Daddy's Girls

I don't know who was more upset about school starting today, me or Lilli.  Well, I'm sure she had me beat but I had been dreading it too. I love having both of my girls home with me and it sure was nice to not have to set an alarm for almost 3 weeks.  At least it's Thursday and this will be a very short week. We had one last fun day before she started back on Tuesday when the 3 of us drove over to Tyler to go to the zoo.  It was a beautiful day, in the 60s, and the animals thought so too.  They were all out and playing.  I think the whole time there was only one cage where we couldn't find the animal.  She had me send this one to her teacher because Mrs. Row's favorite animal is the flamingo. They couldn't believe how close they were Yum! The white tigers were very active.  One even came up and barked at us. We didn't know tigers could bark but looked it up when we got home,  It's just a quick growl but it sounded like B...

It's a new year and I have a feeling it's going to be a good one! We rang it in over the weekend with Shanon and Alex like we always do.  It's a nice way to start the year by being with best friends.  We were at the camp and Capn, Josh, Luke and Wesley were all out there for the LSU bowl game and to hunt too.  Shanon and Alex showed up with gifts for the kids on Friday and I think it's safe to say that Lilli was excited Katie was too but she came down with strep throat the same day they got there and this was her about an hour before. I ran her in to town on Saturday morning to go to the doc.  After one dose of antibiotic the fever came down and she was ready to play! The adults "playing" was a little different this year with Matt still recovering and Alex pregnant The first sign of her little bump :) But we still had a great time.  We didn't catch up and talk baby as much as I had hoped because sick Katie needed a lot of my...

When I was googling the spelling of sayonara I learned something interesting.  I knew it meant goodbye but it has a finality to it.  As in, you never want to see it again.  That's kind of the way I feel about this year.  I can say with certainty that this is the hardest year we've had since we got married.  Part of me wants to not print this blog book and pretend this year never happened.  I know a lot of people feel this way for lots of different reasons but it's been a tough one for our family.  We've seen 4 surgeries between us.  I had a hysterectomy over the summer and Matt has had his wisdom teeth out, knee surgery (which had him on crutches and in pain for months before) and then of course the diagnosis of a heart condition and heart surgery that caused stress and worry the whole 2nd half of the year.  On top of health issues, we also had the months long process of having our house on the market.  Only to end up taking it off...

The last few years we have spent our Christmas Eve with all of our family and then spent Christmas Day at home.  As nice as that is, with all that we have had going on the last several months, we decided that this year we wanted to spend the whole Christmas surrounded by family.  It fell on a weekend so we went up to the camp on Thursday and Yaya and the Dallas group got up there on Friday. (Josh and Hailey alternate and it was their year to spend with her side- they did come for lunch Christmas Day though) The cousins always have the best time and the adults do too. Friday was spent playing and having typical deer camp fun    Saturday was Christmas Eve.  We had Capn's famous gumbo but Matt also spent a lot of the afternoon stuffing boudin into a whole duck and then it in to a whole chicken. Delicious! And then of course we also had to make treats for Santa, open presents and read our stories.  I read the Christmas sto...

We've been really enjoying the first few days of the school Christmas break.  We went to the deer camp on Sunday and spent a couple of nights mostly relaxing but also getting ready for Christmas.  And then we came back Tuesday in time to meet up with Tiffany, Aubrey, and Olivia to see the lights at Christmas in Roseland and go to dinner.  I wish I could see it through the girls' eyes.  We've gone several years in a row and it's pretty much becoming the same old thing to me.  But Lilli and (especially) Katie were full of oohs and aahs.  It definitely makes it worth it!   And it's a milestone day in Matt's recovery.  He was finally released to drive so was able to take off on his own.  He (like most people I guess) didn't like having to rely on someone else to get anywhere or get anything he needed.  He went to work for the first time in almost 4 weeks I love him for many reasons but reason #4581255 is because he ...