San Antonio

It’s still February on this blog!

We decided that it had been too long since I had seen my BFF, Suz, so we headed down to San Antonio the first weekend in February. We also hadn’t seen Ryan’s grandmother in ages, so we paid her a visit as well!

Carter was in school on Friday, and Suz had to work, so we headed to Grandma’s house.  It was so very cool for my girls to visit with their Great Grandma!  We took her out to lunch, and at 85 years old, it is amazing to me how sharp she is and how well she gets around. We thoroughly enjoyed our visit!

After lunch with Grandma, we headed down to El Mercado to cruise around and let the girls experience a little bit of San Antonio. The girls were each able to pick out one thing to take home…  Anna is sporting her new bracelet while she is checking out a dandelion for the very first time:

And Avery decided on some brightly colored paper flowers:

When Carter got home from school, the girls were fired up and ready to play.  

Thanks Suz and Jay for having us for the weekend – we had such a great visit!!

Cuties

One from the weekend...

NYE

Historically, we have tried everything on NYE – the dressy night out, the hotel package, the night out with friends, and I feel like every year, we end up spending too much money for a mediocre night…  This year, we decided to have 2 of our favorite families over for some family-friendly fun, and we have not stopped talking about it since! 

The Schoppes and Almans arrived after nap time on NYE – we lucked out with the weather, so we all had a chance to catch up while the kids played outside.  The Schoppes brought the Disney version of the game “Headbandz” – clearly intended for the kiddos to play… but… since they were having a blast upstairs, the adults decided to give it a shot.  And oh my gosh, it was SO. MUCH. FUN.  We played for HOURS (probably because the drinks were flowing!). Just before midnight, the kids “popped” a few fireworks and then headed back inside for adults (and kids this time!) to play Just Dance for the Wii.  We played until we all wanted to pass out – and pass out we all did.  I can’t believe my kids were up until 11:30 (and were surprisingly great the next day…???)!

Here’s to a new annual tradition!

Christmas Wrap Up

Well, it’s a good thing that my New Year’s Resolution was not to blog in a more timely manner!

Christmas this year was so much fun, and I can honestly say it was the first time that it was not stressful!  The Mr. and I took 2 weeks off (almost for me), and we enjoyed every second of it! 

It’s just not Christmas unless you decorate sugar cookies!  This year, I took a page out of Sandra Lee’s semi-homemade book… we sliced and baked Pillsbury cookies and made the icing from scratch…

And they were oh-so-yummy!

Avery busted Buddy Jingle Bell with a sugar cookie, so she decided to write Santa a note to make sure he knew that they were HIS cookies.

Side note – The elf on the shelf was really fun this year – the girls could not do anything until they found Buddy! I wish I would have taken more pictures of the places we found him this year!  Ah… there’s always next year…

Since it took Anna for forever to open her birthday presents, we decided to let the girls open a present every day Christmas week.  It was really fun for them to focus on one thing each day, and there was still PLENTY for them to open come Christmas morning!  Here the girls are in their new boots from YaYa:

It was so fun watching the girls actually play together this year!

Christmas Eve church family picture.  Someone is happy that the Mr. decided to shave his mustache. Amen.

Boompa, YaYa & the girls:

Somehow we missed Deda & JoJo at church, so we took a pic at home!

We had our traditional tamale dinner and opened gifts with Deda & JoJo, changed into our Christmas jammies and took our annual tree picture (thank you Shalonda for the idea!!):

We thought for sure that the girls would be up bright and early Christmas morning since they knew that Santa was on his way, but they decided to sleep in – ah… a Christmas miracle!

Santa brought Avery roller skates:

And Anna got her own little chair:

YaYa’s gift was a big hit though (with both girls)!

The girls could not wait to go try out their toys outside, so despite the cold, we headed out…

Daddy chasing Anna as she learns how to steer…

At the end of our street, 2 of our neighbors had inflatables in their yard – Anna ALWAYS wanted to go see “Frosty No-man” and “Baby Jesus”.  No matter how late it was, I absolutely could not turn down that sweet little voice when she would say, “Come on Mommy, go see Baby Che-sus”. So as soon as she got to the end of the driveway, she knew exactly where she was headed.  She parked her car, and headed straight for Him…

She thought Frosty was pretty cool too.  Here she is yelling for everyone to “COME ON, COME SEE FROSTY NO-MAN!!!”

Avery – still trying to skate:

Meanwhile, Anna’s still hanging out with Frosty…

Boompa the hero (or sucker!)!

We headed back inside to warm up and spent the rest of the afternoon playing with toys. Avery and YaYa loved the super fun piano from Grandma Sims! Here they are perfecting their chopsticks duet...

And we even had a chance to make some snow...

Instead of Christmas lunch this year, we had Christmas dinner... Cooking during nap time = one happy mama. Daddy was in charge of the Pioneer Woman's beef tenderloin, and it was SO good. I think we found ourselves a new tradition!

Hope everyone had a VERY Merry Christmas!

Elmo Party!

I’m finally finished organized pictures to post for Anna’s birthday.  Poor baby has a birthday during the busiest time of the year!  Despite the chaos, we managed to have a really fun birthday party for a really fun little girl! :)

This year, we hosted Anna’s party at The Woodlands Children’s Museum.  Back in October when I started planning this party, Anna was all about Elmo, so it seemed like a fitting theme…

Party table:

Daddy made this awesome sign for the party! Go Daddy!

And Mommy made this much smaller, less impressive "sign":

And these were yummy! I may or may not have had more than one. 

The kids played and had a great time running around the museum.  Anna decided to go “fishing”, so she was pretty much soaking wet the entire time. 

She went in and out of the gate approximately 1,000 times…

… until she found a grocery basket to push around.  We had to pry that basket out of her hands when it was time to go to the party room!  Thankfully, she can easily be persuaded with food… ;)

As soon as we lit the birthday candle and started singing happy birthday, our little birthday girl turned into a statue.  She made no eye contact with anyone, and the girl literally did not move a muscle.  It was the funniest thing I have ever seen!  I am SO mad I don’t have that little face on video – I’m not sure that this will do it justice…

She stared at the candle for the longest time until she FINALLY blew it out.  Whew!

Now… onto the good stuff. 

Like orange icing… that stained everything it touched.  Thank you very little, HEB.  (They were good though!)

And of course we had to make time for a family photo op:

Aunt Lindsay & Spaceman, YaYa & Boompa, and the Pratis joined us for the “after” party.  Since they drove all that way, it seemed only fair that we feed them dinner and get a little more playing time in…  which pretty much consisted of Anna opening up her presents as slowly as possible.

Luckily, you had some VERY eager four year olds ready to help as she started to run out of steam:

This one was a big hit:

But I think the best present for this little girl was UNDIVIDED attention from her YaYa!

Happy Birthday Little Miss!  I can’t believe you are TWO.

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

We almost forgot the chair!!

Just before bedtime, we had one last photo shoot in your bear chair.  We've slacked off the past few months, so I was adamant that we capture your chair picture ON your actual birthday... even if you were in your jammies!

Here you are working hard on your "two":

You got it!!

I cannot believe this was you just one short year ago...

Sniff, sniff.