Texas trip - week 1

We learned a lot of things on this trip. First, 30 days of vacation is overrated. And B, we're never traveling over Christmas again.

Besides that, we had a great time on our trip to Texas. The two and a half days in the car weren't as horrible as they could have been, and it was so fun to see so much family and friends over the course of our trip. It had been a whole two years since Marc was in Texas, so there were lots of things to do and people to see while we were there.

We spent the first week in Baytown and Houston, visiting with Marc's family. T and Nora had a blast with all the cousins! Nora took a while to warm up the first week, but then she got the hang of all the changes and new faces. Here are just a few of hundreds of pictures from the first week.

T had fun hanging out with Gigi. (And Poppie too, though he's not in this picture)

And with Aunt Melissa (or, Bayissa, as T called her). Aunt Melissa came up with these fun Santa hand print t-shirts. Teresa normally won't make handprints because it is too messy, but after watching her cousin do it, and since someone besides her mom was involved, she thought it was great. Nora was surprisingly cooperative as well.

Who doesn't love naked time?

T doing some tandem rocking with Uncle William.

I snapped her picture while she was saying "stop takin my picture!".

We went to see the Bass Pro Santa again with Melissa's family. Their Santa was much jollier, and T actually smiled this time around. I don't have the digital copy of it though, so just picture T sitting on Santa's lap, smiling.

Waiting in line:

I told T to go stand by the snowman, but I guess she decided the trashcan was photo worthy as well?

Nora loved seeing the fish again, she gets so excited every time, cute girl.

And all the kids loved the toy trains and coloring they had set up.

(had to blur their sweet little foster child's face)

I just really like this picture of Teresa in front of the tree:

While we were in Houston, Marc got to play around with his camera a lot, I think he is getting quite good at taking pictures. I couldn't narrow these down any more, so collages it is!

The Teresa:

The Nora:

Both girlies:

And some cute cousin shots. These two are only a month a part, they had such a fun time together.

We were lucky enough to be there for little M's adoption! He is such a special little guy, I'm so glad we were able to be there when he became an 'official' member of the family.

That's a good looking family, right there :)

T loved the water at the temple, of course:

Nora is standing and practicing her walking, but I think it will still be awhile before she takes any steps on her own.

Me and my girls:

Okay, and one more of the Nora, because she's so stinkin' cute:

And this concludes the posting for our first week of Texas vacation. Stay tuned for weeks two and three, featuring our trip to Boerne and Austin.