Playing Catch-Up and Definitely Making Up for the Last Post’s Lack of Pictures

This was my view most of Sunday and part of Monday. Poor kiddo. One of my coworkers has a kid in Abigail’s class and she told me that her kid was sick, too…so it was something that was going around in their class, I guess. Miraculously, nobody else in the family got sick.

We managed to squeeze in a Buc-ee’s trip to get Christmas shirts. Here is the required picture with Buc-ee.

I usually take a lot of short-cuts for Thanksgiving: Stovetop stuffing, canned yams, bottled gravy, etc. One thing I don’t short-cut is the pecan pie. It’s so worth all the work when I pull a beauty like this out of the oven.

The other thing I don’t short-cut is rolls.I always do a little happy dance when they come out of the oven looking like this!

She was trying to convince me that we needed to eat the rolls right away…that we didn’t need to wait until dinner. 🙂

I splurged and got this fun bag to use during the Christmas season. Look at the little heart and…

…look at it now! Depending on the angle, it changes the size of the heart.

This fun little detail is on the back.

Decorating their mini trees.

I also love that he still loves to do this.

She bought these cat ears with some of her “bank of Mom” money (we keep spreadsheets for each kid, so that we can keep adding allowance and subtracting expenses instead of having a constant flow of cash). Watching her play and listening to the stories she comes up with is kind of one of my favorite things.

My happy place.

Quite possibly one of the best things we’ve found at Buc-ee’s to date. I did have to break it to Abigail that it was a decoration and not a functioning nutcracker.

One of my favorite places to decorate for pretty much anything, but Christmas especially.

This is another fun spot.

When we went to Bass Pro’s, the kids and I were waiting for Paul to purchase some ammo, so we wandered a bit and found this little secluded corner of the store (it’s upstairs and around a corner…there isn’t any merchandise, so nobody ever goes back here). The kids thought this rug was cool. I joked that they should lay down and pretend to be a rug.

Well, it didn’t take more than a second for Thing One to accept my challenge…

…and Thing Two wasn’t far behind. 🙂

The real reason we went to Bass Pro’s. We even decided to jazz it up with our ugly Christmas sweaters (which I think are actually quite cute).

As a female elementary school teacher, it’s an unwritten law to have cute themed earrings for every holiday or season. I found these Grinch earrings and ordered them (and a few others so I can have variety). They’re pretty cute!

Waiting for the carousel during zoo lights.

Waiting for the girls to be done on the carousel.

There was a pick-a-present booth (flat fee; pick a box; get what’s inside) and she got this…unicorn pig ice cream cone…thing. That she loves. So much so, that when we went to the carousel right after getting it, she had to find something to ride on that “matched”. I love this kid!

In Texas, you can always count on perfect strangers offering to take family/group pictures for you (and you aren’t usually too worried that they’re gonna steal your phone/camera). In our family, you can always count on at least one of us not being ready for the shot, or for one of the kids (usually Thing Two) to decide they don’t feel like smiling. This is the product, ha.

Posing by a light-up giraffe.

Zoomed in with the flash this time.

The entire giraffe.

This is what happens when you want a picture with a light-up hippo, but the flash feature on Mom’s phone actually slows down the picture-taking process (like, it lags a bit). She WAS smiling for about half a second…and then I think she blinked.

A light-up rhino.

And a light-up lion. These animals were all really cool.

This is my favorite tree at the zoo. It’s a live oak and it’s HUGE. Its branches go across one of the walkways and I love when it’s all lit up with Christmas lights.

One of the perks of coming at night: we get to actually see some of the nocturnal animals, like this hyena.

I love clown fish…they remind of grumpy old men, haha.

Joseph and I checking out the jelly fish.

She loves this boat. She says it makes her feel like Moana.

This light-up seahorse was probably one of my favorites. The aquarium had some real ones, but I didn’t get a good picture of them.

On the way out, she managed to find the butterfly mural (they had moved it from where it used to be). She was excited to get to still take a picture with it.

So many fun memories in one spot. I especially love the ones from when the kids were tiny. I think my two favorites are Abigail snacking under the Christmas tree while wearing her footie pajamas and Joseph making sure his eyes were protected while decorating the tree…but then there’s Abigail peeking out from under the Santa hat…and Joseph surfing a hippo statue…so many great pictures!!