Santa Land

I took Caroline and a friend's son, Caleb to Santa Land on Saturday night, and my brother and his wife and baby joined us. It was quite an experience! Was it worth standing in a freezing cold line for an hour and a half to see santa....according to Caroline and Caleb the answer is YES! At least they enjoyed!!

Dance Observation Day

Caroline's Christmas Dance Observation Day was last week. We had a great time watching her dance and be overly dramatic (I SOOOOOOOO don't know where she gets that part!). She had a huge group of family that came and watched her (me and Dale, CoCo and Jimbo, Nana and Grampy and Uncle Matt, Aunt Shanna and Uncle Mike and Becca), so THANKS everyone for coming!

Recently when we (or santa, or ANYONE for that matter) asks Caroline what she wants for Christmas, the only thing she will tell them is a Teddy Bear. I finally know where that comes from! One of the dances they did is "I want a Teddy Bear for Christmas"!

She also did a gymnastics portion and was so cute doing little rolls and flips! She has so much fun and dance class and talks about Ms. Chelsea all week long! We can't wait for it to start back after the holidays!!

Ms. Chelsea introducing Caroline...

Caroline making sure EVERYONE had their eyes on her...

Straddle Roll...

The Nutcracker

Going to see the Nutcracker truly makes it Christmastime!!! My mom's mom started taking me to the Nutcracker when I was really little, and I have only gone one or two years since then without going. We decided to take Caroline this year, and she did pretty good. Before it began, my mom decided to tell her the story of the Nutcracker, which included the part where Clara gets scared by the Rat King...so Caroline was really scared when it first started because she thought the whole thing was going to be a "scary show". Then, the part where the Rat King and Nutcracker fight ended up being her favorite part! We had a minor meltdown right after the second act started, because Caroline decided that she wanted to go dance on stage too and I had to hold her from running down the aisle! Once I got her settled down, she sat through the rest of it pretty quiet! She got to see Clara afterwards, and has talked about the Nutcracker every day since!!

Church Christmas Party

A few weekends ago we had a Christmas party with all of our friends from our class at church. WOW there are a lot of kids!!! We had a great time and are so lucky to be in such a great group!! The kids did a book exchange and Caroline loves her new book! Thanks, Tierney, for some of these pictures!!!

The 2 year old girls...they are all going to be such a handful someday!!!

Gingerbread House

I got a gingerbread house for Caroline to put together and decorate, and used it as a bribe all day a few weekends ago to go shopping all day. All day long I told her that if she was good then we would go home and do the gingerbread house. Little did I know (I totally should have thought about this, though), you have to put all the house pieces together and then let it sit for a few hours before you can actually decorate it! OOPS!!! Well, while it was drying I let Caroline help me put Christmas "orDaments"on the tree, and she enjoyed that as well!

Carol of Lights

My Dad was a Saddle Tramp, so I have always kinda been in awe of all of the great Texas Tech traditions...Carol of Lights is definately one of my favorites! This is the first year I got to take Caroline, and even though she got kinda fussy while we were there, she has been talking about the Texas Tech lights and the big Christmas Tree. When we were walking back to our cars, she kept screaming "Polar Express" and pointing at the big tree...and when you look at it, it does kinda look like the big tree on the Polar Express movie!!

Its Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas...

I love Christmas...and Christmas decorations:) My Sue Sue (my mom's mom) had a bunch of Nutcrackers and always took me to the Nutcracker and ever since I was a really little girl I have loved decorating for Christmas. Here are some pictures of the house thus far...

Crazy Hair Day

Caroline's school is doing a food drive for the South Plains Food Bank and each day if the kiddo brings a can of food they can participate in the "day". Monday was Crazy Hair Day and since Caroline is usually the only one to show up participating (like she even notices), I decided to just put a couple crazy bows in her hair and go with it like that. She kept telling me "Mommy, my hair so pretty..." if she only knew:) She also got to have hat day at school where she chose to wear her thick toboggan with little fuzzy balls on top and then Wednesday was sunglasses day.

Our Little Diva

That's our girl!! There are a few dresses that Caroline has that were mine when I was a little girl and she loves them! She calls them her "new Church dresses" even though they are like 25 years old! These dresses were from when I was like 4 or 5, and they are actually kinda short on Caroline...MOM...did you let my butt hang out of my dresses when I was a kid????

Thanksgiving and the Day After...

We had a really strange Thanksgiving this year...it was quiet with very little family!!! Dale had to work, so I went over to my parent's house and it was just my mom and dad, me and Caroline and my Pop. Since it was only a few of us, we decided to forgo the regular Thanksgiving meal and we had my mom's awesome shrimp casserole instead...yummy!!!

So, I lost my camera a few weeks ago and have felt like I lost a leg...it is REALLY hard to function without my camera. There was an awesome camera on sale on the day after Thanksgiving at Wal Mart for like $100 off the regular price. I decided that I was going to turn into one of the crazies on Black Friday and get one...and turn into a crazy I did!!! My mom (who has DEFINATELY never done the black Friday thing) and I got to Wal Mart at 4:30 and it wasn't supposed to open until 5 and there were already a ton of people inside there. I got to the camera counter and figured that the camera I wanted was already gone, but can you believe it, they COULDN'T FIND the camera I came for...it was the camera on the front of their add...their BIG sale item and they couldn't find them! GO Wal Mart...aren't you organized:) But, I became persistant and waited as they found the pallet of cameras and brought them over. Then, since it was so crowded the guy with the pallet decided to open them at a different spot so he didn't have to get through the croud with the pallet and that made the front (ahem, where I was) the back of the line...so we became crazy and pushed our way through!! I've never felt so darn crazy in my life, but at that point it was all about being defiant and getting my darn camera...AND I DID!!

After a few EARLY hours of shopping I had to go back home because we had a drain pipe corrode under our house that we had to fix. This is the drain pipe that the kitchen sink, disposal and dishwasher drain into, so there were who knows how long worth of disposal food and water under the house...GROSS! Dale had to get down in it but we realized the pipe was too damaged and we (AKA, Dale) had to replace the whole thing...some pictures are below. I must say I'm pretty proud and impressed with Dale getting this done and saving us about $1800!!

Yes...this is the standing water/mud/cest pool/compost pile/whatever you want to call it that was under our house. It smelled SOOOOOO bad!!!

Dale had to get under the house by cutting a hole under the kitchen counter and climbing under cause we couldn't get past a big beam to get to the kitchen side of the house through the access.