Brother came home!

Flew home for Dalton's homecoming. Absolutely top 5 happiest moments of my life.

Steve came too! He was able to be there in person the next day.

Saved the best for last.

Thanksgiving & Christmas

 I met up with my college besties over Thanksgiving, so great to catch up with these lovely ladies.  I swear, we were 18 years old five minutes ago.  Where does the time go??

We all have our one favorite thing that our Mom makes for Thanksgiving.  This year, I was able to make my Mom's Green Beans... Nailed it.

Okay, I am from Texas.  Being from somewhere that rarely gets below freezing, there are a few things that I don't know when it is below zero degrees.  I don't know that you're supposed to keep your heat on at night and (especially) when you go out of town.  I don't know that you're supposed to keep your faucets dripping.  Let me tell you, I know these things now.  This is Lucy's water, frozen solid.  Believe me when I say, the warmest part of our house was our refrigerator.

This was an expensive and ONE TIME mistake.

Steve's Grandpa was feeling generous (and pressured by Grandma) this Christmas, and passed down his shotgun.  Super special day.

Steve's excitement > Ralphie's excitement

This was the first snowman I've ever made! I was so excited for there to be enough snow to build my snowman. Seriously guys, I was pumped.  So you can imagine my anger when later that night, some punk kids (I'm assuming) came by and punched his face in, then kicked over the remnants (also an assumption)... all that was left was a big lump of packed snow.

This experience has jaded my appetite for snowman building.

We got a real tree this year.  It was huge and gorgeous! But seriously, way too top heavy, it fell over twice in the first day. After soaking up all the tree water from the carpet, picking up broken ornaments and getting sap all over my hands (and the interior of my house), I decided to bolt a hook in the wall and anchor the tree with one of Lucy's leashes tied to the trunk. It did not fall again. Not gonna lie, I was pretty proud of my brilliance.