We have been busy this Christmas!

We have had a wonderful morning of opening gifs and playing with the kids.  Pictures and videos will come later today…

We hope everyone has a great Christmas!

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This year the Blue Santa program was giving horse-drawn carriage rides (a year round staple in downtown Austin) in exchange for toy donations.  I read about it in the paper and thought it sounded fun.  We arrived shortly after it started expecting there would be a line.  Typically a ride for 4 people would be about $60 per half hour so it was really a pretty good deal.  But when we arrived at the downtown fire station we had a carriage waiting for us.  Maybe the cold weather had kept the people away.

It was a pretty chilly night and we bundled the kids up.  Earlier in the day Amber had taken Jillian and Wesley shopping and had tried to give Wesley a Santa hat to wear for the ride.  But he refused saying something along the lines of “No.  Santa will give me a Santa hat.”  So magically a gift bag complete with Santa hat was waiting for us on the sidewalk when Wesley got out of the car downtown.  It is amazing how easily they believe.  He was sure it was from Santa, wore it proudly, and never had a single doubt.

We toured around downtown hitting the highlights including Sixth Street, Congress Ave, and the Driskill hotel.  We were pulled ably by a Red Belgian Draft horse named Clay.  He was friendly and let Wesley give him a few pets on the head at the end of our ride.  Jillian spent most of the ride yelling “Neigh!” and trying to jump from the carriage.  It was rather cozy the four of us cuddled together underneath a red velvet blanket.

Afterwords we drove up Congress to see the Capital tree and then headed home.  The strings of lights in the picture, which look all white are actually new LED lights the city is rather proud of.  They’ve been touting their energy efficiency for a few weeks now. And in truth they are very neat. They change color, play patterns and in general look nice when viewed down Congress Ave.

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That’s right.  We got snow. The first in several years for Austin (though they did have some rather large ice storms a couple of years ago).  What makes this even more unusual is that on the 9th, the day the snow fell late in the evening, it was 81 degrees.  A record high.  By the time the snow started falling just before midnight we were at freezing and getting some lovely flurries that I woke Amber up to see.

It wasn’t much, a quarter inch is probably generous, and it had mostly melted by the time the kids got up, but Amber got a few shots of them before they were too cold and had to go in.

And here is Jillian doing her best to clean up the deck. She is very fastidious.

This will likely be it for as long as we live in Texas.  I came home after my morning run to play with the kids, but it was much less impressive in the daylight.  No snowmen. Oh, well.

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As is our new Texas holiday tradition we headed down to Zilker Park for the lighting of the “tree”.  We first enjoyed the enormous yule log fire and then counted down as they turned on the lights.  Once the crowd thinned down underneath the tree we headed inside to do some spinning.  The photos look a little blurry because of all the people walking and spinning, kicking up the dry Texas earth.

I started with Wesley in my arms and spun him around and around as he stared up at the lights.  After just a few rotations we met Steve Albert, KVUE reporter, and his cameraman, Woody.  They asked if we’d like to be filmed and we said sure.  By the time they had gotten all set up and had me mic’d up I was spinning Jillian around and Amber was getting Wesley dizzy.

Jillian loved the spinning even more than Wesley.  She would get this mellowed out zombie look and go limp.  When I stopped she would sit up looking all dizzy and then ask for more.  As I say so eloquently in the video I don’t think she would ever have stopped on her own accord.  And I must admit it is rather dazzling looking up at the lights.

They filmed us for a while, asked me a few questions (and to my defense I was rather dizzy and not thinking straight), and then told us it would be on at 10.  We went home, eventually got the kids tucked in and sure enough the Zilker Tree Lighting was their top story.  I managed, with some effort, to get a copy of the video off their website.  Feel free to skip ahead to about 1min 25sec.

And yes a few people at work actually saw us on the news.  I was in the elevator with Jack today and he said “Hey I saw you on the news!”

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Luminaries

Santa was visiting from 6-9.  We got there right at 6.  Good thing, because this Santa was a talker!  He was really sweet with the kids, but the line moved VERY slowly!  When we were done, there were about 50 people in line.

Once it was our turn, we started with Jillian.

Not a happy girl!

As you can see, it did not go well.

I like Daddy much better.

Joshua rescued her and then it was Wesley’s turn.

Say Santa!

He knew exactly what he wanted to ask Santa for.  Two books - one about dinosaurs and one about penguins and Candy.

Talking to him about books.

Then we wanted to try to get a picture of both of the kids with Santa…

This time was not any better.

Santa gave each kid a small candy cane.  Wesley and Jillian were both very polite and thanked Santa for the yummy treat.

Next it was time to ride the “train”.  It is a sweet man who drives a tractor around that pulls 7 “cars” that are made out of 50 gallon drums.

