Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Surprise!

All I want(ed) for Christmas is (was) my two front teeth
My two front teeth
See, my two front teeth!
Gee if I could only have my two front teeth
Then I could wish you
"Merry (late) Christmas!"
And what does this post mean? Somebody's 1st tooth finally broke through! We are guessing it broke through in the last 24 hours, maybe even this morning (around 5:30 am) when she let out some horrible screams like she was in pain. Maybe? Guess we'll never know exactly, but I know that tooth wasn't there when I was feeling around a couple days ago. We can't see it yet, but we can definitely feel it!

Monday, December 27, 2010

Christmas 2010

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. I had this great plan to write a post on Christmas day, one that I had been thinking about while rocking Sara Kate when she woke up around 12:30 in the wee hours of Christmas. But Christmas day ended up being crazy busy and I never got around to it. My thoughts included how could a pregnant woman (Mary) be sent to a stable to bear her child? Would a pregnant woman in labor in today's time be sent to a stable to have her baby? I can't imagine that would happen today, but who knows. And I wonder what the inn keeper thought when he learned that that baby born in his stable was the Savior of the world. Anyway, just a few thoughts I had while rocking my sweet baby.

My parents got here Christmas Eve in the afternoon and I finished up a little baking, including a few family favorites like buffalo chips and getting the cornbread made for the dressing. I got soup in the crock pot for dinner and we headed to church at 6. Our church packs the people in on Christmas Eve (maybe most churches are like that??)! It always amazes me to see how many people come out to celebrate Jesus' birth.
Sara Kate says, 'Wa-hoo!! It's almost Christmas!!'
Church was very nice, and Sara Kate did great during the service. She wore her cute little Christmas tree pillow case dress Meme made her (I got no pictures of her in that, oops), and she looked adorable as usual. We came home and had dinner and hung out for a bit before hitting the sack. Like I already mentioned, Sara Kate woke up during the night so we spent some time rocking, which I actually didn't mind that night. Along with my other thoughts that I already mentioned, I was thinking how grateful I was to have Sara Kate here with us this year. She's just such a blessing and a joy.
Apparently, we were very good this year...my parents came bearing wonderful things for me, Chris, Sara Kate, Phillip, and Holly. They are so good to us.
All decked out in our Christmas jammies!
Sara Kate was way into the bows!! She loved them. She was also very interested in pulling paper and eating it. And luckily Chris caught that she had bitten off a piece off a rather large piece of tag and had it in her mouth. Whew.
Stocking time! From Gran and Pop
From mommy and daddy
Sara Kate got a tea set, books galore, some old school toys from my grandmother, and a hat she had NO interest in (and I don't blame her)! :-)
I got a new coat
My mom got the best wrapped present of the day. Yep, that's duck tape and a trash bag. Ya think we are from Arkansas?? :-) It was a Wii.
After all the damage was done here, we had breakfast, finished up cooking a few things, and headed to Bentonville for Christmas with Chris' family. It was a big turnout, including, us, my parents and brother, Chris' parents, his sister and her family, his grandparents, and his aunt, uncle, and cousins from Texas. Grandpa and Grandma live in a community where they can 'rent' out a club house and that's what they did since there was so many people. It worked out great.
Sara Kate looked like a cute little baby Clause. This is the only picture we got with her wearing her bow.
Brandon...we decided him and Sara Kate could be brother and sister with their blonde hair and blue eyes!
Sweet cousins
Sara Kate giving sweet kisses to Aunt Jenny...actually she was biting her chin. Good thing there are no teeth in that mouth! We were all getting a kick out of this!
Present time
Brandon helped Sara Kate with hers. He really took to her...it was cute. And of course she has another bow!!
Playing with daddy
Overall it was a great day. Sara Kate came home with some fun toys, books, and clothes. It was nice to spend time with both of our families together.
Chris' family
We didn't get a picture of my family on Christmas day but we did on Sunday at church. The pictures are on mom and dad's camera so I'll have to get them to send a few to me.

We did our last Christmas at Chris' parents house later that night and we forgot the camera so we have no pictures of that. :-( My favorite thing of the night was a book given to Sara Kate (Hannah got one too), and it was one of those recording books. It was the Christmas story, read to the girls by their Meme and Poppa. So sweet. It made me get all teary. As you can tell, we had a great day. I'll have to do another post later with other random pictures from our weekend, including a project here at the house that my dad helped Chris with. :-) Merry (late) Christmas!!

Thursday, December 23, 2010

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever!!!

Have ya'll seen the movie 'Four Christmases?' It has Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon in it. We went to the movies and saw it when it first came out a couple years ago and at the moment we are enjoying free HBO and Cinemax. It's on often, and I LOVE it!!! I hope I can get this to work because I have to share this clip. Hilarious!!! I think we've watched it 5 times in the last week or so. It's the part with the Christmas play, and it gets really funny around the 1 min 30 sec mark. But watch it all!!!!! :-) And I recommend watching the movie if you haven't seen it!

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Lights of the Ozarks

Downtown Fayetteville is really pretty at Christmas time. There are so many lights...they are everywhere! I heard on the news a year or so ago that the city could no longer afford to keep the Lights of the Ozarks in it's budget so at that time a private donor ponied up the money to keep it going. Pretty cool. We decided that it was time to take Sara Kate and walk around to see the lights. Did we opt to do this the last 2 days when it was a mild 55-60 degrees? Of course not!! We waited until another cold front came through and it was a chilly 35 degrees! Oh well, I guess it could have been worse. She had bad naps today so she was pretty tired and didn't seem super interested, even though we had her sitting in her stroller like a big girl (for only like the second or third time)!
Trying to drive downtown to see the lights is usually crazy with all the traffic so we decided to go at dusk. It worked out perfectly, and we even got a parking spot right on the square.
Sara Kate saw her first camel. Yes, they do camel rides on this guy. You even have to wear a helmet with a Santa hat on top!
Since we didn't do the mall thing, she saw Santa for the first time! She wasn't really interested, but we had to get a picture anyways to document the moment.
What's a carousel without a Razorback?!? :-)
Just goofing around!
Bob and Sharon went with us. It was nice to have a little family time with them.
And it was extra nice to spend a little family time with my little family.
Finally, I'll leave you with a picture of this really cool tree (the green one)!