Goodbye to 2011 and Hello to 2012

Another year has come and gone so quickly.  I keep catching myself still referring to 2011 and probably will for a little while longer.  It just seemed to fly by.  I am very excited about what 2012 may bring.  I have a new outlook on life and while I decided not to make any New Year's resolutions, I have decided to commit myself to a 2012 To Do List.  I will have to share that later....

To celebrate the New Year, we headed to Austin.  Mom and Mark invited us to join them for New Years Eve and even arranged to have my cousin Allison come watch Katelyn.  Katelyn loves spending time with Allison, so we were very excited.  As usual, our Austin trip was jam packed with fun.  We arrived just in time for Katelyn to get some play time with Nana before going down for a nap.  Chris and I headed out to run some errands while Katelyn napped and ended up enjoying a nice date night out thanks to Mom.  Nothing fancy, but it was nice to be out and about with Chris with no real purpose other than to hang out.  While there, we were also able to make it to one of Steph and Maddie's basketball games.  I still cannot get over how much those girls have grown and how talented they are.  I truly enjoy watching them compete.  On New Year's Day, we got to visit a friend of ours and their new son Fox who was born New Years Eve.  They used to live in the Houston area, but moved a few years ago to Cedar Park, very close to my mom.  We actually do not get to see them very often, so it was nice to catch up.  Since we did not see Mom and Mark on Christmas, we had a late Christmas while we were in Austin.  I have to say, the highlights were Katelyn taking pictures with her new camera and Chris playing with a speaker thing that Mark gave him.  You can put it on anything with a lid and it makes whatever music you are playing louder.  Hard to explain, but pretty cool.

New Years Eve plans included dinner at Cool River.  Its a very nice steak place not far from Mark's house.  We enjoyed a wonderful dinner and awesome drinks.  After dinner, we headed into the bar area where they had dancing, a live band and pool tables.  We all tried our hand at pool and decided we were all terrible, but at least we were have a great time!  We headed home around 11:30 to ring in the New Year with Allison (and to be off the road before all the crazies!).  We were there in just enough time to open the champagne and toast to a new year.  It was a fun evening! 

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas!!  We had a wonderful Christmas this year.  Although the weather was terrible, we had a very relaxing Christmas day with Jim and Patsy. 

Katelyn woke up ready to check things out.  First stop...the cookies, milk and carrots we left for Santa and the reindeer.  She was not so much shocked that the food was gone, but annoyed at the mess they left.  She immediately starting pick it up.  She was none to happy with that mess in her living room.  After the mess was cleaned up, we got her all dressed up in her rain coat and boots for the big surprise in the back yard.  She was a hot mess, but it was Christmas.  So off we went outside with camera's, Nana on facetime on my computer Papa on facetime on Chris' ipad.  Technology is awesome sometimes and Christmas day was one of those times for us.  Nana and Papa were both able to see the huge smiles on Katelyn's face as she played on her swing set for the first time and the only thing that could have been better would have been if they were there in person!  Katelyn's first trip down her slided landed her smack on her bottom in the wet, muddy grass.  She was not please and was ready to go change.  We were able to convince her it was ok and she stayed to play a little more.  Once we were all frozen, we headed inside to open presents.  Katelyn was thrilled with her box of paper and stickers and her tool bag from Granny and Grandpa.  I think she sat with Jim on the sofa for at least 30min just cutting up the flagging tape he put in her tool bag.  And the stickers....she happily shared them with all of us and I am still finding them in the washing machine, her bed and everywhere else.  Its all worth it though to see the smiles on her face.  Chris and I got some awesome things as well. 

By the time noon came around, Katelyn was ready for a long nap and the adults were ready for a snack and to get dinner started.  Me, being the great chef that I am decided I was going to let Chris and Jim go outside to work on the racecar while I started to prepare dinner with Patsy.   HAHA!  I should have left the cooking up to the experts.  While using a new knife (a Christmas gift from Chris) I tried to chop off the tip of my finger.  Good god that hurt!  Needless to say, that pretty much ended the boys time outside as I was now down to 1 hand so they had to come finish cooking.  I think Chris will think long and hard before purchasing another knife for me!  After all of the excitement, we enjoyed a wonderful prime rib dinner (Katelyn actually ate a little bit of everything as well...yay!!) and some homemade desserts. 

I can only hope that we have many more Christmas' like this in our future!

Christmas Eve

We have started to develope somewhat of a tradition with Jason and Diane.  For the past 2 years, they have invited us over to their house for Christmas Eve dinner and gifts.  This year we headed over after Katelyn's nap.  Diane had prepared delicious sides to go with a very tasty fried turkey she ordered.  We enjoyed a few appetizers, opening gifts, some play time with the kids, and a little bit of catching up before dinner.  Katelyn was an absolute gem during dinner and scarfed down the mac n cheese Diane made.  After cleaning up we dove right in to the dessert.  As usual Diane made some wonderful dessert.  Its nice to have enjoyable evenings with great friends!  Hopefully the tradition will continue and if Chris and I can get our act together, maybe next year, we can host!!

Once home, we gathered Katelyn in the kitchen to prepare the milk, cookies and carrots for Santa and the reindeer.  She wasn't quite sure what was going on, but was happy to do anything that meant she didn't have to go to sleep.  We set out a plate of cookies and a glass of strawberry milk for Santa along with a plate of carrots and oats for the reindeer.  She made sure to check on them before going to bed for the night.

 Ally had to check everything out and make sure it was ok!

Santa and his Elf

Katelyn is one lucky little girl!  For Christmas this year, her Grandparents (all of them) chipped in to get her a swing set.  I have been wanting her to have one for a while now, but it took some covinicing Chris before we could get one.  Santa (Chris) came early to build the swing set and enlisted the help of his trusty Elf (Jim).  While Katelyn was at school, they worked all day to get the swing set built so that she could see it first thing Christmas morning!!  Now wouldn't it be our luck that we would go all year in a drought and then out of the blue it would rain almost the entire week before Christmas so the ground was soaking wet and nasty when we try and build a swing set.  Yes it would be and the bad luck would continue when it rained the day after it was built, Christmas day and the day after Christmas.  After a long day of building, curing at the horrible instructions, and a couple of trips to Lowe's, the swing set was as built as it was going to get before Christmas.  I am so thankful Santa's Elf was able to come in to help as the nice 6-8hr build time listed on the box was obviously a type and should have something like 16-17hr build time.

Halff Kids Christmas Party

In recent years, we have tried to start a tradition of having all of the employees kids coming for a Christmas Party at the office.  We usually try and do it as close to Christmas as possible so that the workload is lighter.  This year, we had a great turn out.  I love that Katelyn is getting old enough to play with the other kids without needing me there 100% of the time.  They colored, decorated bags, watched movies, ate pizza for lunch, donuts for breakfast, decorated Christmas Tree brownies for dessert, got a visit from Santa and lighted the mood around the office.  Hopefully as the office grows, we will continue to add to the fun.