Missing Peyton

Remeber the whole toilet obsession? SEE HERE if you have forgotten.

I had just said yesterday to myself, "I'm so glad Peyton is over the whole toilet obsession thing." Well...I EAT MY WORDS! I also eat my words when asking my mom, "how the heck did you manage to let me crawl into the toilet?" because...

This is where I found my missing Peyton today...

She was pretty sneaky seeing that she walked straight past Aaron who was on the bed reading and didn't hear her crawl into the toilet to just chill for a bit with her hot dog. It was pretty funny. I ran to get the camera as soon as I saw her and she just smiled and said, "cheese!" Too bad I didn't snap that pic in time. It was hilarious. When I saw her she just looked at me and grinned, like she was saying, "Ha Ha I did it! You didn't catch me! What are you going to do about it now?" She just sat there chillin until I pulled her out. Good thing Hallie has learned to flush and the toilet had just been cleaned yesterday! (P.S. Peyton did her own hair in this pic, not me :))

FIRST Christmas at Home and FIRST Family Visit

So behind...where to begin...I guess I'll start where I left off.

This Christmas was by far the most different I have ever had. It was bittersweet. Now that we are in "the real world", Aaron does not get the breaks he got while in Medical School. Unfortunately for us, he just so happened to be on Trauma during December (which is one of the busiest). And even more unfortunately, luck would have it that he was oncall Christmas Day (30+ hour shift).

So, we had our first Christmas here in Texas. It was SO WONDERFUL that my parents, brother Jordan, Chels and Jared came here! They will never know how much this meant to me. We missed Dustin, Natalie and her fam and all of Aaron's fam though. With Grandpa passing away in March, this was the first Christmas to not have either Grandparent with us. I think it was helpful for all of us that things were changed up a little bit this year so it didn't have to be as hard. We sure did miss them though.
To sum things up, here's my bitter/sweet list:

SWEET:
Not having to pack, trek and fly our fam to Utah
Not having to try and lug all the presents back home :)
Having my parents, Jordan, Chels & Jared come stay with us
Seeing our kids experience the fun of Christmas in our own home.
Having WARM weather
Starting some new family traditions
Aaron having Christmas Eve off so we could celebrate Christmas then.
FINALLY buying our first Christmas tree (after being married 6 years, we have never needed a tree until this year. isn't that crazy?)

BITTER:
Aaron working like a madman (on call (30+hour shifts) every 2-3 days, other days still super long)
Having this be the first Christmas without both my Grandpa and Grandma.
Missing the Briggs Family Christmas Eve Party!!!! Jordan missed "SANTA" (bingo) and couldn't believe I didn't have the game here to play at my house. I just didn't even want to try and compete with Aunt Dicksy's prizes :).
Missing our usual family tradtions
Missing our families at home
Hallie so dissapointed when Christmas came and she realized she wasn't going to be able to build a snowman (for so long she thought that Christmas meant the snow would come and she would be able to)
Hallie and Peyton getting the flu (possibly Swine) really bad (I haven't seen Hallie that sick since she had RSV when she was 9 months), Jordan puking all day, mom and me both getting nasty sick too, me losing my voice completely...pretty much, we all got sick!

Well...I am overwhelmed with how many pictures I have of Christmas and my family here. This is partly why I just haven't blogged about it. But...this is the best I'll do at my family journaling these days, so bring on the pictures!!! (thanks Cho and Dad for some of these pics.)

Merry Christmas Eve/Sea World

On our “Christmas Eve”, we spent the day at Sea World with my parents. Chelsey and Jared happened to go the same day with Jared’s family so it was fun to see them there too. They gave Hallie a shamu stuffed animal they had won and Hallie was seriously IN LOVE! She would not put it down and has had to sleep with it almost every night. We went on a perfect day there! Wonderful weather and not too crowded. (thanks Dad for these pics. I forgot my camera.)

(yes my mom and I thought we'd half close our eyes for the pics. lovely.)

Peyton and Hallie loved the Sesame Street Christmas Show and Polar Express 3D movie. During the Elmo show, Hallie looks at me, waves and says, "Bye Mommy!" Then walks all the way down to the front and starts dancing. She was the ONLY one down there. I was shocked. It was so funny/cute. Shortly after, many followed her lead and got their groove on too.

Aaron and I convinced my Dad to go on a ride with us. Halfway up it he said, "I can't believe you talked me into this :)". We were front row and got soaked! Don't you love my look? I stole Hallie's jacket and put it on my hair. I know, I am lame! Hello, I just straightened it though :) ha ha.

Hallie wanted her turn on the rides and informed us that she wanted to do it all by herself. These pics make me laugh. This kid was like trying to crawl out and Hallie was just looking at him like, "What the heck are you doing?"

I love my sisters and Mom! They're the best!

Interesting Santa Visit

Well..after a long day of Sea World...

Santa came to visit us! Our neighbor came over to our house and decided to inform Hallie that Santa called her on the phone and told her that he was coming to visit her! Hallie was so cute. Just so in awe and barely said a word. Her eyes lit up and she was just so angelic.

He had Hallie (and me) tug on his beard to show that it was real.

Peyton pushed his hand away as soon as it got close to her.

Telling Santa that she wanted a rolling pin and a drum

I'm with Peyton on this one :)

The best part was to have my family here to witness the whole thing. It was pretty comical. He just kinda stood there, barely cracked a smile and barely said much. Hallie loved it though. It was a nice gesture of my neighbor.

After Santa departed, Hallie, Grandma and Grandpa :) made yummy sugar cookies to leave out for Santa!

