A Wonderful Christmas!

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What a great Christmas we had!  We were so fortunate to have my brother and his family from China, my sister from Florida and my Grandma from Montana all fly in and be together.  My nephews are too cute and it's fun to see them playing with Isabel and Logan.  Lots of little boys = lots of noise!  The good kind.  ;-)  I love how Ethan isn't even two yet and runs around and wrestles with the older ones.  He only took a few knocks and gave some good ones!

Brian has started a new job and unfortunately was unable to really take any time off for the holidays.  He drove back and forth from Austin to Houston four times to be with us on Christmas, the weekends and New Years.

Christmas day we went over to visit with Grammy, Papaw and the Hawkes'.  Isabel and Logan had fun racing with Lila on the driveway in her new tricycle.  They have so much energy!  I don't know how they get by on such little sleep and play SO hard.

Five of the of the twelve people staying at Gramma and Grampa's house came down with a lovely tummy bug.  Pretty sure we can thank Logan for that one.  Luckily it only lasted about a day.

We hit up lots of parks and even took Isabel on her first ice skating adventure.  We made the decision to rent a helmet for her.  She was one of two kids with one on, but boy am I glad she did.  She was using the little walker thing to skate around and was going really fast.  She decided that she could skate without it so we skated while I held her hand.  Then she decided she could skate by herself.  She was doing awesome and then got a little too confident and her legs flew out from under her and she really smacked her head hard.  Tear and ice and 20 minutes later she was ready to get back out there for a couple more laps.  I have a feeling the movie 'Frozen' has something to do with her love of ice and ice skating.

New Year's Eve day we went to the children's museum and they had a noon countdown and some fun activities.  We've gone the past 2 or 3 years and it's packed, but fun.  Logan got lost right out of the gate.  That was not so fun.  I knew he couldn't leave without me, but it was still scary.  I found him at the complete opposite side of where he was supposed to be (in the play house with his sister and cousins) with a nice lady sobbing.  Poor little guy.  He rallied and was ok after that.  It was really difficult to keep tabs on the kids-even with 4 adults.  I actually made it to midnight on New Year's this year but we missed the ball drop.  We were still on a high from watching the awesome A&M football game!

We're back in Austin and Isabel has her first day back at school Thursday.  Logan doesn't go back until Tuesday.  I've enjoyed having my buddies around for a couple of weeks.  I'm sure the time will be even more special next year when they are both going to school for almost 7 hours 5 days a week!

Today we were supposed to take down Christmas decorations (like everyone else in the entire country) and clean, but we decided to go to the mall and do some exchanges instead.  And then we went to Chuys for lunch.  I'm starting my diet (again, with the rest of the country) and had a chicken salad while Brian went for it with a steak burrito, 2 cokes and some creamy jalapeno.  He's participating in a weight loss challenge at work and the first initial weigh in is on Monday.  He wants to win, so he's 'bulking.'  ;-)  Wine has been switched out for tea at night (boo) and I've been drinking a gallon of water a day.  I have to stop with the water around 3pm or I'm up, no joke, 5 times a night.  Sometimes more.  It's ridiculous.

So tomorrow we have all of the decorations and cleaning to do.  Always fun with 2 little ones around.  At some point in the near future we also need to get Logan a big boy bed.  Yep, he's still in his crib!

*just now posting this---3 days later.

Now I'll just photo dump pictures from my phone!

Still cold

I love that it's still cold (sort of).  The high today was 46.  Yes, I will not be sweating when I walk to get the mail.

Last night we had one of Brian's coworkers over for dinner. I made some pretty good chili, cheddar biscuits and cornbread.  I was able to send Don off with lots of leftover chili and lots of chocolate chip cookies.  Isabel really helped making them and for the first time in almost ever they turned out awesome! Dare I say almost as good as Meredith's recipe?  Logan and Isabel both had really good days, but Logan melted down right in time for dinner.  Luckily our dinner guest has 4 kids and was very understanding.

