At Home in the Mountains

 We had a great Christmas that flashed by before we knew what was happening. My parents came to Dallas this year. They arrived Saturday night, stayed with Tammy and then went to Mansfield for a couple days On Monday, we went to Mansfield for Baby Jude's 1st birthday party and then my parents came home with us that night. On Christmas eve, the Hall clan (minus Brad who had to work til ridiculously late :( ) came over. We had one of our favorite Eckstein family Christmas meals--TAMALES! Yum!  After dinner, we opened gifts. The kids had a great time. Maddy and Bethany both made gifts for each other. Maddy got a play dough bead necklace from Bethany and Maddy made Bethany a little door hanger/ornament with lots of pink and purple and the intial "B". (She has been watching Mommy work.)  On Christmas morning, Maddy got her new kitty, Genevieve. Maddy LOVES this kitty. Now the trick is to get her to treat the kitty right so the kitty loves her back. Maddy has had fun ...

Holding her favorite kitty, "Genevieve"  We had a lovely ice storm over the weekend that started late Thursday night or early Friday morning. We were keeping some kittens and a momma for a friend for a couple of days and that turned into all weekend because of the storm. Good thing we had them to entertain us since everything else imaginable got cancelled this weekend--church, craft fair, Dallas Marathon, school, etc. Snuggling with James  Fortunately Aaron is a pretty good driver on icy roads so we were able to get out quite a bit to do errands etc. On Friday we went over to some friends and Aaron and Maddy went sledding with them. On Saturday we went out and did our Christmas shopping. Great day to take care of that and don't think we would have had another time to do it anyway. Lot's of businesses were shut down because of the ice and I would say Saturday was the worst day for the roads because it was so cold we never got any thaw that day. Tammy and Jeff ...

Wow! Where to start? We are going along at blazing speed it seems. I am so ready for the semester to be over and enjoy a few lazy days before Christmas hits full blast.  I will just give some pic and some news blurbs about what is going on. News blurb #1: At my last doctor's appointment (30 wks) I hadn't grown or gained so they decided to do a sonogram to make sure baby was growing correctly. I was very nervous, even though I suspected that all was fine, given our past history with Maddy. Sometimes you just can't help those bad memories coming in and nagging at the corners of your brain. Fortunately they had sono appts available that afternoon and Aaron was able to get off work and come to the appt. The sonogram went great. Baby was 3 lbs 7 oz and 15 in long--two days ahead of scheduled due date. We also found out for sure that we are having a GIRL!! Now to finalize a name.......... News blurb #2: Maddy is starting to read. After the sonogram we picked her up at scho...