December

Chock full of stuff. Not only is it the whole Christmas season, but we had the last Baylor home game and Delaney's first birthday. Too much for one post.

My parents had saved their old tree for us, and we actually got to use it this year. If you will remember, last year in the teeny barn apartment we barely had room in a corner for a small 4 foot tree. 

Carter loved decorating it

Guess who took these??

Stellar.

And it wouldn't be December without a string of adorable little girl outfits. I had been collecting things since summer for her!

The Charlie Brown tree got moved to Carter's room, and he couldn't have been more excited. Can you tell he decorated it himself?

She barely crawled at this point, yet the ramp had to be put away because she kept doing this

The first weekend in December was a long anticipated trip to Waco for the very last Baylor game in Floyd Casey Stadium. It also happened that Baylor was up for Big 12 Champs dependent upon this game.  Well, by midweek it became pretty obvious that we were going to be in for some nasty cold and wet weather.  We made the call to take the chance that school would be cancelled Friday and skip town as soon as Christiaan got off on Thursday. That afternoon I frantically packed everything for the weekend, including SEVERAL layers of clothing for us to wear at the game. It started to sleet when I picked up Carter from school, and between that and all the frantic packing he was a bit freaked out and asked if we could take our tree with us.....that would be a negative. The dogs even sat this trip out.

We got out of DFW just in the nick of time, and roads were actually fine further south, since the worst of the storm was in the metroplex.  As anticipated, schools everywhere were closed Friday and DFW was coated in a good few inches of solid ice. Our block apparently lost power for over 24 hours, so it was a dang good thing we weren't there!  Waco only got a bit of the nasty sleet, but the high temps were hovering just below freezing. So naturally, we did what any sane person would do and went to an outdoor football game scheduled after dark. I wore three layers on my legs, my Uggs, four layers on my top half, two hats plus the hoods of my sweatshirt and thick rain coat, two scarves, two pairs of gloves, then made use of those instant heat packs inside my gloves and shoes, plus brought a sleeping bag with us and literally got inside the sleeping bag. And still froze. Like, I never stood up the whole game. 

Meanwhile, the kids watched the game on TV in the comfort of Nana's nice warm house. 

I wasn't quite sure I would make it at this point. I had Kristi on stand-by to come get me if I chickened out.

I took this screenshot at the beginning of the game. It only got colder from there.

That would be a half inch of solid ice on the ground in the stands.

But alas, we survived, and made it thru the Big 12 trophy presentation plus all the ceremonies to close out the stadium for the last time ever. I have so many memories at the stadium with my man, and I have only been going for 4 seasons! Our first picture together was taken here, we survived a few scary storms and extreme temps here, and watched Baylor's rise to the top over the last few years. This is Christiaan's happy place, and I enjoy little else so much as to watch him have such joy here. 

And after a scary drive back home, at which from south of downtown Dallas (or DownTallas, as Carter calls it) until we pulled into out driveway I may or may not have had my head in my lap and my ears covered, this was what was left in our backyard. After deciding that there was no way in hades we could get to school the next morning, I took a Xanax and me and my frazzled nerves went to bed. And school was cancelled again anyways. 

Carter thought it was awesome, except he couldn't understand why we couldn't build a snowman.  Because solid sheets of ice, son. He literally slid down the slope in our front yard. 

We were fortunate enough to only have lost this small branch from the tree out front, because many people had a lot of damage from fallen limbs.

Once back at school, it was door decorating time! I was pretty proud of our snowman! We got first place!

Special treat at school this year....Santa D came to Vista!  He couldn't talk to Delaney because she already smelled a rat just looking at him, but she loved it!

Pajama day before Christmas break!  Last year's picture was of me hours before going into labor, a pregnant Jill, Chelsea on her first day back from maternity leave, and Deanna found out she was pregnant the next morning. This year, no pregnant people!!

Poor girl ended up at Care Now the morning of her birthday, diagnosed with ear infections. Her first time to be sick. 

And the next few days looked a lot like this....

Until she finally got over it, after a visit to the pediatrician for correct antibiotics, and looked like this the rest of break!

Kisses

Big 12 month old!

Carter spent New Year's with GramPam, and we celebrated at the Aldrich's house. D partied hard, and was totally stealing my midnight kiss. Daddy's girl, much?