December Miscellaneous

Since we went to San Antonio for Thanksgiving, Christmas did not come to our house until the first week of December this year.

Part of my tree collection and my treasured nativity set.

During one of the abnormally warm days in the beginning of December (right before it got abnormally cold), I was doing something inside while the boys were playing in the backyard. All of that was fairly normal. I yelled out for Alan, who I thought was in the back of the house, and there was no answer. I went into the garage, no answer. I checked the shop, no answer. Then I got a text message on my phone from Alan that read, "Sshh!" I had no idea what was going on, so I walked out on the porch and looked around only to find my rather large husband ducked down behind some trees in the backyard. He was slowly working his way across the yard (in "stealth mode") to scare the boys.

The boys were playing just on the other side of the trailer. It was all that I could do to keep quiet.

Then the crazy cold came again and the only reasonable thing to do was go to the movies. Like every other family with children under twelve, we went to see "Frozen." I had a photo of Aaron and I as well, but it is even scarier than this one, so it didn't make the cut.

My sister sent this photo of my precious niece Braelynn in one of her many festive outfits.

With the weather changes come more allergies. Poor guy.

We gave Alan a box of customized M&M's for Christmas, so I wanted to document one before wrapping (and later eating) them up. They were very cute, but there's something weird about eating food with your kids' faces on it.

Trip to Rivery Park after a Home Depot run one night. The boys approved of the new playground additions.

Alan would be changing stations after the New Year, so we dropped in to visit Station 3 one more time. Adam was wearing a swift water rescue helmet that we decided he should wear all of the time.

The week before Christmas Alan went back to PINS (Padre Island National Seashore) to fish. He was getting some of his things organized and as it is with anything these days, he had a little help...

 A few photos of Alan's trip to the seashore...

This one was to document the unusually smooth, huge, and seaweed free beach.

On his way home he took this photo, which still cracks me up.

My parents made a very last minute trip up to see us on December 19th. Not long after they got there, Adam took a spill in the garage and encountered a bucket on the way down. There was a lot of blood, no crying (which is strange, he will fake-cry for any of a thousand reasons, but when crying would be allowed, nope...), a slightly freaked out mama, and as usual (thank you God) a calm and level headed daddy. So, after a couple of phone calls we left Aaron with Grandma and Grandpa for the afternoon and we took him in. It had to be his lip... it had to be. 

Anything else would have been easily stitched up, but the lip is serious because they don't want to greatly alter the way one looks. Anyway, we went to a highly recommended urgent care and the doctor did his very best to bust the wound open again (which would indicate stitches at Dell Children's are necessary) but it didn't budge. So, he cleaned him up, gave us some suggestions and things to watch for and we were off. Surprisingly, Adam didn't mess with it at all, and he seems to have inherited his Daddy's super-human style healing because three days later he looked like this... 

And now it is just a tiny little line of a scar that can only be seen to those who know its there. Well, I guess that includes all of you now too. I was incredibly thankful my parents were there to stay with Aaron and more importantly that Alan was there for our first bloody rowdy boy emergency.