Holidays!

New Year's with two of his favorite ladies
Back to school

Santa brought new house shoes

Christmas Morn

Last fall ballgame

Me with my mom and brother, Grant

Papa Doug with all the grandkids

Papa Doug and Marmee with all the grandkids

At a Holiday Tea Fundraiser for Pediatric Cancer patients

This year we stayed in Colorado for both Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. We missed seeing our families of course but it was also a nice change to stay home and relax. I cooked a turkey for Thanksgiving for the very first time and it was so easy and so good! We had tons of leftovers because I cooked enough food for ten people but it was only my little family of four. Needless to say, I ate sweet potatoes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. My girls are not picky eaters, but for whatever reason they do not like mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, or dressing. Ian is worse than them because he's a meat and potato guy and won't even try any of the side dishes, which drives me nutty because I am completely opposite - I'll eat pretty much anything!

Since there was an excess of leftovers from Thanksgiving, Ian requested steak and potatoes for our Christmas meal (imagine that). I think it was around 12 degrees outside on Christmas day. Try firing up your grill in that temperature! The girls enjoyed opening their gifts from Santa. Maggie commented that Santa "sure did know us well" because he got a lot of what we needed and wanted. Santa only brought them a few toys this year and the rest was stuff they needed like new shoes, clothes, etc. My kids have never played much with toys or dolls - or at all really. They play pretend and dress up with each other and they like books and computers but there are never any toys involved. I played Barbies until I was in the 9th grade so I'm not sure where this comes from! My neighbors come over and ask "where are all the toys" and I have to reply that we do have some, they are just put away in closets or in the basement. My girls are welcome to get them out any time but they don't! Weird, I know.

In early December we traveled to Dallas for Ian's Diageo Holiday party and stayed at the Four Season's in Las Calinas. My mom, step-dad, Grant and sister-in-law Jill and their kids came too and met us there. We had a lot of free time before the holiday party so we got to spend some time with them and it was great since we knew we were not going to be seeing any family at Christmas time. All the cousins got to play together and run wild in the hotel lobby. The Diageo party was held at the Dallas Cowboys Stadium in one of the private party rooms and they offered a tour of the stadium, which I did not do for some reason. I wish that I had.

Also, in December the girls and I attended a Holiday Tea Fundraiser for Teen With a Dream, which is an organization that raises money for pediatric cancer patients. A friend of ours sits on the board of Teen With a Dream so he had told us about the event. I thought it would be a fun thing to take the girls to so they could get dressed up at Christmas time. It was SO fancy and there were china tea cups and tea pots and the finger foods were really beautifully made. These tables were like a work of art! Maggie and Lucy don't quite know etiquette or even table manners. They were clanking cups into plates and taking the lids off of teapots and spitting food onto their plates and Lucy nearly pulled the tablecloth out from underneath it all. They were like two wild bulls in a china shop - isn't that the phrase they use? Oh my gosh - I was a nervous wreck by the time we left. Who knew girls could be so rowdy?

Maggie has wrapped up one basketball season and just started another. She made 12 baskets in her final game of last season! She's really tall and really aggressive so that always helps. Her new team is all of her friends from school so it could be really good or really bad since she likes to socialize a little too much anyway. We've never known any of the other girls on any of her previous teams so it's a big change to have friends on her team for once. Lucy will be starting back to gymnastics soon. She is anxious to get back into it because we took a break over the holidays. We're thinking of getting her into mini-mite soccer.

We went to Breckenridge for the day a couple of weeks ago so that Maggie could take some snowboarding lessons. She was not so sure if she liked it. I didn't get any pictures of it because they take them up on the mountain for the lesson so we weren't anywhere near her. We didn't even get to see whether we were getting our money's worth from the lesson, equipment rentals, etc....it's so expensive!

The Perry's are coming to visit next weekend and bringing our nephew Ethan with them. The girls could not be any more excited to see all of them. Hopefully we will have some snow so Ethan can do some sledding while he's here. Maggie and Lucy will be turning 8 and 4 in February and April so look for me to write about birthdays in the next few months!