12/25/10

Christmas at the Ranch

Redneck Christmas Tree, Redneck Christmas Tree, how lovely are your branches..

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Not every little girl gets to experience that magic of a redneck Christmas tree, but our little girls did. Blythe helped us pick out a 4x4 stump, shovel the sand into a tin bucket, and decorate snowman to hang on the garland. I have to admit that when my mom was first describing this tree I was a little skeptical, but I think it turned out pretty cute, even without the super cute girls in front of it.

After we got the redneck Christmas tree assembled it was time to put on our shiny black shoes, our bright red Christmas dresses, and head to Christmas Eve service where we met up with Joycelyn, John R, Grandma Barbara, and a few other locals. Of course a trip to the local church wouldn't be complete with a test run on the motorized chair. You know Jason, always in engineering mode and wanting to make sure it was safe for the seniors.

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After Christmas eve service we headed over to the McRorey's so the girls could get a taste of a real Christmas tree. Their great, great Aunt and great Grandmother put this tree up just for them.

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****Christmas Morning****

Claudia, Jalyn, Grandma Barbara, and I were all sitting out in the living room in anticipation of Blythe waking up and starting Christmas when we heard a rustle quickly followed by Jason telling Blythe she had to wait. Apparently when he was little his dad always stalled by brushing his teeth, or shaving, or something just to increase the anticipation. In all fairness I don't think Blythe had a clue that this morning was any different than any other morning. Finally Jason was ready and let her open the door..

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[here she pokes her head out and sees all of us staring at her and thinks twice about coming out]

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[Now she's got her game face on]

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Since Blythe is really into birthdays this year we decide to celebrate Christmas with a birthday cake for Jesus (Angle food cake of course) complete with candles and a very excited little girl to help blow them out.

Merry Christmas!!

12/10/10

Nilla Goes To The Hospital

Nilla is Blythe's beloved baby doll. It's like Mary Had A Little Lamb, everywhere that Blythe goes, Nilla goes too. A few weeks ago Blythe pointed out to me that Nilla had an awie on her leg and when she showed me sure enough she had a major awie. Nilla's cloth body was starting to become detached from her plastic leg...not good. I really didn't want Blythe to have a one legged baby doll that she takes everywhere with her and I also thought a nice Corolle doll should certainly last more than a year (even with the amount of love Nilla receives). I contacted Corolle and they responded immediately that they would send us a new Nilla, then I got an e-mail back that they would be sending a doll as close to Nilla as possible, but they were all out of Nilla's. I went online to see what the doll looked like and it looked exactly like Nilla just in a different outfit so I guess that is a bonus because we now have a new outfit.

Jason and I debated about how best to replace the old Nilla with the new Nilla. We knew if she saw both of them she would say "I want 2 Nilla's," so that wasn't an option. We have been talking about taking Nilla to the hospital so we continued that theme. Jason tried to convince her that she should kiss Nilla goodnight and let Nilla go to the hospital, but Blythe was NOT interested in leaving Nilla overnight, but who can blame her? What mom would let their precious baby go to the hospital without them over night? So we went with plan B which was the super quick before bedtime trip to the hospital. I told Blythe to give strip Nilla down and give her bye bye kisses and to show me the boo boo so we could make sure it was all better.

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Here we are starting to get a little nervous

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Then Jason brought in the hospital box and Blythe placed her in the box and away she went. In lightening speed the box cam back and Blythe quickly took Nilla out..

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only to learn that Nilla had not been fixed and she needed to go to a different hospital (I was biting my tongue at this point thinking, really Jason we needed to do that?)

So Blythe loaded Nilla back up in the box and away she went. This time she was getting nervous so I suggested a seat in the waiting room chairs.

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Finally Nilla returned and was ALL BETTER. Blythe couldn't have been happier. And to top it all off Blythe got a new pair of PJ's for Nilla in her advent calendar!

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Finally floating again

I knew it had been a long time since I blogged, but I had no idea how long it had really been until I logged on and saw it was 11/17..WOW I am almost a month behind. I debated about going back through the days and pictures and playing catch-up, but I resolved to go ahead and catch-up on memory book pages and post some sneak peeks here so you could see what we have been up two the last 3+ weeks. Apparently we have been having WAY too much fun to get around to blogging.

On November 20th we took Jericho to her first Aggie game and Blythe showed us she is an old pro at cheering for the Aggies.

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My cousin Blair and his wife Tanya were in the states for a visit from Australia so we took them to see the holiday festivities at the Gaylord.

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