Seaworld At Christmas

We had an awesome day in San Antonio this past weekend. We spent the night with Auntie KK & Uncle Larry, enjoyed lounging through the morning with them, lunch at Maggiano's and then headed off to Seaworld. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Seaworld at Christmas time. The decorations are great, the shows are great (and different) and the weather is usually more pleasant than the extreme heat experienced in the summer. We were able to get everything in that we wanted to while we were there. Marty and the kiddos fed the dolphins first, of course. The coral reef exhibit usually follows that.

So beautiful - especially at night! :)

After the Coral Reef building, we went through the Fantasea area and visited all the characters.

From there we went to see if there were any live animal photo opportunities but they had closed up for the day. So the kiddos made Christmas cards with pop up penguins instead and then we headed off to Shamu Express.

The Candy Cane Forest was one of my favorite parts of the day -- I am definitely a sucker for Christmas lights.

The kids went and played on the cargo nets and slides for awhile and then we caught the three main shows... The Sea Lion, Walrus and Otter show was silly and funny as usual. Then Shamu - and who doesn't love Shamu -- there was even a baby Shamu in the show that was fun to see. Finally the the Dolphin and Beluga Whale show... This is one of our favorite shows during the regular season with the acrobats, divers and parrots and macaws flying above. For Christmas they choreographed to music from the Nutcracker.

The day there always puts me in a Christmas mood and the end of the day topped it all, listening to the carolers, Sea World characters, elves and Santa, singing Christmas carols all around the lit up Christmas trees. It was definitely a great ending to a great day!

Dancing Time

Dance performance times are one of my favorite times of the year. I love seeing how much Madi has changed from year to year and it is so fun to watch the girls so excited to show their dances. This year we are down to one dance class which is hard and then nice all at the same time. So jazz it was for the year. Madi absolutely loves jazz and was so excited to do her dance last week. Her class has a lot of girls and they all did awesome. I am so impressed at how in sync they were and how well it all came together. They have an amazing teacher though so it doesn't really surprise me! Her natural ability to teach is very evident and Madi absolutely adores her!

Snack time after the dance is really why the boys come! :)

All ready to go...

We had the Christmas Party at Auntie KK & Uncle Larry's to go to over the weekend. Madi was so excited to wear her Christmas dress and I promised I would try to curl her hair for her. She was excited as this is a rarity. I do not have the patience to curl her hair very often. She has very straight hair and it requires a lot of hair spray and taking little pieces at a time. She was so excited when it was done which made it all worth it. Drew was a little less excited to get ready to go. He would have rather wore wind pants and a t-shirt!

We had a great time at the party too... Lots of great company and Madi and Drew were so excited to spend the night by Auntie KK & Uncle Larry.

Timber!

So the buyers of our house requested that 5 palm trees come down from the yard. So Marty found a break in the rain to get started. After a couple days of work, the trees are almost all down. It looks SO weird in our front yard now (and makes me want to cry a little). Yikes. The kids had fun yelling timber as the trees fell and soon we will get the debris all out of here - once it stops raining that is.

My two characters

These two goofy goons dressed up almost every night until I hung up the stockings. These little Santa's helpers would run and slide into the refrigerator and why you ask... Well they were missing their glasses and couldn't see. Night after night it never got old and they giggled away. I was almost sad to hang up the stockings this year. I miss my sweet, silly Santa's helpers and I may need to set the stockings loose again! :)

For Sale and Sold...

A little over ten years ago, we signed the contract to have our current house built. We were still in school, married maybe a week, and fell in love with a paper copy of a floor plan. We drove from Madison, WI to Round Rock, TX and back in one weekend to make selections and recheck the lot we had picked.

Our house finished in March of 2002 and we were so excited to move in we moved in without any electricity as the builder was fighting the city on something with the roads. We didn't even care that our furniture was being delivered in the dark and we did as much in the daylight as possible. A couple days later the power was on and we were SO happy!

A couple of months ago, we decided it was ready to make a location change and we hesitantly put the house on the market and signed papers to start building a new house contingent on the sale of ours.
This past week we signed the papers officially selling the house. It was a day of mixed emotion. I thought I would be ready to jump for joy and shout from the rooftops but I wasn't. We are going to miss this house - even with the few things we always wanted to change, we have never found a house quite like it. We went into seller's remorse and I am not quite sure we have snapped out of it yet.

We are excited about the new house and nervous at the same time. We became accustomed to some of the things in our house that the new one will not have. I am sure once we are settled, we will find many reasons to love our new house too. For now we are excited for a new adventure.


The house seems to be moving along and we are hoping it keeps going quickly. We fortunately have about a month and a half (we hope) to pack up and move on... Hoping to move straight to the new address but only time will tell. For now, we pack... A LOT of stuff!!!!

Lowes Build and Grow Clinics

Madi and Drew love the little kits that you can build at Lowes. Last Christmas we purchased several of them in the store but recently ran out. Madi really wanted to do the science kit they had but when I went to sign u they were full. To our luck, we happened to head into Lowes that Saturday to get roof tar and they had 2 unclaimed. They had so much fun that I signed them up for the Christmas train series. Here they are building the caboose. Can't wait for the complete project in a couple of weeks!