North Pole Express

Last Saturday we set out on a little adventure I called "A Day Full of Christmas Cheer in Grapevine." We had lots of fun and visited several different venues. For the sake of not making your retinas bleed profusely, I've broken the posts (and pictures) up into several different (and hopefully manageable) chunks.

We'll start with our train ride on the North Pole Express. Neither Tay nor I had ever ridden on a train before so it was a special treat. Before boarding, we checked out some of the vignettes set up around the property.

Saw the Grinch,
Frosty and Rudolph.

And took in the decorations before the pre-show began.

Aren't they cute? Oh, how I love them.
There's my stud. My rock. And our in-house comedian.
Playing in the (fake) snow on the way to the train. (For the record, they had a Daddy Dance Off during the pre-show and I am absolutely convinced Dave could have won....if we had been able to get him up there. Seriously lost opportunity for some photographic goodness.)

They're pointing and laughing at me because the snow kept sticking (in massive amounts) in my curly hair. Dave took a picture at this point but let's just say it was less than flattering. I have another one from the ICE exhibit at the Gaylord that I'll show you later.

Santa came to see us after a reading of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas.

Pouty McPout Pout - the lost elf - made an appearance because she was embarrassed by Davey's excessive dancing in his seat. Luckily, it was a short visit by Pouty Mc.
I blame my appearance in this photo on the fact that we left really early that morning. I hope you will too.


It was lots of fun and was the perfect length (about an hour from pre-show through the end of the ride). Next we headed off to the winter spectacular at Bass Pro Shops where my child was more interested in taking target practice than Santa. I'll share those pics tomorrow :-)

Halloween '09 - The Final Post

I'm sure you'll be ecstatic to know that this post contains the final Halloween pics from my camera. Were it not for documentation purposes, I wouldn't bore you with more but I have a feeling a certain little girl will be happy to see them up on the ol' computer. :-)

These were actually taken Halloween night (after the Baylor/Nebraska game) when she did a bit of trick or treating around our neighborhood. She really came away with a haul and it took almost 6 weeks to go through that candy. 

Showing it off for the last time. Notice the new tights - they were super cute!




This house is Tay's favorite every Halloween so she asked for some pictures to document the fun.



And that concludes our Halloween fun. We went to Grapevine for some fun holiday activities over the weekend so I have tons of new (seasonally appropriate) pictures to share with you later this week.

Side note: Rehab is still slow and painful for the little one. Please pray for her arm as I've told her we will be starting physical therapy in January if it's not better by the time she goes back to school. This is stressing both of us out quite a bit so you won't waste a prayer on us. I promise.

BMBC Fall Festival

Ok, y'all, so I'm backtracking a bit to Halloween (yes again) because I'm trying to get it all documented. If you've had enough of the cutest costume ever created then feel free to stop reading here. If, however, you have not, then please continue reading.

Our church had a Fall Festival the Wednesday before Halloween. Seeing as we were obviously out to have just as much stinkin' fun as possible, Miss Tay suited up once again and headed out with her candy pail.

But not before a bit of a goofball photo session with yours truly...

Then we headed out to church. First stop - the cake walk, of course!

Then a bit o' cookie decorating. And eating.
Following by more cake walk...
Many wistful glances were cast at the inflatables; however, I was not willing to risk further damage to her arm so then ugly glances were cast at me. All in a day's work, right?
More cookie decorating...
Then she just started taking group shots with my camera.
But took a break to have her face painted.
And that was it - oh, she did win a stuffed animal in the sucker pull. She thought that was the most fabulous thing EVER! And I thought it was super cool of God to cheer her up like that because she really was sad not to be able to play with the other kiddos. 

There's always next year, though, right?

Happy weekend everyone - we're heading to Grapevine tomorrow to ride the North Pole Express, visit the ICE exhibit at the Gaylord and enjoy Christmas on Main Street. You can be sure we will hit Spaghetti Warehouse on the way out of town as well. :-)

Last Home Game of the Year

The last home football game this year was on Halloween, which Miss Taylor thought was absolutely fabulous. It was a really early game (11am to be exact) because it was televised (someone should have revised our TV schedule after RG3 went down - just sayin'...) but we all headed out early to watch the Bears take on the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

As we were waiting in the parking lot in the car (got there really early and it was actually cold that morning), we were absolutely floored with the shear number of Nebraska fans. They just kept coming and coming and coming. Every single one of them was decked out in red from head to toe and I'd say approximately 45.8% of them had on a hat that was a corncob.

