What a wonderful Christmas

Once again we had an amazing Christmas season. Beginning with my family Christmas on the 16th (so we can all be back in our own homes for Christmas Day), which was a wonderful gathering. The Ohio Kennemers were very much missed. One of the best things is seeing my kids playing with their cousins, who they love.

Christmas Eve was spent over at Jim's parents' house. We are lucky that our family traditions work out nicely without overlap; plus everyone is local so we are never required to travel for the holidays. I had to work early in the day on Christmas Eve (curse of working at a church), but it wasn't bad. I got to go to mass that morning, and got to see all the little kids I love up there. And Jim got to make sure our two were bathed and dressed for the day. Grace and Alex had more cousins that night to play with - nice for us because since the girls are older we really can say "Watch Alex for us" and don't have to be peeking around corners or through windows to make sure he's not destroying everything in sight.

And Christmas Day was exciting. Other than the hitch with the scooter, the kids were overjoyed by the presents (and Grace was very accepting of the "Santa's elf forgot a part" explanation). I get to enjoy myself by cooking the big holiday meal for our family and Mom, Dad and Luella. Beef tenderloin again this year, with mashed potatoes, peas and glazed carrots. Plus I took a stab at making homemade rolls - maybe not beautiful, but they seemed to taste okay. My big accomplishment of the meal was dessert - Irish bread pudding with caramel-whiskey sauce. Yummy!

At the end of the day I just was able to revel in the beauty of the season. Grace declared twice (once at Grandma and Pawpaw's house and once Christmas morning) that "This is the best Christmas I've ever had in my whole life!" I was able to cook a wonderful meal and have other hands cleaning up in the kitchen, which is my most-hated part of it. New toys were strewn all over my house, but we were all still full from the food and wine of Christmas dinner so we didn't care. Just hanging out on the couch that evening as a family, kids crawling all over us, was the best place to be. Alex zonked out on top of me on the couch, and Grace quickly fell asleep after a couple of books.

And in case anyone was wondering, I got up this morning to hit Target at 7am and found a replacement Princess scooter at the second store I went to. Stuck the box under the tree with a big bow on it. Grace discovered it a couple hours later. So she has her scooter only one day late, and now I get to make a trip to Target again to return the first one and get names for writing my complaint letter.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Damn damn damn

11:45pm on Christmas Eve and we discover that the Princess scooter Jim is assembling is MISSING THE REAR AXLE.

Yep, the most-wanted Christmas gift of the season in our household is incomplete. So we've written the letter from Santa explaining that the elves made an error, and I'll probably go hit a Target at 7am on Tuesday morning to try to find a new one.

Stupid Target. Probably didn't check the package when it was returned the first time before taping it up and sticking it back on the shelf. I'm writing a letter...

All I want for Christmas is...

everything, which will change next week if you ask a 4-year old.

Last year was easy to sway Grace's Santa requests to match what had already been brought. But this year she sees a commercial targeted to little girls and something new pops up on the list. The latest is a scooter. Originally a Barbie scooter (don't ask me where that came from). But of course everyone is sold out of the three-wheeled Barbie scooter. But I discovered a Disney Princess scooter, which once I mentioned it has now shot up to the top of the list. So Fairy Princess Dora is in the back of the car waiting to be returned to Target.

Alex is a bit easier. For the longest time you'd ask him what he was going to ask Santa for, and his response would be "toys". Now he's changed it to be "monkeys, dinosaurs and toys". So I'm going to have to run out one last time on Thursday (when both kids are at a special drop-in day at school) to try to find some monkeys and dinosaurs for the boy.

Family vacations are fun!

Yes we did it. Rented the RV and hit the Texas state parks last week. Despite the fact that I was sick the first couple of days (including on Thanksgiving the day before we left - great), Grace was sick in the middle of the trip and Alex picked it up at the end, we had a great time. Had to patronize WalMart twice and discovered that the stores in small towns are much nicer than the ones in DFW. Stayed at Ft. Parker near Mexia the first night simply because just about every other park in the state was booked the Friday after Thanksgiving. Then two nights in Garner State Park and two nights at Pedernales Falls SP. We were going to spend a night at Dinosaur Valley SP, but decided to just make that a stop on the way home after having two sick kids for the past few days and realizing the cold front was coming in that night. Originally planned on reaching Big Bend, but changed our route after the first night when we realized we wanted more park time and less drive time.

Our sweet ride.

Alex adopted this weird stance for a while when throwing
rocks into the river at Garner SP.

Grace said "Throwing rocks in the river is more
fun than...ANYTHING! Even Coloring!"

Checking out the recently deceased butterfly next to one of the
biggest trees we'd ever seen (Garner SP).

The butterfly.


Helping Alex navigate the rocks at Pedernales Falls SP
(to get to a good spot to toss them into the river, of course).


Not only could we throw rocks, but we could stick our
feet in this river while we did it.


Helping Grace cross back across.


Grace shows off hers (and my) bedroom. Alex and Jim shared the
MUCH more comfortable bed in the back.


Alex and the smudges he helped decorate the entire RV with.


A sunset at Pedernales Falls.


Me watching the deer roaming through our campsite. Not much fear in those guys until you really make a lot of noise. We also saw feral pigs (from a distance - about 4 adults and a mess of babies), rabbits and numerous cool birds. That was the live animals. If you count the roadkill you can add a lot of raccoons to that number - there was a stretch of road from Garner to Pedernales Falls where we saw one probably every two miles.


Picture of the family taken the last night using the camera on the computer.