White Christmas

Not being native to the Dallas area, Jay and I often miss the snow. Especially at Christmas time. I for one struggle with feeling the spirit while shopping in 70 degree weather.

But, this year was different and on Christmas Eve, we got about 6 hours of steady snow fall. It was wonderful! Just a prefect back drop to baking our santa goodies and wrapping the rest of the presents.

Christmas morning brought the beautiful sunshine and a blanket of white everywhere.
Liam's first Christmas couldn't have been better.
Just perfect!

Picture Perfect

With my Liam and Elle all dressed up for their School's Christmas show, I decided to take some great pictures. They're just the cutest in their Christmas formal wear.

As I posed the children and attempted to capture the perfect holiday shot, Liam and Elle had much different ideas. Finally I gave up.

I later reviewed my collection of photos and laughed aloud.
Sometimes the worst poses turn out to be the sweetest memories.

Our New Baby Boy

As it happened, my loving husband and I finally, after a week or so discussing it, decided to adopt a stray male lab mix a friend found. Unfortunate for us, after having the beautiful creature for a month, she just couldn’t let him go, so our adoption hopes ended.

That’s when we realized we really wanted to add a new dog to our home and we wanted to do it soon so this dog could be close to our aging old Wally and inherit some of his quirks, hopefully the good ones :).

So with that realization, we talked....
Getting the lab would’ve broken the no-shedding and smaller dog size rules we used to think we had. Jay, a now novel fisherman and boat owner, wanted a water dog he could take out often. Whereas me, the self declared “Not a big fan of Dogs”, wanted a trickster, someone I can teach to play frisbee and fetch, and many other possible things…. we both thought of our favorite dogs we know and knew… and both had the same breed in our top 3.

The beautiful, talented, super intelligent, amazingly trainable and agile…. Border Collie!
So for our Christmas present… we adopted this little guy.

Called “Dallas” by his breeders, 7 weeks old and the only one that didn't jump on us or nip when we started to play with the litter. I called him to me and Liam, he walked to us, sat down and stared into my eyes as I talked to him, as if he knew what I was saying. I immediately melted! We’re still deciding his name and are absolutely in love! Even our Elle, who seems to take after Mom a bit more in the dog arena is in love.

We’re sooo excited to teach this guy and look forward to watching him grow with the kids.

House Full

My kid brother, DJ made it to Dallas for a visit this month. An extra special visit as we got to meet his girlfriend Randee and her beautiful daughters Raelynn(age 4) and Noel(age 3).

Thanks to my wonderful in-laws we were able to hang out at the Lakehouse for a few of those days. Between adventurous swims in the cold and hours of trampoline jumping our guests really enjoyed themselves.
It was such a treat having a house full!

Cheeri-Oh!

Little Liam has decided he is fully capable of feeding himself. That can make quite the mess. Thankfully there are the ever wonderfully, fairly safe to eat, Cheerios!
Liam may very well turn into one, he eats them so often.

The other morning at breakfast, Liam had a bit of a mishap when trying to get a cheerio in his mouth. He of course paid no attention to the cheerio stuck to his nose.

The rest of us noticed and giggled... I said, "poor little guy, he's trying his best."
Elle then responded with, "that's ok Liam, now we match." as she stuck one of her cheerios to her nose.

What a wonderful big sister!