White Christmas?

In Texas? Who would have thought?

The day before Christmas eve in the Dallas Fort Worth area, I was regretting having only packed my heavier clothes for forecasted 30s and 40s in Colorado (Where we would be headed after Christmas) and lighter winter clothes for the forecasted 60s in Texas. Why? Because it was 76 degrees and I was a little hot!

Have you ever heard the expression, "If you don't like the weather in ___ (insert which ever state the person is from), just wait five minutes!" The story is always accompanied by crazy weather stories to which the hearer feigns interest- not because they're not interested, but because they are thinking of the even crazier weather stories from the places they've lived. Well here is a story I'm adding to my list. The day after it was 76 degrees, on Christmas eve, it snowed! In the exact same spot it was 76 the day before! And it wasn't your normal, 'It snowed in Texas- there's an eighth of a centimeter on my car' kind of snow. This was a good blanketing snow that thoroughly excited me, made Jake sigh and Abigail pleasantly happy, not knowing how good of a thing she was getting. Over the next two days, we had an all out snowball fight with cousins, made snow angels, ate snow, and built a few snowpeople. Ahhhh... how nice.

(mid snow"ball" throw)

(Gramma checking out the view)



(decked out with her new umbrella. BTW- isn't the clarity of this picture awesome? This is thanks to the new lens that Jake and my mom got me. THANKS!)

The snow was almost totally gone on the day after Christmas, the day we were leaving for Colorado. Jake checked all the road conditions and even looked at live video of a few places along the way for our trip and everything looked good. Well, not too far out of Dallas Fort Worth, we hit snow and ice on the road. A lot of snow and ice. We're talking 2-3 inches of ice and everything covered in snow. We were going 10-15 mph and passed quite a few cars abandoned in the snow. It was a little crazy. There wasn't much we could do but follow the car in front of us and pray to get out of the ice safely. Two hours later, we did.

(this picture doesn't show the dramatic whole-road-covered-in-ice part.. but you can see a couple of abandoned vehicles!)

First Hair Cut!

We took Abigail to get her first haircut last Saturday! We decided to take her to one of those special kid places for her first time, so I found out about one, called and made an appointment. I was telling some friends we were going to take her there and they said, "Oh yeah, and she'll get glitter in her hair?" Uhhhh.... glitter? Suddenly, I wasn't as excited. The store is called Sweet and Sassy, it is a chain started in Texas and does parties and other such things but also has a salon side. They market to little girls who like to dress up and do make up and hair, but claim that they don't want them to look like mini-adults and instead are more age appropriate. When we walked in on Saturday, sure enough, two little girls around 6 and 8 were coming out with fresh hair cuts and glitter in their hair. Thankfully, Abigail did not notice because there were plenty of princess things and candy to look at. I asked for a no-glitter cut and was relieved to see a normal looking salon section (shaped and colored fun though). Abigail had her hair washed and cut and dried. We barely got a smile out of her the whole time because she was self-conscious and a little nervous, but she enjoyed it and got to watch a party that was going on (the girls were all dressed up and dancing and having their hair put up). Here are our pictures!

(holding on for dear life)

(how she tries to not put her fingers in her mouth)


We forgot to get a picture there, but here is what her hair looks like! Can you tell a difference?

Victimology

We have a long time professor, pastor and friend who always claims he is going to write a book on victimology. He is 'collecting' stories for it. Well, here is a portion of my chapter.

Have you ever had a dream and in that dream someone did something dreadful to you? Something that causes deep-seeded anger and resentment? For instance, stealing your last cookie? And then, have you woken up in your anger in the middle of the night, yelling at that person, when your emotions overcame you? My husband has. In fact, he did just the other night. Unfortunately, I believe I was the victim of this entirely fabricated story. However, I will never know as Jake never remembers what his dreams are in the morning. That is why I always have to press him at the time he wakes me up with his shouting or shaking or pushing or jumping (yes jumping) to tell me what his dream was about. Anyway, the other night I woke up to my husband angerily shouting, "What do you want me to do?!!? HUG YOU?!?!" I quickly figured out that he was sleep talking and even quicker became very offended and angry (a fault of mine- I easily get angry at offenses when I'm half asleep) at the reason behind this outburst. I said something that of course I don't remember except that it was to the point and not so nice. He didn't hear me and instead carried on his conversation in a rather angry voice, "Well that's what I'm here for!!" "Ugh!" I said and turned back over to go to sleep. Like normal, Jake has no recollection of this outburst- but that means I can tease him endlessly about it. Don't worry, my dear readers, this is nothing like my husband's normal temperament. Although the night before we had watched a House, MD episode where a husband had frontal-lobe inhibition (I think this was the right term for the tv doctors) where he couldn't lie... maybe Jake got some of that truth serum?

Here I must own up that I too, have had dreams in which people have offended me deeply. When I wake up, it's really hard to let go of the emotions, even though my head knows that I made up the story myself. Isn't that crazy?

Why are you doing those crazy things with your eyes?

About a week ago I got jalapeno pepper oil in my eyes. Let's not talk about that. Only, you should know that it is OIL, and it only washes off with oil cutting soap. And you should use rubbing alcohol on your hands and in your finger nails if you are ever silly enough to not use gloves or something of the sort while cutting jalapenos. Please, please do not wash your hands with regular soap and then cup a lot of water in your hands and then splash it into your eyes after fearing you may have gotten a little bit of oil near your eyes. Especially with contacts on. Hopefully, if you disregard my request, someone will be nearby and be able to pour milk into your eyes while you lean backwards over the sink. This will cut the pain slightly as you try and get the contacts out of your eyes (though you still have the oil on your fingers). But lets not talk about that.

About a week ago I got jalapeno pepper oil in my eyes. The next day I had to wear my glasses. This is never very appealing to me as I am very near-sighted and, no matter how hard you try, you can't really make the lenses that small with my prescription. Anyway, Abigail and I went to the store and she was riding in the buggy (that is southern talk for grocery basket- not a baby carriage. Don't worry, we don't call it that, it was just a good opportunity to educate non-southerners about the word). We were walking along and I was looking this way and that and Abigail all the sudden asked me, "Why are you doing those crazy things with your eyes?" "Uhh...." I said. I tried to imagine what my eyes looked like from a 45 degree angle below, through the thick part of my lenses. "I'm not doing crazy things, Mommy just has to wear her glasses today." Silence for a second while she was thinking about that. I expected her to ask why I had to wear them. Instead, she said, "You shouldn't wear those." Smiling, I told her that Daddy and I happened to agree with her, but that it was necessary today.

We also took some silly pictures that morning, I thought they kind of went with the story.

It's December the What?

The 13th already?! Impossible.
We've been busy!
We got to go to a cookie factory with our playgroup! It was so fun! I highly recommend visiting cookie factories. Especially the ones that give you a ton of free cookies.

A few pictures from the trip. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the actual factory, only in the office and on the train before we started the tour. I hope my friends still love me after I post these :)

Unfortunately Tyler was getting away, but I was lucky to even get this picture- they all jumped off a second after this!

on the train

Abigail and Ruby