Christmas in Houston after all....

After spending all night in the airport in Seattle we didn't give up after all....we were able to get a flight out of Seattle in between snow storms so we did arrive in Houston in time to spend Christmas with my family! We're enjoying our time here catching up with family and friends. We will be back in Seattle next weekend so look forward to stories and pictures from our trip then.

Snowed In

I was so prepared for our trip to Houston. I've put my time as a stay-at-home mom to good use! I planned our meals down to the last breakfast so that we wouldn't have food go to waste in the fridge while we were out of town. I carefully packed suitcases for everyone. I had the ultimate supply of dollar store toys and craft projects for Olivia to play with on the airplane. The diaper bag was fully stocked and perfectly organized. We've had quite a bit of snow here lately so we wanted to leave plenty of time to get to the airport, get parked, and checked in. I checked the status of our flight constantly all the way to the airport. I'll save the details for another day but we were snowed in. Our flight was due to leave at 6pm and then got delayed and delayed again, then we got on the plane only to sit there for a few hours and get off again so that it could be canceled. We then tried to go standby this morning on a couple other flights out of Seattle but those flights were canceled as well. We spent the night on the airport. It was terrible! We won't be able to get home for Christmas. Thanks to all that careful packing we arrived back home to a completely empty fridge. But then to end on a positive note, thanks to the fantastic diaper bag and dollar store toys! You absolutely do need 3 changes of clothes for each child under 3, you never know when you'll be sleeping in an airport or running a mini-daycare for other stranded holiday travelers.

Home for the Holidays

We've spent enough time as an Army family to know not to ever take being home for the holidays for granted. Mike is due to deploy during the first half of 2009 so we're being sure to treasure every moment. My heart goes out to our friends who are not blessed to be together this year for the holidays. You are in our thoughts and prayers.

All the snow we've had here lately means that Mike has been getting home from work early! How could I get mad at my husband for tracking snow in and taking off his wet boots in the middle of the living room when I saw him having this adorable moment with Olivia.

Merry Christmas

Since we're leaving tomorrow we had a mini-Christmas celebration here. My favorite and most useful gift so far is our new gorillapod tripod for the camera. We used it to get some great pictures of the whole family!