This month, we started off getting the pups ready and dropping them off with their vet while we headed to Florida again.
This time, we decided to fly instead of drive.
We went to watch Grandmommy & Granddaddy perform in their church's Christmas Concert.
We went to the Mims Christmas Parade,
then to the Cracker Christmas Festival to visit with our friend, "Baby James," then back home to celebrate early Christmas with my family.
This year, for all of the nephews, I made PJs as Christmas gifts. These are baby Colton's.
The next day we celebrated early Christmas with David's family. These are the pjs I made for Nathan, Alex & Jonathan. I'm so happy because they actually wore them twice while we were in Florida and they actually fit perfectly! So happy!
While we were back home, we also scheduled to have everyone's teeth done since we don't have new dentists in town yet. Rosalie got hers done for the first time and did amazingly! Which, she is now up to EIGHT teeth, 4 top & 4 bottoms.
Sophia got her first xrays, and her second cleaning/examination and also did great.
That night I also got to meet up with a longtime childhood friend and went bowling! We had a lot of fun and it was really great getting to catch up! Wish we'd had more time, but we'll definitely do it again next time I'm in town!
Then we got up STUPID early (5:30am, er 4:30am TX time) to hop in the car and get to Magic Kingdom in time for the opening ceremony (which in all the times we've gone, we've never seen). We made it!!
(opening ceremony)
(Dapper Dans)
My parents joined us a little bit later, and hung around for a few hours.
We scored last minute reservations to Be Our Guest for lunch, and I tried the "Grey Stuff," it was indeed delicious. The food was actually really good, and the place was just beautiful.
Sophia was even finally tall enough to go on all of the coasters (except Space Mountain) and was all about it. Here is me, Mom & Sophia (between us in the back row) on Splash Mountain.
We watched the Festival of Fantasy Parade,
and rode the Jingle Cruise.
Shortly after this, they headed home and we continued on with our day.
We LOVED the 7 Dwarves Mine Train!! It was amazing! By far our new favorite ride!! We had to child swap for it, so Sophia got to go twice and said to me "Mom!! You aren't even going to know what to do with yourself!!"
We still had two extra hours of magic hours, but it'd been a very long day and both girls were very tired and my body was hurting, so we were finally able to catch the Main Street Electrical Light Parade (a favorite of mine since I was a baby), then decided to call it a night. We got back to the hotel and the girls crashed, which was great.
The next morning we got up, and decided to kill some time since we didn't have to be back at the Magic Kingdom until 4pm, so we walked around our hotel and over the bridge to Art of Animation for some lunch.
Then we headed to the monorail and went to the Grand Floridian & Wilderness Lodge to check out their pretty Christmas decorations.
By the time we were done with Wilderness Lodge, it was time for Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party, so off we went.
Then the night took a turn for the worst, when we tried to join the Country Bear's Dance Party. There were only like three other kids in there with one CM on an otherwise empty dancefloor, and I'd just put my things down, and brought the girls onto the floor about 10 feet away from the others to dance by ourselves in a corner, and all of a sudden some like six year old snot came full force into both of my girls, knocking them down. She landed on top of Rosalie but Rosalie ended up okay. Sophia on the other hand landed on her face and split her chin open.
They put us in an ambulance and took us to the local ER, where we got in immediately but were stuck there until 3am and the poor thing ended up having to get stitches. Talk about the worst Disney experience ever. She's three and had to leave the Christmas Party because of some little snot girl, whose mom just sat there, never got up, never apologized or checked to see if she was okay, when her face was literally dripping blood. I should have straight up punched her in the mouth. An eye for an eye, right? Needless to say, that pretty much ruined our trip, and was just a bunch of drama after that point.
We took her to Disney Springs the next day and got her an Ariel cookie to try and leave on at least a remotely good note.
That night was the rehearsal dinner for my sister's wedding, which was another mess in itself.
Luckily, the wedding the next day was much much better, and absolutely beautiful.
She was the most beautiful bride. I'll post lots more pictures of the wedding once they all come back from the photographer. :)
We basically had a day of rest/packing, then off to the airport we went to come home. Oh, and while we were at Disney, Sophia also managed to pick up an ear infection and an upper respiratory infection, along with a stomach virus likely on the place, that ended up getting passed around to all of us, and ended with Sophia and I both in the ER with nonstop vomiting and me with a fever of a 102.4, and our whole family on Zofran for a week. Seriously, it was the week from hell. The good news is, that Thursday, Sophia got her stitches out, and she did great and it's looking so much better now.
Among all of this nonsense, I had a birthday pass, of which I wouldn't eat anything, let alone go out for a nice dinner or celebrate. :( That's one for the books.
In better news, my beautiful sister also graduated college! In just a few short weeks? Days? She will be a full time elementary school teacher! I'm really proud of her!
