Oh My

I love coming to Wisconsin for Christmas. Not only is everybody nice, but the food is awesome. So, Christmas day we eat at Grandma's house. Then over the next two or three days, we usually get together at somebody elses house to either watch the Packer game or just to see each other some more. This year was no exception. I seriously think I gained ten pounds since crossing the Mississippi River. But the food is great so it's not all bad. And Michelle's family is all about the taste so there is hardly any low-fat butter, light cream cheese or sugar free anything. Yummy!

Houston, we (might) have a problem

How do you know when your 6 year old daughter will be tall? When you go out to eat and she eats more than mommy. Then as we're walking out she says she's still hungry.

I remember when she was two and the old wives tale said to double the height on her second birthday and that's how tall she'll be. Well, that means she'll be 6 feet tall. At the time I went out to a couple of "guess your child's height" websites, answered some questions such as parents height, grandparents heights, parents siblings height, etc. The shortest result came back at 5'8". The tallest? 6'2" Any height she grows is fine and I won't complain about it one bit. But 5'8" means we pay for college, 6'2" means full ride athletic scholarship somewhere.

And if you know me at all, I'm constantly asking, "Want seconds?"

Woo-Hoo!!!

Sometimes it takes awhile to realize the fruits of your labor. Today, I've doubled the number of subscribers to my blog from one to two. That's fantastic. In fact it's better than fantastic. It's super-fantastic.

Two years ago, I made a New Years Resolution to celebrate the little things. I think this calls for the finest adult beverage imporated from the great city of St. Louis.

Bummer

So, last night was Katy's Christmas show at school. We got an email the day before saying the first graders will be on the right hand side of the church so we should sit on that side. Upon arriving, we found a couple of seats toward the front and thought we were pretty lucky. Unfortunately we couldn't see Katy, at all, not once. Well, we saw her for 5 seconds as she was walking out. At least I got that on video.

What to do, what to do.

Michelle and I are in a dilemma. For the past who knows how many years we've spent Christmas day up in WI with her family. We would just load up the presents in the car Christmas Eve and Santa would stop at Grandma and Grandpa's house and we'd open up the presents Christmas morning before everybody else got there. Easy. Well, this year we won't be staying at their house. Michelle's sister from NC will be here so their family takes up two of the bedrooms. So we are staying at one of her other sister's house. No big deal in itself, just a change of venue. The problem is they have two girls of their own and Michelle and I both feel that Christmas morning should be family time, especially since their girls are young and still get super excited, so we don't want to infringe upon that.

Another thing is our girls are getting older and we want to start our own Christmas traditions. Opening presents in front of our tree, having the girls come down the steps Christmas morning all crazy and excited, just the "normal" Christmas morning magic.

So now we're at the crossroads where our family wishes meets extended family traditions. It's difficult and I don't see it getting easier anytime soon. We'll just have to see what these next couple of years bring.

Wow

Ever have one of those weekends where everything goes good? I just had one. The girls behaved for the most part, we did some fun stuff, saw Santa, ate some cookies, all in all a very good couple of days.

Here we are dancing to the CR Spirit dance team music. during the parade. I think I do the best robot ever.

We frosted some cookies...

watched a guy carve an ice sculpture....

and watched them turn on the lights on the big tree.