Christmas!

 We had a pretty fun, exciting Christmas this year. We kept it pretty low-key and simple, which was really nice. We had a few traditions that we wanted to do, but didn't want things to be really stressful and crazy right before Christmas, which was really nice, and it was also really good since we were kind of holed up not doing much the week before Christmas break when the girls got sick. We started out with a few little things in Texas. I at least got a couple of pictures of a couple of the things that we did.

 Here's our little tree in our apartment. (Photo courtesy of Emmaline.)

 Emmaline and Marta decorated our gingerbread house while Royce piped it.

 I've kind of learned to step back from the gingerbread house, because it stresses me out a little because I like it to look really pretty, but it's so much more fun to just let the girls go at it. The only thing I did was the single layer bush in the front.

 A week or two before Christmas break, we had a Christmas party at Royce's Aunt and Uncle's house that was really fun. Sadly these are the only pictures that I got from the whole day, but there was tons of great food, and some awesome BBQ, and it was fun to see some family that we don't normally get to see.

 Then we packed everyone up and flew out to Oregon. That first day of traveling was pretty crazy, but we made it. We were flying out the Saturday before Christmas, so I was prepared for complete chaos at the Austin airport, but it was possibly the smoothest check-in that we've ever had. They had the parking so well organized. As soon as we pulled up they had guides directing us exactly where to go so we didn't have to drive around looking for a spot, and we pulled into our spot, and got out, they handed us a card telling us exactly where we parked, and they got our bags for us and put it on the shuttle and we just had to get on. It was pretty nice. Then we got in the airport and checked our bags and were through security in about 7 minutes. It was awesome. The only bad part about all of that is that we were there pretty early so we ended up waiting about two hours, but we got some lunch, and walked Marta around until her legs were ready to fall off. Anyway, this is getting long, so I'm going to stop, but we ended up with two flights, and after an extra two hour delay in San Francisco (4hrs total in Frisco) we finally made it to Medford and a waiting Grandma. (At 11pm.) Another 2hr drive through the snow and a 14hr total trip and we were at Grandma and Grandpa's house. We ended up getting to bed after 2am we didn't quite make it to Church the next morning, which was a little disappointing, but we were all so exhausted we didn't mind too much.

The rest of the time we were in Oregon was mainly just relaxing and playing in the snow and normal Christmas stuff. I think we only left the house once and that was to go to the Hobbit. It was nice, and I was glad not to have to drive on the roads. I used to be able to drive in the snow, but I'm not so sure any more.

I wasn't sure what the girls would think of the snow, but they liked it a lot more than I thought they would. Emmaline loved it, and Marta did pretty well, until she got cold and then she was done right now.

Haha..I told Emmaline that she should put some socks on before she put her boots on, but she didn't want to. Then her boot fell off and I'll bet she wished she had some socks then. :)

This is the only picture that I got opening presents, but Marta opened up this Elmo, and just hugged him and hugged him, and then crawled up on Grandpa's lap and just snuggled Elmo, patting his back. It was really cute.

We went out sledding on Grandma and Grandpa's sled run. Uncle Will and Marissa went sledding with Emmaline and I held Wyatt since neither he nor I were up to sledding. And I think Daddy only came out in the snow once when we went to chop down the Christmas tree, and that was enough snow and cold for him. :)

Marta was not a fan of Emmaline sledding. The first time Emmaline went down with Will and they weren't very far up, and Marta was okay with that, but the second time down they went farther up and had a lot of fresh powder that flew up into her face and she couldn't breathe and kind of freaked out a little bit, and that totally freaked Marta out, so when she went up the sled run again, Marta just lost it. Poor thing. She was just crying and saying, "Emmaline, Emmaline."

 

Sadly these are the only pictures that I got in Oregon. Hopefully Will and Marissa got some good ones. We had a lot of fun, and ate tons of really good food. I had German Chocolate cake more than once as a second breakfast, and pie and prime rib, and lots of other yummy things. Now I have to be much more careful with what I'm eating, especially since my diabetes test is in about 5 weeks.

The way that our flight schedule worked out we had a couple of days so we went out to Royce's parent's house for the weekend to visit more family. It was fun to see everyone that was still there, and we got to celebrate our anniversary while we were out there, which was so nice and fun. We went and stayed in College Station and went to dinner at Texas Roadhouse grill, went to Les Miserable, got really good ice cream at Cold Stone. We also had some time to kill before the movie, and went into some random shops that we'd never been in, and one of them was a place called Kirklands, and we found this really pretty wall decor. I loved it, and it has now become our family crest. (Can you just make up your own family crest like that? Oh well, I just did.) It's my first real wall decor, and I'm excited about it.

Then we finally headed home, and it was nice to have our own little space again, though we had lots of fun seeing everyone. Then things got a  little crazy again. Marta got a pretty crazy fever (it got up to 105.4...scary), and then we all got sick one by one. It's been a pretty crazy sick week and a half, but it was nice to be able to spend some time together with just our little family, even if we have gone through 4boxes of kleenex and 3 gallons of orange juice and counting. These last few things are some cute pictures/video that Emmaline took. Marta loves her little elephant.