Whirlwind

It's beginning to look a whole lot like Christmas. I have been chomping at the bit for the Christmas celebrations to finally begin and finally the day arrived. We took advantage of every moment we had with Aaron home and filled our weekend to capacity. In normal holiday fashion we kicked things off with Grace opening and modeling her Christmas jammies from Mema and Poppy. A pair that matches all of her cousins.

Friday morning, while others rested and recovered from their black friday extravagnazas, we went out to breakfast. Can you guess where?

When it comes to visiting Santa, Bass Pro is the way to go in my opinion. We stood in a short line. I kept my fingers crossed that Grace wouldn't freak out like last year. We pointed Santa out, overly mentioned that he was "So nice!" but as we walked down to see him Grace exclaimed, "I'm scared of Santa." So Aaron held her and she was just fine with that. This Santa was awesome. Just look at his face. We ran into Santa over by the bathrooms. As we crossed paths Grace said "Hi, how are you?" Santa: "I'm good, and you?" Grace: "Good." Perhaps next year we should just cruise by Santa and exchange pleasantries and have the camera guy snap a picture, because that is more Grace's style.

Reindeer carousel. Have I mentioned that the above picture and carousel rides are free. Seriously, I love Bass Pro Shop. And they aren't even paying me to say these things.

We spent hours on Saturday morning going through and reorganizing our files. This has nothing to do with the holidays but it felt awesome to get rid of all that stuff. We shredded bags and bags worth of paper and created a to do list a mile long to check and double check and get up to date. I must be an adult because I found all of that really exciting and felt awesome afterwards.

We found out over the holiday weekend that my brother-in-law Cade was offered and accepted an incredible job offer at a dental practice in Houston. My heart broke a little but we are so excited for them and this new adventure. They flew back into town and movers came on Saturday to pack up their things. We drove up to see them before they Left

 Grace asked about Stacey every single day that she was in Arizona. It's going to be an interesting adjustment for her when we can't seem them a few days a week.

We already miss them terribly. Only one day in and I have already thought multiple times how much I wished I could go to her house and hang with her and the kiddos.

We closed out our weekend with more Christmas related activities. Like watching The Grinch and Elf, making wassail, and filling our apartment with the colors red, white, and green.

The Christmas music is jammin' at our house and our countdown chain is getting shorter and shorter. Grace and I shed a tear as Aaron went back to work, but we know we'll get him back when the holiday gets closer.

26 Days, 7 hours, 43 minutes, and 10 seconds.

But who is counting? Right?