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!