Of the four hundred and eighty-eight pictures we took during Christmas this year, this one is easily my favorite.

Santa!!

We took Tressa to meet Santa for the first time this past week at Bass Pro Shops. They were offering free pictures with Santa which was right in our price range. We were a little worried about how Tressa would react to such a bearded figure since she's just started to be wary of strangers, but she loved him! (unlike the much older child in line ahead of her who cried like he was getting a flu shot)

Checking each other out for the first time.

She's really not straining to escape his arms, this is in the middle of a big smile for Mom.

Merry Christmas!! (and a Happy early Kwanzaa)

Little Reindeer

I just love this little hat on Teresa. And, it was only a dollar at Target, which makes it even cuter, I think.

How to tell if your pants are too big...

I had to laugh today when I looked down to see that Teresa had crawled right out of her pants.

Christmas Tree

I keep forgetting Teresa can get around as well as she does. And as fast as she does. I set her down on the other side of the piano while I was playing and turned around to find this just a few notes later. So, of course, I had to find the camera and document it. I was surprised at how quickly she headed for the tree since the first time we showed it to her she wasn't too impressed.







She had a hard time reaching the ornament with her little hands and eventually just started lunging at it with her mouth instead. Neither method was effective. Which is why she looks so irritated in that last picture.

Picture of a cute baby

Teresa and I were in Austin this week for her six month doctor's appointment, and this is the only picture I took. Ciaran is such a cutie, and his mom doesn't put enough pictures of him up on her blog, so I had to post it ;). Teresa and Ciaran still aren't too interested in each other but we sure have fun with them together. T was great at the doctor, got some shots that she did well with. She had an oral vaccine that she LOVED. The nurse was surprised when T just slurped it all down right away. She's 28 inches, which is above the 95th percentile, and is down to the 75th percentile with weight at 17 lbs, 8 oz.

In other news, Marc comes home in less than two weeks! Teresa can't wait.

Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! Late, I know. I love Thanksgiving, especially this year, when I have so much to be thankful for. I would make a list, but it would be ridiculously long. Teresa would definitely be at the top, though, if I were to make such a list. She'd probably be on there several times, actually. And I'll just warn you now, this post is really long, and has A LOT of pictures. I really am trying to cut down on how many millions of pictures I take... Anyway, this year we got to go to Florida to visit Marc for Thanksgiving. Turns out Pensacola is just barely in Florida, only about 8ish hours from Houston, so we drove out for the long weekend. The drive was so beautiful! We went through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, it was such a nice drive. Especially since I wasn't driving ;) Teresa was great in the car, she slept most of the way, with only a little complaining thrown in. She was excited to see her daddy. I was a little worried about her reaction to him, since she has recently started being a little clingy, but she had a great time with Marc.

Waiting...





We ate Thanksgiving dinner with the LDS Branch on base, and it was delicious! They probably only had less than fifty people there, but they had tons of food. Way too much food, including possibly the best green bean casserole I've ever had. Ever. Seriously, it was really good. The weather was really nice, a little on the cool side, but we had fun hanging out outside after lunch. It was fun to see Marc in his dress uniform, that was a first. I liked it ;).







I made him pose by himself, just 'cause he's cute...



Matching cousins! I don't know if I've gushed enough about these cute outfits Melissa made! So fun.







And some more...







Friday morning Marc's mom, Melissa, and I left the hotel around 4:30 to do some Black Friday shopping. My first experience with Black Friday last year was pretty horrible, I pretty much just stood in line and tried not to throw up, so I wasn't really looking forward to going this year. But, it turned out to be pretty fun. Not actually as crazy as I imagined it would be. Black Friday shoppers are pretty efficient, they pretty much know what they want and just get in and out. Our camera decided to break Thanksgiving afternoon. I knew it was coming, it's been acting up for a while now, so I guess the timing was good, cause we were able to pick up a new one super cheap at one of the sales.

Marc isn't allowed to leave base yet, so we went bowling Friday afternoon. It was pretty much the only family activity available on base, since it was too cold to be outside much on Friday. How awesome does his uniform look with bowling shoes instead of boots?



Teresa had fun eating the table (did I mention she's teething?) and examining the bowling balls.





We were sad to leave without Marc, but he gets to come home for Christmas in less than three weeks! In other good news, he got to start his advanced training class yesterday. He had originally been told it might not start until later in December, or even January, so we were pleasantly surprised that he got to start earlier. He loves it, so far, but we'll see if that changes in the next 15 weeks.