Now that the balcony lights are down and we're enjoying our last night with the Christmas tree before taking it down, I can just get my holiday update in under the wire ;)
Our Thanksgiving celebration began with the annual Apostles Day School Thanksgiving play and feast. His first year Daniel was part of Plymouth Rock, then an Indian, and now a pilgrim, complete with speaking part (his line was "To a new world!" in response to the line before his asking where the pilgrims should go to leave the oppressive King of England).
After the play we enjoyed lunch with our little star and some of his classmates and their parents.
For the Thanksgiving holiday itself we traveled to south Texas to the family ranch house to celebrate with my parents. As usual the kids loved spending time with Mimi and Baba and exploring the ranch. They especially enjoyed taking rides around in the old ranch truck and helping Baba drive the tractor and, when the weather was cool, playing with old toys on the kitchen floor.
As December rolled around we began getting ready for Christmas, which included the annual tradition of picking out a real tree to decorate. Daniel and I were the only ones to go to the tree lot this year but it'll be fun to take Rebecca too once she gets older.
Of course, I just realized tonight that I never got a picture of the tree-just in time before we took everything down ;)
We returned to our longtime church home, Incarnation, for the Christmas Eve service. We love our new church but it was fun to see old friends and experience the timeless beauty of a traditional service with organ and brass. The next morning I rose early to put our turkey in the oven. This was my first time to make the holiday turkey and after a few days of brining and drying, it was time for the main event. Aside from setting off the smoke alarm once or twice it turned out wonderfully.
To my surpise I had the downstairs to myself for a few hours as the family slept in. It was nice drinking my coffee, enjoying the quiet, and getting breakfast ready, and funny to look at friends' Facebook updates to read about the early rising kids who had already opened all their gifts.
We enjoyed a full house for Christmas-my parents, Kevin's mom and her sister visiting from Idaho, Kevin's brother and sister-in-law, and our friends the Rangels, who are our kids' godparents and whose own kids are close in age.
It's always fun to see the kids play together and apparently Rebecca and Gabriela were of similar mind with their holiday party attire:
After the meal we enjoyed visiting with company and later, our annual tradition of watching It's A Wonderful Life that night. All told, it was my favorite Christmas in years. Good food, good company, what's not to love?
The kids were excited about the Christmas decorations but didn't actually show much interest in the gifts under the tree while they sat there wrapped. Daniel did sneak to open a few early though ;) Last year all he asked Santa for was a coloring book and some crayons and this year's wish list was similarly simple: a pair of sunglasses. He got that, plus a few books, toys, and some clothes. Rebecca has been in a big Minnie Mouse phase lately (and requests to watch Mickey's Christmas Carol at least once a day and points out when Mickey and Minnie appear) so her gifts reflected that, to her delight.
My mom bought each child a new pair of cowboy boots the following week when we were in Austin. Rebecca chose a pink pair. On the way there I asked Daniel what color he wanted and he immediately said "red," so once he saw a red pair he was set.
After the stop over in Austin we headed back down to the ranch, continuing our tradition of avoiding the Black Friday and New Years Eve crowds by being dozens of miles from the nearest town ;) The kids again enjoyed Mimi and Baba and tractor time but the highlight for Daniel was a tractor ride with my Uncle Charlie that ended by getting stuck in the mud. Weeks later he still likes pretending that his toy tractors and trucks are stuck and rescuing them ;)
It was a fun way to close out 2014 and start 2015 on a good note.
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