We also finally started feeling good enough to finish decorating the Christmas tree,
and went out to experience The Trail of Lights, which was really beautiful and pictures do not do it justice at all.
In completely unrelated news, I also got to see (from a distance) history in the making.
Space X successfully launched and landed an upright rocket. It was incredible to watch, and is the first time in my life (growing up in the space city) that anything has truly gotten me excited about what is to come. Elon Musk is genuinely what we need in this country to move forward. The strides he's taken in technology between his cars (that he's now basically made opensource, and it making to be actually affordable to the middle class family), to his battery powered housing, and now Space X. We may as a country actually have a chance at being successful again, if we could just get past Generation Butthurt and actually start using our brains, and getting educations, and losing this self entitled bullshit everyone has.
Now more back on topic, the girls and I finally got to make our Christmas cookies! They really enjoyed decorating them!
Then before we knew it, it was Christmas Eve and Christmas!!
Sophia, being the sweetheart that she is, made four Christmas cards for Santa from our family, and helped me make some chocolate chip cookies for him, but insisted that I make him hot cocoa, and not a glass of milk.
The next morning, she was so excited to see that he'd eaten his cookies, and left her a letter as well as a playhouse for the girls!
We even got to facetime with our family.
Sophia's favorite gift was her playdough ponies for her sister.
Rosalie's favorite is the playhouse from Santa.
We spent the day just hanging out, cooking, eating, listening to music, watching Christmas movies...then we dropped off some of the extra food (because I don't know how to cook small) to some of the local homeless and went out to look at Christmas lights. It was very relaxed.
The next day we did a little bit of running around for after Christmas sales. We picked up a few more strands of lights for outside next year, two things of lighted garland for our porch post, some bows and ornaments, some candles, and a gingerbread house. :)
The weather was nice and cool, but not too cool, and we decided it'd been too long since we'd gone out on a hike. We used to go every weekend, but then we got lost in the mountain of things that needed to be done, and then the weather was yuck, or David was on call, so we decided to give it a go. The first place we found was actually one we'd already done before, so we headed on to the next,
Wild Basin Wilderness Preserve. It was pretty beautiful, there was even a little waterfall and a cute little creek.
Unfortunately, after that we soon learned that apparently Sophia is highly allergic to something (we think cedar) and had an allergic reaction similar to what I get when I'm too cold. She was swollen and welted and her feet were so swollen that they hurt, and her poor little face didn't even look like hers anymore. We took her to urgent care and they gave us a steroid and a higher powered benedryl basically. She seems to be doing much better now, but for two days I just felt awful for her.
In slight craziness, Texas has been experiencing some pretty crazy, abnormal weather. The panhandle and west have been under a serious blizzard, and there have been tornados that have unfortunately killed several people. We are far enough east that we missed out on most of this, but have gotten very very cold weather and a bit of rain. The other night however, all of a sudden it got very very loud and sounded like our house was coming down. We rushed outside to see a massive hailstorm going on, which quarter sized hail flying down hard and fast, and lots of it. Somehow, it appears that our vehicles survived without a ton of crazy dents. I did actually get to see a single snow flurry! It was supposed to snow that same night, but then the weather changed and the rain stopped. :(
Then we decided that given this crap, non-Christmasy month, to go ahead and take down everything early. This is very out of the norm for me, as I wait until at LEAST new year's and quite frankly, would keep it up all year if it wasn't frowned upon. We just weren't in it this year. Nothing about it felt right.
(Watching Barney from her new picnic table from Grandmommy & Granddaddy)
(and from her new house from Santa)
(Sophia's "Snowgie" from Frozen Fever)
In other good news, a month or two back, we found out that David's job would be hiring, and I immediately thought of an old co-worker/friend of his, who weren't really sure would even consider moving, but turns out, the timing was perfect and he was looking to leave anyway. He scored an interview and killed it, and is moving out in a few days to start! It'll be really great to have someone else we know here, and good for David too, because he too likes to woodwork, and tinker, and canoe, so hopefully this will be an all around good move for everyone! :)
Today on New Year's Eve, we got up this morning and headed to the Round Rock Public Library for their Noon Year's Eve Party for the kids, but when we got there, there were just too many kids and it was stressing Sophia out, so instead, we opted to rent three Disney movies that we haven't seen, picked up Round Rock Donuts and McDonald's and headed home for a movie day. Then after David got home, we headed downtown for a free New Year's event. OMG!!! The fireworks were insane! There was live music and some food trucks and such, but those fireworks! It was directly over Lady Bird Lake, and we were close to the water with a perfect view of the cityscape, and my god. I mean, seriously, their fireworks went on forever and far surpassed anything I've ever seen at Disney! That's quite a feat! That said, hope everyone had/is having a wonderful and safe new year!
