Feliz Navidad

Grandma Walker was able to come for a brief visit. What a treat!

One of the funniest nativity stories I have ever seen...note the kitty ears on Marc. Need I say more.


There is nothing quite like Christmas to make you feel like a kid again! I just love Christmas with kids. I love the excitement and anticipation of every part of the holiday season. We really try to limit the "stuff" part and focus as much on the real goodness of Christmas as possible. It probably helps that our TV doesn't really get channels and they are unable to pipe in cable...so we are not bombarded with all the crazy commercials.
I was pretty proud of my boys this year. They did extra chores to earn money to buy gifts for other children (Sub for Santa kind of things). They had so much fun picking out all the toys...maybe they thought they might get to keep them, I am not sure. But I would like to think that they "got" it a little bit. Hopefully we can keep up the tradition and it will be something they will remember with fondness.
We got to spend Christmas with Marc's family in Dallas. It was very fun to be with all the cousins at one time. The boys couldn't get enough...plus their cousins have a WII, so they pretty much didn't want to come home. To top it all off, we got a white Christmas. It was kind of crazy...but we were in Dallas afterall! LOL

Our Little Runner

M loves to run. He always wants to race. When he was younger and we had preschool at our house, he'd beg his friends to race him over and over and over. Usually kids are happy to do a few loops around the couch or the backyard, but this is different. Four or five laps later, most are ready for a rest and/or don't want to race anymore. But not M...he could go on forever.
Since he started school, on our way home from school he asks to be dropped off at the end of the street by the mailbox because he wants to run home.

Don't get me wrong, we LOVE that he likes to run and totally encourage it, so I was really excited when I got a notice from school that there was a district-wide cross country race. The race was broken up by ages and gender and was 1 kilometer. I know that doesn't seem that far...but to a 5 year old used to running home from the mailbox, I knew it might be a little daunting. So, I mentioned the race (almost in passing) and said that he could do it if he wanted. He thought for a moment and said that he would think about it (totally his father's child...analyzing already). After about a week, he decided that he wanted to do it and even chose the race over going to Sea World.

On "race day" I was totally nervous. I felt the same as I feel before one of my races. I tried to act calm and not project my feelings on him. He was so cute. Before the race, he got into the holding area with all the other 5 yr old boys and "warmed up" by doing jumping jacks and some stretches (maybe they do that in PE at school...I wasn't sure what he would do when the announcer told them to warm up). Then, the gun sounded and he was off. He did such a good job and ran the whole way. I couldn't have been more proud if he was in the Olympics. Who knows if he will continue to run...but it doesn't really matter. It was fun to see him doing something that he loves!