While we were in San Marcos for Christmas, Cowboy decided to build Noah a tree house. Here it is in the process. I don’t have any pictures of the finished product, but it turned out pretty cool.
Noah also helped with a little gardening while we were there. There were onions to be planted. Granny Pearl separated the bunch, and Noah and Cowboy planted them.
Our Family
Nothing like the love of a grandparent.
Good times.
Gabriel slept through most of his “Christmas”, but he got some cute things.
Aunt Mary joined us for Christmas this year. It was nice spending time with her.
OK, it’s been a while since we went, but here it is.
We decided to go to the Austin Trail of Lights on the last Saturday before Christmas… big mistake. We got in the car around 6 and headed down via IH-35. Traffic was backed up for several miles due to a wreck. Of course the whole time, Chris is saying, “We should just go home.” But we persevere and get to Waterloo park where the parking is.
We park and get in a line that wraps around the block and remain in line for the next 40 minutes. We finally get up to pay and Chris gets charged for an extra person. No big deal. We then wait another 20 minutes and get on a crowded bus. The bus is taking us 3.2 miles. According to Google Maps this should take 11 minutes. Of course, it doesn’t. It takes 1 hour. All the while, the four of us are crammed into a seat for two. As you can imagine, Chris is still whining. But we finally arrive.
We get off the bus and Gabriel is hungry by this time, so we stop to feed him. And then it’s time for the fun Trail of Lights. The crowd is so thick that Noah can’t see unless we are right along the edge or he is up on someone’s shoulders. Since Chris didn’t hang around to find that out, I ended up with Noah on my shoulders and Gabriel in the harness. As soon as Chris realized that he had lost us, he waited and then took Noah. Thank goodness. I’m not sure I could have make it too far. So Chris takes over and Noah gets on his shoulders. As many of you know, Noah is potty training. Chris asked Noah repeatedly if he needed to go to the potty with the answer being no every time. Eventually, we find out that the answer was actually yes. Of course Chris had to find out the hard way… with a wet neck. But he took it in stride, and we found a port-a-potty.
After we made it through the trail we headed over to the Zilker Christmas Tree to take a spin. After that we head back to the busses. Noah tells me on the way to get on the busses, “Mama, I didn’t want to see the Trail of Lights”. We get back to the bus drop off and find out that there is a different pick up spot… back UP the hill. So we head back up the hill and get in another line.
We finally made it back to our car and got home around 11:15. We won’t be going to the Austin Trail of Lights again for at least the next few years.
I’m sorry I’ve been so slow getting Christmas pictures up. I’m home now and I’ll post pictures soon (hopefully tomorrow).