Thursday we are celebrating Isabel's teacher's birthday.  I'm bringing both teachers lunch and cupcakes.  I stole an idea from last year and am bringing in a vase so that each student can being in a flower to fill he vase.  Hopefully it'll be a nice, unique arrangement.

We also have holiday parties next week.  Logan's is from 8-8:45am.  Not sure what I have to being for that yet.  Isabel's is next Thursday.  I'm making 21 gingerbread house 'frames' out of graham crackers with the other room mom.

I suppose I should start thinking about teacher/therapist/mail carrier/bus driver/Etc gifts.  Maybe some Christmas crack?  I need to check out Pinterest for some inexpensive ideas.

Our Elf on the Shelf, Twinkle Sparkle, has been pretty unoriginal at popping up each morning on new places.  Izzy's favorite has been on the milk jug.  One night I want to gift wrap the toilet....need more motivation for that.

I think he liked his special hot chocolate!

Twilight Sparkle

Her lovely 'headband.'

Easter and we closed!

Usually Brian's office closes at noon the day before a holiday. Not this year. New CEO = new way. It worked out fine since we CLOSED on our refi Friday night at 5pm. Someone came to our house and shoved papers in front of us and we signed until our hands cramped. It only took almost 5 months. Once the loan is funded (Tuesday at midnight) Brian is going to file complaints. I know it won't do any good, but maybe if there are enough complaints eventually they won't be able to ignore it anymore.

After we closed we headed to Houston. We got in around 9:30pm. I dropped Brian and Logan off at urgent care. Logan pulled a wooden car down on his face Friday afternoon. He had a little cut and some swelling. I tried to put some ice on it, but that lasted about 2 seconds. I didn't think too much about it but on the ride to Houston Logan started covering her eye and complaining that it hurt. Brian and I both thought that it looked like he was having trouble focusing. I started worrying about a detached retina so wanted to get it checked out ASAP. The doctor said he was fine. I think he was probably just tired, rubbed his eye and was having trouble focusing because he was so exhausted. No naps these days and he was 2 hours past bedtime.

Saturday we headed over to Kingwood and had a nice Easter lunch with Grammy, Papaw, Uncle Greg, Aunt Jennifer and Lila.  The kids did an egg hunt and played outside a bit.  The weather was perfect.  We went back over to The Woodlands and hit up Rico's for dinner.  Yum.

Sunday I had big plans to make it to church, but that didn't happen.  I'm sure it would be an hour of me sweating and having hypertension trying to make sure Logan didn't disturb anyone or hit/bite/push/pinch kids in the cry room.  Church just isn't in our immediate future.  Maybe one day.  We got in the spa and dyed Easter eggs instead.  The Easter Bunny stopped by and left some eggs to hunt in the front yard too.

We headed back to Austin in the nick of time to avoid severe storms all around us.  We actually had great weather.  There were a LOT of people on the roads and traffic was pretty heavy.

Monday after working out I witnessed a car accident.  I was the first person to stop and it was so scary not knowing what I was going to find behind all of the air bags.  Luckily everyone was fine.  This woman just completely ran a red light.  Not even paying attention.  She was in the morning zone out or something.  I was talking to her and trying to calm her down and she was telling me that she just bought the car the day before.  I guess she hit a deer last week and totaled her other car.  She kept asking me if her car was 'bad.'  I was like 'uh, it's not great.'  Yep, she totaled her brand spanking new Volvo SUV.  I was pretty impressed with the encasement of air bags around the entire passenger area.  The other guy had an older Impala and he was a little shaken up, but nothing major.

This week had been non stop cleaning.  I borrowed a steam carpet cleaner from a friend and have been slowly cleaning all of the carpets.  Logan decided to flush a flashlight down the downstairs toilet so we had the fun task of cleaning that up last night.  It was especially fun because a couple of people forgot that it was broken and did some #2's in there.  Gross.  So that room was completely sanitized.  I do love freshly washed bath mats.

Tomorrow is Isabel's birthday celebration at school.  We made some cupcakes and I'll take them tomorrow afternoon.