1st Christmas

All she wants for Christmas is two more teeth! Madi has been pretty good about leaving the tree alone until the other day when I made the mistake of putting her in front of the tree to try and take a picture. The pictures explain what happened next. Since then, she has unwrapped presents with her teeth and tried pulling the lights off the tree. That's actually pretty harmless for her! What a joy it is to look at her and think that she wasn't even born yet this time last year even though we thought she was going to make an early appearance since I was dilated to a 3 by Christmas. She held off for another 3 weeks and has kept us on our toes since.

Sold...maybe

Well, during the middle of our crazy Christmas season, a couple came a looked at our house and decided to make an offer later in the week. We countered, they accepted, and the inspection was done yesterday. They still have a 10 day option period to back out and 19 days to obtain financing, but if everything goes okay, we're out of this house by January 16. It's kind of funny. We liked this house, but we wanted a couple of acres and a little more room for the girls. We have worked so hard to sell this one so we can begin to build the new one, but now that it's finally happening, I'm a little nostalgic. Even though we've only been here a little less than 4 years, this is the only house Alli remembers living in, and this is the house we brought Madi home to from the hospital when she was born. Anyway, I'm putting all that aside as now we have lots of decisions to make about where to live in the meantime, how much to pack and when, where we're going to have Madi's 1st birthday party, etc. Oh well, I figure it will all work out. God has a way of putting all the pieces together at just the right time in a way you're not expecting.

#6

Alli decided against a big birthday party this year where we send out like 30 invitations and rent a gymnastics center for the kids to run around and play. For her 6th birthday she wanted to have a small party with a few friends from her class at the local bead shop, Got to Bead. They each got to make a bracelet with their name on it to take home. I think their favorite part, though, was the chocolate chip cookie cake with lots of icing butterflys!

Nutcracker...a Star is Born

Alli was chosen to be an extra in the Nutcracker with the Waco Symphony on December 7. She was a Snow Drop in Act I and had a great time. We didn't get any pictures of her in costume because they are the property of the ballet company. You show up with hair and makeup done, put on your costume right before you go out on stage and then take it off after your portion of the performance is over, and they won't let you take pictures during the performance due to the professional performers' union rules and all that complicated stuff, in addition to the fact it's just hard for the dancers to see when there are flashes going off in their eyes. Anyway, they took a professional picture of her in her costume the night before at dress rehearsal so we're hoping those will turn out okay. We won't know until after the first of the year. Except for a few family pictures, these are the only pictures I got to take.

The Week After

After a fun trip to Branson, we had a really interesting week following. Our realtor had asked us to have an Open House the following weekend and to have the house decorated for Christmas. I had decided I was going to do minimal decorating since the house is for sale, Madi is so little and curious, and we would be at Mom & Dad's for Christmas anyway. Well, I went ahead and decorated everything that following week in addition to Alli's gymnastics lesson and a baby shower. Meanwhile, we learned that James' uncle, his Dad's identical twin had passed away in Oklahoma. We quickly shifted around our plans to be there as we felt like that was important. On Friday evening, we had my company's Christmas party in Salado, which was wonderful food by the way. On Saturday, Alli was in the Gatesville Christmas parade, then she went to a birthday party in Waco, and then we took her to the Nutcracker practice at Waco Hall for their costume fitting and dress rehearsal until 9 pm. On Sunday, we finished packing for Oklahoma, did her hair and makeup for the Nutcracker, did final touchups for the Open House, went to watch the Nutcracker with the Waco Symphony and Russian Ballet, and then we left straight for Oklahoma. Don't get me wrong, while we were very tired and stressed after everything was said and done, we were glad we made it to everything because every activity proved to be a blessing in itself...but even more so to be able to be back home and spend some time enjoying the holidays.

Thanksgiving 2008

So we decided to be very brave and attempt our annual Thanksgiving trip with Nana and Papa to Branson, Missouri. Granted, this is not such a big deal until you throw in a 10 month old and all her belongings in addition to a smaller vehicle from the ones you've taken in the past. We didn't attempt it until Alli was 2. On the way up there, we stopped and had dinner at Aunt Tammy and Uncle Aubrey's house in Oklahoma (thanks for the awesome meal, guys). Alli had a great time playing with her cousins that evening since we hadn't seen them since Labor Day weekend. We drove another hour and spent the night. We drove the rest of the way the following day. Your schedule has to be a little more flexible with a little one in tow so we didn't cram in too many activities, but we did have a wonderful Thanksgiving Day brunch at the Keeter Center at the School of the Ozarks, rode go carts (I think it was a balmy 35-40 degrees), saw Liverpool Legends (Beatles imitators), Noah the Musical, and the Dixie Stampede. After all was said and done, Madi proved to be pretty flexible herself. I'm sure her daycare teachers loved us the next week since we had totally messed up her eating and sleeping schedule. As we left Branson on Sunday there was a beautiful snow falling...and a nice gusty wind...but the snow was so pretty. Anyway, we drove all the way back on Sunday and went back to work and school the next day. It was a nice break, but we came home to a lot of activities and things to take care of in the following weeks.

Open House

Okay, so I have a lot of catching up to do. On November 11, we went to an Open House at Alli's elementary school. We had a wonderful Italian dinner catered by Rosati's in Hewitt, and we got to see Alli's classroom and all the cool projects they had made for Thanksgiving and Fall. The really neat part of the evening was when we got to go to the computer lab so Alli could demonstrate the Powerpoint presentation she had created. I was amazed! There are quite a few adults that don't know how to use it and here my kindergartner is using it. I even learned a short cut tip for starting up the presentation. The picture is from the entry way to Alli's school. Madi wasn't overly cooperative and ended up on the floor... oh well, just take the picture and move on, right?