Crazy is the New Normal: Christmas Vacation Part 1

On Monday Carter and I left for Keller. Pretty much every single time we have gone to spend time with Brooke and the boys, someone has gotten sick or we have had some family emergency that has caused us to shorten our stay, so I was praying that we would get to have our full stay this time!

We quickly discovered that Brannan is no longer a fan of Carter. Basically it boils down to this: Bran is Matt Travis made over, which means he is very particular about his personal space bubble, and also does not like his things to be messed with. Carter on the other hand, wanted nothing more than to join Bran in playing with all his 5 billion trains, and Bran would have nothing of it. Because Carter is clever and also perhaps a little devious, he realized quickly how to push Bran's buttons. And he did that for 3 whole days.

Preslie came down for a visit, and this was the best picture we got of the 3 of them, out of the 3 of us taking pictures! As Carter is not normally around cute little girls in pigtails, he assumed that P's piggies sole purpose were for pulling. He just couldn't help himself. Poor Preslie doesn't appreciate loud, crazy screaming, and unfortunately that is what boys do best. So we spent a good portion of our playdate refereeing the madness.

The rest of the pictures were something similar to this. Also, I apparently have my camera on some weird setting or something, because everything I take is blurry. Guess I need to read the manual. :)

Preslie eventually had enough of the hair pulling and was ready for bed, and then Bentley and Chay showed up for a surprise visit. It was Bentley's 2nd birthday that day, and we were celebrating it with a party the next morning. Cutest cheese faces ever!

I didn't get many pictures at her party because I spent so much time keeping Carter out of trouble, but I did at one point walk into the playroom to discover him playing dress-up with some of the girls! Sweet Addie in the gray dress is just a few days younger than him and is teeny!

And then he walked out of the room with a purse on his arm. But hey, it was a Coach purse, so at least he has taste!

Bentley was so cute blowing out her candle! She wanted Chay to keep lighting it so she could blow it out over and over and she was cracking up!

We had a WONDERFUL long visit with our friends! With no emergency phone calls! Well, I did get an interesting call from Mom, but that is its own post!

We came back to a yard full of leaves that GranPam and Carter just couldn't resist playing in.

Then yesterday Christiaan and I finally went to Ice at the Gaylord. We were supposed to with our friends over Thanksgiving, but literally an hour before we left I came down with the stomach flu, then when we rescheduled it Christiaan had the stomach bug, so we rescheduled it again his work schedule changed and we had to move it AGAIN. Then we got stuck in traffic on the way there and were late, but they still let us use the tickets. Why they wouldn't just refund them in the first place is beyond me. Anywho, it was really good of course, although I liked last year's theme better. We skipped the slide part since we didn't have kids with us and Christiaan had on his cowboy boots, which they said were a no-go for the slide. The lines were crazy long anyways.