The Saddest Day of the Year

We had a great 3 day Christmas celebration! On Christmas Eve, we spent the morning over at my parent's house. We opened presents, ate, played games, and took pictures.

Sophie June got a pink fuzzy jacket.

Walker got a Santa costume and a reindeer nose.

There were many other gifts but those are the cutest :) Granddaddy enjoyed watching SJ push her new stroller with her Cabbage Patch doll.

We went to the Christmas Eve service at Kara and Aaron's church and then had dinner at their house. Again, the cutest part of the evening was SJ and Walker.

Christmas morning, the Ward family came over to our house. We opened more presents, ate, played Rock Band, and played Pictionary Man. I promised Susan I would post this video of the best band of the day.

Justin and I got a new TV for Christmas...a 52 inch Panasonic plasma screen! It is a pretty cool addition to our living room :) Thank you Susan, Kelly, Grandma, and Papaw. We are enjoying it right now!

This evening, we had my family over to our house for dinner. We played Pictionary Man again...my mom LOVED it! No pics from tonight.

To explain the title, Walker was very sad today that Christmas was over. So we all thought back to when we were kids and remembered how sad it was the day after Christmas and knowing that you had to wait 12 whole months for it to come again. I get a bonus though...it isn't so sad when you still have 9 days until you have to go back to work.

Merry Christmas

This is my last day of work until January 5th!! Merry Christmas!

It's the most wonderful time of the year

Nothing like cold weather to get you in the Christmas spirit! It is freeeezing here today...literally. My toes almost froze off on the walk to the office :) But I much prefer it to the 75 and humid it was yesterday.

I have to give a shout out to my boys! I had my doubts about whether or not they could pull it out against the Giants...but they did!

We had a good weekend. Saturday morning I had a nice 6 mile hill route run with some of the other mentors with TNT. Then I went on a very successful shopping trip while Justin watched soccer with a friend. My office Christmas party was Saturday evening. It was a lot of fun. Nothing like two of the big wigs playing rock band! Don't worry, we definitely got some black-mail shots! Sunday was a little busy with trying to get ready for the week after church. But it was capped off nicely with a fun Cowboy's game at my parent's house.

Now I just have to get through this week. I have from next Monday through New Year's off! What am I going to do with myself? I never have time to just do what I want to do!

Turkey Trot...

This is my second post today! Please read both!

I forgot to mention in my full report below that I started my Thanksgiving by running in the 8 mile Turkey Trot in downtown Dallas. It was so fun! I had a great race finishing in 1:25 which was 9 minutes faster than my time last year! I was so fast Justin missed me crossing the finish line b/c he wasn't expecting me yet :) Here I am after the race.

Thanksgiving Report...Better Late than Never :)

We had a great Thanksgiving break with the Walker's and the Ward's. We spent Thanksgiving day at my parent's house. Walker wore his Cowboy's uniform most of the day. He was so cute and wanted to play and watch football with his Uncle Justin. Cute Walker line....Justin yelled T.O. you're awesome!...Walker said, what's a TO? Yes, too cute :) Click on the upside down picture of Walker to make it larger. His eyes look really pretty with the picture enlarged. He had just hiked the ball.

Here he is showing me his Tony Romo bandaid.

Here he is in his full uniform.

And just so you know Walker wasn't the only one there, here is Grandmommy, me, and Kara in our Thanksgiving orange.

We spent Friday and Saturday in east Texas with Justin's family. Everyone was there including Amanda and Josh and Billy, Neil, and their girls from out of town. We had fun fishing, hunting (some of us), sitting around the campfire, and making smores. Yes, it is okay to make smores before lunch if you are bored. It rained the day we got there so it was really muddy. Bright spot...I got to wear these cute pink boots the whole time.

On Sunday we got all our Christmas decorations up. We put lights on the house and the tree outside. We got our tree up inside...the Ward's gave us their old fake tree and it looks great. Here are some pics of the house.

**Second Post Today...Please Read Both**

I forgot that after the race on Sunday we drove down the Big Sur coast. It was rainy and very windy which made for some great waves. But it also caused the parks to close so we didn't get to go in to the parks to see the giant red woods and great views. We also went to a cute light house and a Spanish mission.

One of the huge waves.

The cute light house. Also the oldest operating light house in the US.

Cool bridge in Big Sur.

Now read the post below for the rest of the trip!

The Long Awaited Trip Report

It has been a few days since we got back from California :) But I wanted to give a full update on the trip. The first full day we were there we hung out in Monterey while Amanda worked and Josh went to school. We went to the aquarium which was awesome. We loved the cute sea otters. I also really liked the touch exhibits which were probably mostly for kids. But I got to touch a sting ray 3 times! You can see sea otters and seals all along the Monterey coast. We also shopped on Cannery Row, went to Fisherman's Wharf, and took a walk to Lover's Point. Here is a cute pic of us along the road to Lover's Point.

Here is one of me on Cannery Row.

We ate dinner that night at a little burger joint with the four of us. Justin was horsing around and ended up spraining his ankle. It was really bad and swollen. We got him a brace and he toughed it out for the rest of the trip. But he was in pain and had to go slow. The next day, Amanda took us to Carmel by the Sea and on the 17 mile drive. Both were beautiful and we had perfect weather. We ate lunch at the Hog's Breath Inn. Here is the Lone Cypress along the 17 mile drive...a very old tree.

Here is Justin on the 18th green of Pebble Beach.

I can't remember what we did that night...I think we ate dinner and had Ghirardelli for desert on the bay. On Thursday, I got up and went for a run along part of the race course to test out clothing options. Then we got ready and headed to San Fran when Josh got out of class. We walked around San Fran near our hotel that night and ate at a cute little Italian place. Here I am in front of it.

We also went to a park and got some great views of the Golden Gate Bridge. My pics of that didn't turn out very well since the sun was almost down. But here is an okay one.

We got up early Friday and headed out for our Alcatraz tour. That was great! It deserves a few pics :)

We also went to the top of the hill with Coit Tower, to China Town, to Fisherman's Wharf, Lomard Street and Ghirardelli square. The hill to Coit Tower was so steep it just turned into stairs...poor Justin and his ankle. We rode on the historic trolley car which was a blast! A long but fun day. Here are a few pics.

On top of the Coit Tower Hill.

On the trolley car.

In front of Lomard Street.

The next day we went to Sausalito and to a hill above the Golden Gate Bridge on our way out. We also went to the Full House house and sang the song :) Here is a cute pic of Justin and Josh in front of the bridge. Yes, it was really foggy.

We ate at In-N-Out Burger in San Jose on the way home (and on the way there. I forgot to mention that). Yummy! That afternoon we walked into downtown Monterey to go to the race expo. We went to dinner at one of Amanda and Josh's favorite Italian places that evening. Got to have pasta before a big race!

Then you know about the race....so skip to Monday morning. We left to catch our flight around 8 am I believe. All went well and was on time until we got to the air space above Dallas. We circled there for a while and then the pilot announced there were about 100 planes waiting to land and there was a ground hold due to bad weather. So...we went to Austin. We landed there and got off the plane. No one including the pilot knew when we would get to leave. All the shops/restaurants in the airport were closed so we had pretzels and peanuts for dinner. We were supposed to get home at 6 so we could go to work the next day. We got home at midnight...and still went to work the next day. But other than that our trip was great! Maybe we can get back out there before Amanda and Josh move on :)