Merry Christmas!

We had a wonderful Christmas with Stephen's family and my mom and grandma this year. We had Christmas eve dinner at our house and let everyone open one gift. Christmas is always full of surprises! We then headed to church to celebrate Jesus' birthday with a beautiful candlelight service. Tis the reason for the season!

Christmas morning everyone came back to open more gifts and eat more delicious food! Tiggy was even dressed for the occassion and could've passed as a package topper. Steph and Gene brought over their dogs Smokey and Jake for a fun filled play date with Buddy. We all had a fun filled day of games, Christmas music and constant munching. We are truly blessed and it was wonderful to have most of our family with us at our house this year. We did get a chance to talk to everyone who couldn't make the trip this year and they all seemed to have a blessed Christmas too. Hope you all enjoyed your time with your family this year as much as we did.

MERRY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY NEW YEAR!

ICE!

Steve and I went to the Ice exhibit at the Gaylord Texan with mom and Carol the week before Christmas. This exhibit is absolutely amazing and I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't been. Everything throughout the exhibit is made of ice, amazing life size (and larger) ice sculptures, absolutely breath taking.

Christmas is coming...

With Christmas just around the corner, all the fun parties, music and decorating comes along with it. We had a great weekend preparing for the holidays.

Thursday night we picked up our little brother and took him to Frisco Square to see all the Christmas lights that are choreographed to our favorite Christmas songs. It's so neat! He absolutely loved it. We parked Steve's truck and all of us sat in the back and made Christmas cards. We wanted to teach Jonathan the importance of giving this time of year. So we made cards for his mom and grandma, our troops in Iraq and of course Santa! =) It was really a great time!

Saturday we went to Holiday in the Park at Six Flags with Steve's co-workers. We had a great time riding rides and getting to see the park lit up for the holidays. So much fun!

Sunday we spent the day decorating the house. We put up the tree and lights outside. We still have some small things to do, but we are ready for Santa!

Last full day in NYC

Saturday was our last full day in NYC, so we still had a lot to fit in. We went to Battery Park and saw the Statue of Liberty first thing. There was a super long line, so we opted not to wait for the boat, we just took pictures from land. We also went by Wall street and took some pictures with the bull after rubbing his horns for good luck!

Instead of waiting in line, we went by Ground Zero and to the World Trade Center Museum. It was a really small museum, but definitely heart wrenching! A quote on the wall of the museum read, "Two bullets ran into the World Trade Center that day, and one love came out." It was truly amazing reliving that day and remembering back to the week/months following when we really saw America bind together, no matter who you were!

After that, Steve and I hit up Canal Street for more shopping while everyone else went back to catch a boat for the Statue of Liberty (I have my priorities straight). =)

That night we met up for a wonderful dinner at one of my all time favorite restaurants Tavern on the Green. It is a beautiful place and the food is delicious! We had a great meal together, a wonderful ending to a great week in the big city!

Friday in NYC

Friday was of course Black Friday, and what better place to be to go shopping then NYC?! We had a great time seeing all of the window displays for Christmas and of course spending money! =) The tree you see here was the tree in our hotel, it was our meeting place, so of course I had to get pics of that. We also went to Bubba Gumps Shrimp Co. that day for lunch/dinner, it was great.

That night we went to see Mary Poppins at the Amsterdam Theater. It was a fantastic show!! We also had a special surprise at intermission to find out that Tim McGraw and Faith Hill were sitting 4 rows in front of us with their 3 kids. The pictures aren't great, but I didn't want to call too much attention to them. Kind-of exciting for a Texan who doesn't see celebrities very often!

After the show, Drew, Shelly, Steve and I caught a cab to Brooklyn so I could show them where I lived. It was a fun little trip down memory lane. =)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thursday was Thanksgiving day, and I have to say, we have so much to be thankful for! Since I was a little girl it has been a family tradition for us to wake up and watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. It was truly amazing to have the once in a lifetime opportunity to watch the parade in Harold Square from the 10th story of the Publicis NY building across the street from Macy's. Our window was literally right above Meredith and Matt(from the Today show).It was truly breath taking!

After the parade we went to have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner at Gallagher's Steakhouse, which was fantastic! It was wonderful spending the time with my family, but we definitely missed all of the family we were not with!

After relaxing for a while, we decided to take Riley to Rockefeller Plaza to go ice skating. We had NO idea what we were getting ourselves into when Steve and I agreed to take Riley without Drew and Shelly! We were absolutely exhausted after hauling him around the ice (let's just say 50 pounds of dead weight), whew, makes me tired just thinking about it. =) But it was totally worth it when eating our last dinner in NY we asked him what his favorite thing was and he said the parade and ice skating with Aunt Lana and Uncle Steve! =) Made my day!