I'm finally, finally back! Its been far too long since my last post. We've had a lot of things happen since the last post- Christmas festivities, New Years, Bowl Game, snow days, & Valentine's. I'll try to summarize our activities with pictures! Enjoy & I promise I won't be so absent anymore. (This may require a few consecutive posts to cover all of it!)
We started off the Christmas season by going to one of my favorite Tech traditions, Carol of the Lights. Kate had a blast looking at all the lights & running around Tech campus. It makes me so excited to share in Tech traditions with Kate & start training her to be a little Red Raider. We also got to share in our fun with our friends, the Maloufs.
Side note: I made the skirt wore!
We attempted to visit Santa but this is how it turned out. Kate wasn't a fan. We didn't try anymore after that.
We attempted to be real Lubbock residents by going to the Christmas parade. It was pretty cold but we had fun. Kate liked saying hi to everyone who walked by & seeing the lights. She attempted to learn how to say "Merry Christmas" but all she could say was "merry" so she kept yelling that to everyone who walked by. Also, if you notice in the pictures, she made sure her baby dolls paid attention to the parade and stayed warm under the blankets. I think one of them was even bundled up in her stroller at one point.
After the parade we went to a neighborhood in town called "Vintage Township" where they had different Christmasy displays and tons of lights. They had little lit trees that danced along to the music of the Trans-Syberian Orchestra every hour. I wish I could have captured Kate's excitement when the music started and the lights went crazy. Some of Kate's favorite things right now (and especially during Christmastime) are lights and music; seeing the two together was an overload of excitement. She danced around and put on a little show for people who were standing near us. There were also snow machines throughout the area which I thought was a lot of fun. Kate wasn't fooled though, she knew they were really just bubbles; however, that in itself made her really happy so it still worked out for the best! Another note about Christmas lights: Kate loved discovering that houses had lights on them during Christmastime. Every time we would drive around she would say, "Mom, you see lights?!" and get really excited. After Christmas was over & she couldn't find as many lights she would point out street lights or whatever. I hope next year she remembers her love for the lights and will still get excited when she sees them starting to appear on houses again.
Before we left town to visit our extended families we had our own little Christmas with just the three of us. Kate got lots of play foods (which would make more sense to her once we went to visit Grammy), a Shrek game, and a red peacoat...which I was very jealous of actually. We had a really fun night playing with the new toys and taking in all the Christmas spirit in the air.
Christmas in Odessa was filled with lots of energy, laughs, and fun. When Kate gets to meet up with her cousin Mikey they become best friends and partners in crime. My mom has a Santa Claus doll that sings and dances on a rope that goes across the living room on the ceiling when its activated by noise; needless to say, with two toddlers in the house poor Santa got a lot of exercise while we were there. It was so funny to see the kids learn how to yell at the Santa doll to make him move then watch them giggle and dance the whole time. (That explains the picture in the top left corner) The next day we were there we got to pick up my older sister and brother-in-law from the airport. "Po & Mett" as Kate calls them are a treat for Miss Kate. We waited for them in the arrival area of the airport with a sign with their "names" since we were their chauferrs for the next couple days. Our Christmas celebration was on Christmas Eve and was a bit different this year. My whole life we have celebrated Christmas in Van Horn where my grandparents live; however, now that my mom is a grandmother she wanted to start her own traditions so Christmas is now in Odessa. I am not a person who likes change but I was ok with the move. We had fun and were with the people we cared about so thats all that truly matters. Oh, and Kate got a kitchen from Grammy so that explains the play foods!
On Christmas Day we made our way to El Paso so join the Phillips side for the big Christmas celebration. Now, when I say big, I mean BIG. For our dinner and gift opening there were 13 adults and 9 kids...and there were even family members missing. As big and chaotic as Christmas with the Phillips' is, it has really become one of my favorite parts of Christmastime. Everyone piles into the living room and we each take turns opening gifts one by one and everyone usually has about 10 gifts. Sometimes the gifts are jokes, sometimes they tell stories of something that happened in the year, and sometimes they bring tears of joy. You never know what to expect but you can for sure expect a good time. This year Santa came for a visit! It was so funny to listen to the older kids discuss how it was that Santa would make an extra trip back down from the North Pole just for them (since he came mid-afternoon Christmas Day) and then constantly question the adults about whether or not that was the "real" Santa. When I heard that Santa was coming I was a little afraid Kate was going to react like she did before with Santa (see the picture before) but she actually did fine...as long as her daddy was there and she kept her distance from Santa. The next morning we went to church and Kate got to wear her final holiday dress of the season. Thanks to a typical warm El Paso Christmas weather she was able to show off her little dress without a coat! Haha. We had to make our way back home after church, it was a short trip but it was fun. I love the other half of my family and am so blessed to have each and every one of them. 
One last discovery Kate made this holiday season is that she loves pie...pumpkin pie to be specific! She must get that from me because I could easily eat a whole pumpkin pie by myself if I was allowed. Kate became a little obsessive over her love of pie. She would walk around saying, "Eat pie. Eat pie" over and over. And, of course, since we were visiting Grammy her request was always granted.
Well, that concludes our Christmas season! The post is almost 2 months late but, oh well, we just get to re-live Christmas all over again!
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