2012 in review

Its not New Years, yet, but I am ready for a Year in review...

Celebrated my 25th birthday with family

Lewie joined our family.

Spent a week on Gull Lake.

Watched Bjorn and Alyssa get married on the lake.

Neil started his first year of decathalon coaching. 

Sold over 100 scrabble tiles on etsy.

Got my cool new car.

Released the Eat Well Waco program at work. 

Marquie, my cousin, moved in with us.

Spent a week in Colorado Springs.

Went horseback riding.

Went white water rafting for the first time.

Celebrated Neil's 25th birthday.

Had an armadillo problem in our back yard.

Worked on my aunts house that burned down from wildfires.

Got a rainwater harvesting system.

Started two community gardens in town.

Survived a drought in Texas.
Witnessed a great Baylor football season.
RG3 won the heisman.

We had a great year we had and now, with one more in the family, we are ready for more adventures.

Randomness in 2011.

My camera card was full. Christmas is coming up. 

I finally decided to clear the card to make room for new memories. 

When doing this, I ran into a few pictures that I realized I never mentioned so here are a few.

On my trip for the Beach to Bay Marathon, we stopped at the Aquarium in Corpus Christi. 

 We visited the Mayborn Museum near campus on the last day of the mummy exhibit. Thus, the RG3 pharaoh.

I made a quick change in the upstairs bathroom and finally switched out the old toiled seat that had random nailpolish and other stains when we moved in.

We found another friend in our yard. He was a big one!

I found this old gumball machine with a really heavy, intricate, metal stand.

From Dec 2010 to Dec 2011, I had 273 pictures and that does not include all the pictures I had to delete everytime I tried to take pictures in the last month. I gotta remember to clear it more regularly.

Santa stopped by.

 When we agreed not to buy gifts for each other, I thought that we were not going to buy gifts.

Instead, Neil sent me an email with a list of cars and told me to choose one. 

That was kinda fun, but really overwhelming. 

After doing our research and heading to the dealership, I came home with my very first NEW car!

40 mpg highway will make it a great traveling car! 

So much for not buying gifts! He made out pretty good too. He got Alamobowl tickets to watch Baylor and RG3 finish off a great season!

Christmas Card Reveal

Since most of the cards are out, I can now reveal our Christmas card(s)!

I am making it sound much more exciting than it actually is, but either way....here it is!

 

And because I am that indecisive, I split the order in half between the one above and the one below. 

 This is the back:

We set up a white backdrop (curtain) in our kitchen, set up the camera on a stool, a full length mirror across form us, and snapped the picture with a remote. 

The card was done through snapfish with a 50% of coupon! 30 cards for $15!!!

Blog Christmas Greeting.

Romantic Snow Globes by WiddlyTinks.com

All that glitters is GOLD.

On our list of things to do on Thanksgiving break with mom (besides Black Friday-yes we did it) was finding stockings for her mantle. We had the same stockings since like 4th grade but they were mismatching and we have added a Neil to the family so she wanted a complete set and boy did we do good.

First of all, ALL CHRISTMAS STUFF at Hobby Lobby is 50% so we headed straight there and found some adorable stockings. Because they all look alike, we wanted to personalize them somehow.

We saw these cardboard letters for $1.00, and grabbed glitter paint for $1.17 and gold glitter scrapbook paper for $1.99

We started by painting the edges and saw how great the paint worked so we nixed the scrapbook paper and painted the whole letter.  

 Be simply tied the letter to the stocking loop and hung them up for show.

I love the way the letters came out. For just a dollar each, they would make great ornaments, gift tags or anything!

They look great on her mantle and she does such a great decorating job, that I know the whole house will look amazing!

Light up the Night.

 The day after Thanksgiving seems to kick off the Christmas season and we did it up this year.
We headed down to the Riverwalk to eat and see the lights up. There is also a river parade that goes on but we just admired the view from afar. The new LED lights were the talk of the town. It is magical on the riverwalk during Christmas. I highly recommend it. If you are there you may want to stop by the huge tree in front of the Alamo.

We couldn't get enough lights so we headed to San Marcos to see Santa's ranch. It is 12 acres of lights. We piled into the back of dad's new truck and took it all in.

This is the tunnel I want to do alllll the way down our 100 yard drive way - Neil vetoed that idea.

Of course Christmas in San Antonio is not the same without the Mariachis!

 There were themes along the way. The first of which was "In the Beginning" and it took you through bible scenes. I had never seen lights done quite this way. Cool way to keep the reason for the season on our minds.

 It was a perfect 70 degree night. The tour took about 30 minutes and another highly recommended stop!

Merry Early Christmas, Dad!

We got to see Dad's new shiny toy over Thanksgiving.

He had his old truck since 1995! He worked it to the ground!

His truck moved me 6 times in 8 years....thanks for that, by the way.

What a handsome pair they make.

I am sure they will have great adventures together.