Christmas, yes Christmas, 2012

Yes, it's May. Yes, I'm just now blogging about Christmas. Please don't judge me. In case you haven't noticed, the last time I actually posted a blog was to announce Rhys's birth day! That gives you an idea of how this residency has been going. Busy, busy, busy. I try my best to spend as much of the weekend with the kids, and on the few days when they both nap at the same time, we're either cleaning, working in the yard, or sleeping ourselves! Gena has truly been truly amazing staying home with our little monsters this year, I don't know how she does it. I try to let her get out of the house alone (or leave her alone in the house) for a couple hours on the weekend, and I'm barely left standing by the time she comes back. She really is incredible. Enough gushing about her though, Mother's Day is next weekend (thanks Alison for clearing that up for me!). On to Christmas.

We started looking at flights in the fall and realized we would have to take out a 2nd mortgage on someone else's home to afford to fly home for Christmas, so we made the decision to travel in early January (cutting travel expenses by about 60%). This also meant we would be celebrating Christmas with just the four of us for the first time, AND celebrating Christmas with just US for the first time. The closer we got to the big day, the more we realized how uncharacteristically excited we were! Once we removed the stress of travel, we were like little kids looking forward to Christmas morning!

Christmas with the Nichols

We spent this Christmas in Denver with my (Geoff) family this year. Flying with a 17 month old is interesting. She's still free to fly, but that means she still has to sit on our laps. Anticipating a long afternoon, we ran her around the New Orleans airport as much as we could, hoping she'd fall asleep in the plane. Rounding a corner in the terminal we came across someone I expect she will be very familiar with in future Christmases, but with whom she has no love for as of yet. You guessed it, Santa Claus! Southwest Airlines was doing free photo shoots for kids in the airport, and I decided to take advantage. Cora wasn't sure about Santa, but he did give her a candy cane, so he can't be that bad, right? Wrong. I'm not complaining; I think this picture is perfect!

Maybe she'll like him a little more next year.

Christmas Part II

As promised, I have the rest of the Christmas pictures!  Things are starting to get moving at work, and we had a nightmarish two weeks at our new daycare, but now I finally have time to share them with you! Don't worry about the daycare fiasco, we got it taken care of, and are starting in a new place Monday that we are very excited about.

As you know, my Mom is usually busy on Christmas day, seeing as she is both the choral director and the organist at her church, but she was able to come out to TX to help spoil her granddaughter for a few days after Christmas.  

Leading up to the visit, she mentioned that she was working on a surprise for Cora, but wouldn't give me any clues.  Finally, the day before she flew out she made me promise that I won't hate her for how the surprise turned out.  Now I'm not a hating person, but this made me worry!  I harassed her for a while trying to get some info from her, but to no avail.  Janna was a little more informative, but not enough for me to be ready for this.  

Christmas with Cora

This year we travelled to Texas for the Christmas holidays. Since we've never had a holiday just the two of us, we usually don't make much fuss about presents and whatnot. In fact, I don't think we even bothered to wrap them last year. But, as Christmas this year meant presents for Cora, we decided we should actually do something. 

So the Saturday before we left for TX we woke up, got donuts, and had Christmas. Cora enjoyed all her new toys and books. (And doesn't her stocking there on the right look nice? I managed to finish it on time!)