. She does not like me to take them "away". Which in one aspect is kinda nice because now I know I can put them in on Saturday night and her hair is all done for Sunday morning!

 Yeah, we think it's pretty cute too. She looks like a totally different kid with all the curls! And another good part, they are still curly after 2 nights so this is a hair-do that keeps on giving.

Christmastime!

 So this year I was totally thrilled when our Christmas lights went up in less than 30 minutes! That is called team work! (Or really superb organizing and putting away from last year.) So Sam is tall enough that he didn't need the ladder to put them up, The Girl handed him the hangers and I unwrapped the lights from the spools that I made last year. It was very exciting and The Girl really likes to see the lights! We haven't taken a picture, but we didn't get any more lights since last year so look at this post to see what the lights look like from last year. It looks the same, except now we have a sidewalk in the front of the house.

The next day was Sunday and we thought decorating the tree would be a great activity, so we got that done and by Sunday night it all looked pretty spiffy.

I learned a sad lesson on Monday though... I was sooo tired from being up most the night with a little boy trying to kung-fu his way out of my insides that I decided that I needed a nap. The Girl was playing so nicely with her nativity when I closed my eyes I didn't think anything of it. However, an 18 month old who has never climbed up on anything, especially the train table, in her life decided that she needed to climb up and get the outlet cover out of the window behind the tree. This didn't go over too well. The next thing I know there is a Christmas tree on my head. Now, can I just point out that this is a really unlovely way to be woken up? Yep, you see the pillow under the top of the tree? That is exactly where my head was. I sat up and started crying, mostly from the shock and I'm sure the hormones had some part in it, and The Girl crawled over the tree and got off the table. Then she came and gave me a hug and kept saying, "It okay. Sorry. It okay." and slobbering on my face giving me her interpretation of kisses. So it was sweet, but still not very fun.

 

As a side note to anyone who may be concerned, Sam has added another platform to the bottom of the tree that makes it slightly more stable. And she has only attempted to get up on the table a handful of times since then, and only to try and get pieces of her nativity that ended up out of her reach.

Texas Thanksgiving

This year we decided to spend Thanksgiving in Texas with Lela and Papa. We had to take advantage of one more free plane ride for our baby girl. 

It was a lot of fun and while we have more pictures, I decided to post what I had on my computer since it's already a few weeks late.

The girl had a lot of fun feeding the ducks and swans at the park near the grandparent's house.  The swans were a little more aggressive than the ducks and were a little better fed.

The girl had fun helping Papa clean up the leaves in the backyard.

Before our Thanksgiving feast we went to downtown Dallas for the 45th annual Turkey Trot. We "waggled" our way through the 5k course. We pushed a stroller through most of the course, but met Papa a little before the finish line. He took over babysitting duties so we could kick on the afterburners for the final sprint to the finish. There were thousands of runners and walkers on the course. Lela, of course, did the 8 mile run and finished way before we did.

Mary went to the baby doctor a few days later and he was impressed she was able to do a 5k in her third trimester!

Our little girl sure had a lot of fun with her Texas grandparents. We can't wait to see them again soon.