Seriously

While I had to admire their team spirit and was amazed they had traveled so far, I must admit to - at one point - saying something along the lines of "they just keep coming - it's like a bunch of ants."

To which my child replied, "Yep - fire ants."

Get it - they were wearing red?! Loved it - and what's the old saying about the apple and the tree?

I digress.

Anyway, our guys put on a sporting performance and, while the final score was 20-10, we did not let them score a single point in the second half. We also apparently triple teamed Suh (you know, Mr. Defensive Player of the Year and Heisman Finalist) because we didn't hear his name once during the game.

We, friends, shut. Him. Down.

Oh, yes, we did.

Obviously I believe in moral victories.

I only took a few pictures because Miss Thang was still in her sling at the time and let's just say that she was less than willing to have many snapped that documented her injury. At least while she was awake.  But that'll be our little secret, ok?

The team warming up before the game began

More of the team warming up before the game

We were being a bit silly (shocker, right?) that day

It was a series of silly, y'all

Sweet, sweet face

Ok, prayer warriors, I have a request - Tay went back to the orthopedic surgeon earlier this week and the bone is 95% healed. She has been released to participate in PE again, which thrills her to no end, but she can't resume gymnastics/tumbling until March when she sees him for the final time.

Everything is great with one exception. We've worked extremely hard on getting her arm straight and have made significant progress. It's still only about 90% there, though. The doctor asked her to work really hard in the next few weeks because the window of opportunity will begin closing after that time.

Functionally, there is no issue but I don't know if this mom can live with the guilt of my baby girl having a crooked arm for the rest of her life. The doctor did say that, per the x-rays, there's no reason it can't/won't be straight. But I need her to work hard. And we're both really tired of this process. And, yes, I realize other people have much bigger issues and I do realize how blessed we've been in this process.

But I still covet your prayers.

Pretty please.

Silly Sonic Run on a Sunday (for Sundaes)

A few weeks ago my sister-in-law, Diane, picked Miss Tay up after we got home from church and took her to lunch and then shopping for her birthday. She is the one who got her the super cute fur-lined hoodie you saw in the Christmas on 5th pictures. 

They had lunch at Red Lobster, hot chocolate at Barnes & Noble, did some make-up shopping and hit Marshall's, which is where they scored the awesome jacket. Not knowing that my little one had already ingested so much sugar (I was recovering from an upper respiratory infection), I decided to take her with me to satisfy the sweet craving that had been eating at me for days.

I've been working out really hard and trying (and succeeding to some degree) to lose weight so I don't keep sweets in the house anymore. So the satisfying of this sweet tooth required a trip to Sonic. She got a hot fudge sundae and I got the hot fudge sundae that includes bananas. Yum, yum, yum!

While we were enjoying our sweets, Tay got tickled. And I really don't even remember about what because we weren't talking about anything funny. Maybe the sugar rush had just become too much and overcome her little body. Who knows. What I do know is that the following pictures document an experience I had with my daughter on a cold Sunday evening at the Sonic in Hewitt, Texas, that I NEVER WANT TO FORGET.




She was absolutely hysterical and, because she was tickled, I got tickled and - well - you can imagine the riot that ensued. 

Seriously.

It was awesome.

Needed to document this occurrence for posterity. It was that good.

And now I shall resume the snickering that has been ongoing since I found out my husband was given a high-powered DIURETIC for his blood pressure that makes you DROWSY. Tell me that doesn't have comedic potential...

Oh Christmas Tree

During our visit to Chritmas on 5th at Baylor last week, Tay and I ventured inside the SUB to check out some of the Christmas trees that had been decorated for all to enjoy. Quite frankly, it was super cold outside and we were looking for a few minutes of warm and cozy. We did enjoy the trees a great deal as well, though.

See?

Can you tell she was less than enthusiastic about taking these photos? 

While miss Thang has written a letter to Santa and is expecting him to bring her a Wii this year, she  refused to talk with him in person. She did, however, insist on a photo of the big guy and Mrs. Claus. So, no, I have no idea who the woman is in the photo. Just focus on the figures in red :-)

To cap off our Baylor experience, I took the little one to IHOP for a mediocre dinner. If nothing else, it was authentic and we had a great time hanging out together as well. 

Hope you're enjoying the holiday season thus far - we're certainly doing our darndest to make up for last year when I had nose surgery and was out of commission while all of the fun activities were going on.

Christmas on 5th - A Photo Essay