Holidays in a Small Town

Sometimes I forget that we live in a small town, because it is surrounded by a really big suburb, but today we were reminded of why living somewhere with only 2,000 or so citizens is so much fun! All three of us were out putting up our Christmas lights, when we see policemen, the firetruck, and people in elf hats walking down the street during a little Christmas parade! And guess who was on the firetruck? Santa! And he had candy treats for all the kids! I was so excited we were out at just the right time. Meredith quickly came to see when we told her it was Santa, but then she got a little scared when he got a little too close. Even though she was crying and pretty scared, my polite little girl still managed to choke out a "thank you" to Santa for the treats. Santa was very patient with Meredith and tried to change her opinion of him, but I think we still have some work to do before we try to sit on his lap!

You would think candy might be a bribe to not be scared, but not for Meredith!
Progress- she actually let Santa reassure her!

After finishing up the lights (or as many as we could before we ran out!) we had a quick dinner and headed down to the park that is up the street from us for the Christmas tree lighting - a fun activity with popcorn, face painting, pictures with Santa (we didn't push two visits in one day), and of course the lighting of the tree!

All the kids get to hold a rope and pull to make the lights come on. You could tell that the kids that have done this for many years love this - they were lined up for a long time to get as close to the tree as possible! Meredith keeps talking about it too, so I know it is something she will be looking forward every year!
Showing Meredith the lights that she helped light up by pulling the rope.
The tree all lit up!

Christmas Cousins

We spent a wonderful Thanksgiving at Aunt Sandy's house complete with wonderful food and a huge table full of friends and family, including, of course, Landon on his first Thanksgiving! Sandy also got Landon and Meredith matching PJs so we of course decided we needed some cute pictures!

Sweet gingerbread men for sweet little kiddos

Oh wait, is this still being sweet? I think that was Meredith's intention, although I think Landon didn't quite see it that way...
Much better!

Go Stars!

Neal's good friend had some great seats to the Stars game that he wasn't able to use this weekend, so we were lucky enough to get to use them for him! We decided to take Meredith along to experience her first game, but we were very realistic in thinking we might not make it through an entire period before we had to head home. But Meredith surprised us by making it through not only the whole game, but overtime too!

She loved Daddy's shirt that had a star on it and then thought it was so strange that so many other people had on the same shirt! She spent a lot of time checking out the crowd, but loved the lights on the ice (especially the star shaped lights!), watched some of the action, got into the clapping, and even gave groans and "oh no's!" when things weren't going well for the Stars. Neal had jokingly said that he thought after 5 minutes of play she would declare the game "All done!" but it was actually all the way until 6 minutes that she asked "Mama's car, now?" Luckily we were able to distract her with junk food! After a bag of animal cookies, a trip for cotton candy, and helping Daddy with some popcorn, Neal was actually able to enjoy the whole game! I saw a little less of it than that, but I just had fun being there with my whole family together.

The best part was walking out to the car, Meredith was in Neal's arms and said "I had fun!" And she even woke up this morning talking about how fun the hockey game was, so we will call this outing a great success!

A rare moment of Meredith looking into the action on the ice - there was too much else fun going on around us!
Cheering with Daddy in overtime - sadly, the Stars still lost.

Aunt Katie's Dress

Meredith's Aunt Katie made her the cutest Tutu for her birthday this year - Meredith has an aversion to slightly funny feeling things being near her body, so since August, this beyond-cute dress-up item has just been hanging on her wall. Then on Saturday, she woke up from her nap to see it - and almost immediately insisted she wear "Aunt Katie's dress!" So we added it to her Longhorn t-shirt, jeans, and straight-from-nap hair, to give us this darn cute ballerina! I am so excited for Aunt Katie to see this and to know that the only reason it came off was because spaghetti was being served for dinner and there was no way we were going to get sauce on this!