Nativity Story~Times 10

We had to follow tradition and act out the Nativity Story that we always do at our family parties. Hallie was SO excited for this. She had planned for days what she wanted everyone to be. She of course had to be Mary because "Mary is a mommy, just like I am a mommy." Well...she had so much fun doing it that she wanted to do it again and again and again. My family were all good sports. Jordan's flight got super delayed (poor guy) and he missed our Christmas Eve, so Hallie had the greatest idea that we could do it again the next day too! He was nice to play along and be the "angel". So if you are wondering why our costumes are just a little interesting, well...we were improvising quickly!

The only way to keep her happy was with this sucker. (they do wonders :))

Even Shamu was lucky enough to be involved as the angel!

Can you tell we were all "done" with this and pictures? P.S. Sorry Dad, that Hallie kept you as the donkey!

Sweet little angel

After this was all said and done, they opened their new PJ's, set out the milk and cookies for santa and were ready to hit the sack!

Hallie made a little bed for her and my mom to sleep. Nice try Hal!

Christmas Morning Excitement

The girls were spoiled this year. Thanks to wonderful Grandpa's and Grandma's, aunts/uncles, and cousins. They had a wonderful Christmas morning. Hallie got her drum and rolling pin from Santa just like she had asked for. And Peyton got a rocking horse that she likes to go to town on along with a big Elmo book. Our big present to the girls was a playhouse. Aaron has been building it in our backyard and it is adorable. Pictures to come and a whole other post in itself though. I realized I got a little carried away with presents this year, so I tucked quite a few away for some other occasions. Big thanks to everyone for a wonderful Christmas! We feel so blessed to have such wonderful family and friends.

One of my favorite parts of the morning was Hallie's first question when she woke up. "Why did Santa not leave his cup of milk by his cookies? Where did it go?" Silly Hallie, umm, Santa put his cup in the sink :) What a good boy to use his manners!" oops! ha ha (you can tell my brain is gone these days :)).

loves her new camera. She has been taking pictures of everything except people. NO people she says. Peyton was super excited to see.

Usually Peyton is the one to cheese it for the camera and Hallie will look anywhere BUT the camera. I couldn't get Peyton to look at me for one second. She was too busy opening presents and playing with her wrapping paper and bags.

This year I really tried to help Hallie understand that Christmas was about giving. We sat down and wrote a list of who she wanted to give a present to and what she wanted to give. If I had the time, I would scan her list and post it because it was SO CUTE! Who would've thought the top people on her list were some I never considered! Panty (her dog) got some doggy bones, Baby Peyton (her doll) got some goldfish crackers, etc. She wrapped them all, wrote their names on the packages, and couldn't wait to give them their presents :). Too cute! She had Aaron take her to get my "surprise present" which were some super awesome PJ'S that she wants me to wear just about everynight :)!

Aaron and my mom cooked us some yummy crepes for breakfast!

Not sure why I'm the only one that decided to lounge in my sweet new PJ's from Hallie and not get ready. I am aware I look gross, but had to include for memories.

Something fun was to make a Christmas dinner with my mom. We usually always go to Aaron's mom's for Christmas dinner so it was a little different to actually have to plan something! I finally learned how to make my mom's yummy homemade rolls (usually she tries to teach me and I zone out and just eat them :)). We had a great dinner!

It was a wonderful Christmas morning! Different for sure, but good. We missed our family that wasn't with us but felt so blessed that we were able to have some come out.

One last Surprise

Here is my dad hard at work to assemble his present :)

There was a string under the tree with a note that said to follow the string to find one last surprise. It was so cute to watch.

They got a darling kitchen set that was waiting for them in their playhouse.

We moved it inside until the house is complete. They love it and went to town all morning cooking and baking for us.

Alamo/ Fiesta Texas!!!

When we would tell someone that we were moving here, they would say, "You have the Alamo there!". Yes, I am a little stupid in the history department, (probably because I liked to skip that class (along with many others) quite often in High School) and didn't even know what this was. Well...maybe I will appreciate it a little more when I am older :). Jared would kill me to know I wrote that because he tells me how awesome it is that Davy Crockett was there, etc. So, here is the Alamo! We went! The building was pretty cool. I kept thinking of all these great places to take pics. Too bad it was super crowded.

Peyton adored Jordan! He was so cute with her and she ate it up.

Well, Jordan and I quickly did our rounds, then ditched the parents and kiddos to head off to Six Flags Fiesta Texas for the day! It was So MuCh FuN! One of my favorite days with Jordan in a very long time. We haven't been able to hang out and really chat for awhile. I loved it! The day before he had been puking all day so I couldn't believe that he'd even want to think about riding a roller coaster. Well, he insisted he was fine. I'm not gonna lie, I was a little nervous I was going to end up with puke all over me and he probably got sick of me asking him every 5 seconds if he was going to up-chuck on me. He was fine though and we had a blast!

Meanwhile, my parents watched the movies, toured some more and did the river walk with the kids. And of course got spoiled with ice cream.

Birthdays...Birthdays...We Love Birthdays

We got to celebrate Jared and my Dad's B-Days while they were here. It was fun. Jared was so sweet to spend it with us on our "christmas eve" instead of being with his family. Hallie was so excited to have him wear the birthday hat and was even more thrilled that he let her help him blow out the candles.

My Dad celebrated his bday by going to Corpus Christi Beach. He loves to go on drives and see nature and stuff. The kiddos and I unfortunately stayed home because Hallie was sick and a car drive with a sick whiny kid did not sound too exciting :). They had a good time though. We were sad we couldn't go.

That night we celebrated at the outback! YUMMY! Aaron was able to come too! It was great!

And the best part...CARD NIGHT!!! My mom and I had been trying for days to get them to play with us. We were so excited when they did! It was a blast!

Had to include this picture of my crazy bro and hubby. Love them both!