Goodbye Mom

Both kids enjoyed the ride.  Jillian was very sweet at the end of the ride and was giving Wesley hugs.

After the train ride we went over to the community center where they had hot chocolate, cookies, and a few snacks.  We ate them outside at the playground then walked back to the stroller.

Still eating their cookies.

We then walked around the trail to see the luminaries.  We also walked around a couple of houses that had a lot of decorations.  There was even a sweet man, who had a ton of decorations in his yard, outside in his driveway passing out yummy hot chocolate and cookies.

Looking at the snow globe with a penguin inside.

Wesley was so sweet - he said goodbye to all of the decorations.  It was a good thing we were on a short block.  He made us laugh when we were on our way out of the neighborhood and Wesley said, “they even had bats!!”

Wesley sees a bat - we see an angel

It was a wonderful way to spend a Saturday night!

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I’m not sure if this is something all Costco stores do or if this is just a thing they do in states like Texas with a tree deficit, but the trees had yet to arrive by 2pm (when I was there to get gas) and by 5:30pm (when we got our tree) the truck was a third or more empty already.  So if you want to be like us and get yourself a Costco tree you’d better hurry.

It is also the first time in my adult life that I can remember having a tree all wrapped up.  I’d always scoffed at paying the extra money to wrap it in plastic.  They always fit on the car just fine.  We had no idea what it was going to look like. They offered to open it up for us, but we decided we’d risk it.  We needed some sort of adventure out of the whole experience.  And after all it is Costco.  If we opened it and it was terrible they’d take it back.  And as it turns out it is a nice looking tree.  Not very big (7ft, noble), but Wesley thinks it is huge so that is all that count.

Here is a time lapse video I made of pictures Amber took of the unraveling of the tree.  You can see the kids are excited.

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We started on the morning of his actual birthday by opening a few presents.  He likes to open presents.  And then continued celebrating by going out to lunch, all four of us, even though it was a work day.

Kind of excited.

That evening we opened a few presents.  The next day of course was Thanksgiving.  And that means a party and to Wesley every party is especially for him.  Especially when the party comes with juice boxes and dessert.

On Friday he got to hang out with me all day since I had the day off.  Not to toot my own horn or anything, but to Wesley that is fun, maybe not as fun as a party, but still fun.

On Saturday we prepared for his real party.  We decided that instead of doing a big elaborate cake which would be both time consuming and hard to get to the park we would let Wesley decorate cupcakes for his party.  He had a blast for at least the first 15 or so.  The last few took a little coaxing to get him to finish.

Decorating cupcakes.

Too many blue sprinkles.

I'm three.

The original plan was to meet up at the park and then walk over to the fire station for a tour and afterwords come back to the park and have the party.  Remember that it was 80F on Thursday.  Saturday of course turns out chilly and then as we are at the park setting up it starts pouring.  So change of plans, no preparty.  Instead we met at the fire station.

I had my concerns.  Our group was pretty young, the oldest are in Kindergarten, and I’ve been on tours with other groups of kids that were a little academic.  Luckily, the firemen were great.  They pretty much let the kids run amuck.  On the trucks, in the trucks around the garage.  It was great.  The kids had a good time and even came away with some hats and stickers.

Ready for action.

New recruits.

We thought we might have to have the party in the back of our Subaru, but luckily it had dried out by the time we were done with our tour.  So we set back up at the park and had a nice little party.  Wesley opened more presents, blew out candles (even though it was too windy to get them lit) and ate cupcakes.  All in all it was rather nice and much less stress than our usual birthday celebrations.

He didn't notice they weren't lit.

More goodies.

After the party we played with his new toys.  And for no real reason took turns dressing up in his new chef’s outfit.

Wesley is goofy.

Dad too.

And Jillian...

And Mommy too!

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For the first time in a long time we had a relatively relaxing and low-key Thanksgiving.  We didn’t cook a turkey or a ham.  All we made was dessert (apple crisp and a banana cream pie) and then showed up at Kerry and Bill’s in Hutto.  We got together with a bunch of mutual friends and had a nice afternoon, talking, eating, watching football and even playing a little Nintendo Wii.

The ladies did most (probably all) of the cooking.  Dinner was delicious.

Kerry makes greenbeans

Amber Makes Gravy

Building up an appetite

Headed for the NFL

All the food was really good.  From the turkey to the chestnut dressing.  Even the parsnips were yummy.

Collin likes dinner!

Wesley pretends to eat.

The only downside to not hosting dinner is not having any leftovers.  Okay, we’ve got lots of pie and crisp, but it is hard to make a sandwich with leftover apple crisp.

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Even though his party isn’t until Saturday we’ve still had some fun.  He has opened a few presents and I came home from work mid-day and we all went out to lunch at Burger King.  Later in the day he spent some of his birthday money shopping with Amber and Jillian and got himself a stuffed orca among other things.

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