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!