Nutcracker

Cameron received an invitation from one of her best friends to attend the Houston Ballet Nutcracker matinee performance. Erin & Cameron were best friends in 2nd grade - in the same class and Girl Scouts together. Even though they are in different classes this year and Cameron doesn't attend Girl Scouts, they are still friends and see each other at school during recess.

Erin's mom took both girls (aren't they adorable!) and they had snacks and bought ornaments before the show. Erin loves ballet, and is a Junior Patron . This membership included a reception in the Green Room where they could meet the dancers afterwards.

Cameron, Erin, and the Sugar Plum Fairy (Kelly Myernick)

They also toured backstage and got to see the props up close!

Erin's mom sent me the photos and clearly they had a fabulous time! I wish I'd been there too!

Texas "Snow"

Yesterday morning we woke up and were surprised to see we'd had a near freeze overnight. North of town they did freeze, but we think it was only about 35F-37F on the coast.

When I opened the kitchen blinds, we discovered a thin white sheen of frost glistening on the grass, the playset, and the (used-to-be) golf course out back. It was really pretty and if you didn't know better, you could squint a little and pretend it was a light dusting of snow.

The girls were so excited to see it. Naturally they called it snow, though I had to correct them and explain that it was just a little frost. As we drove to school, the rising sun's warm rays took care of any remaining frost. (It actually warmed up to 65 yesterday.) But it was very pretty just as the sun began to rise, all white and glistening.

I wished I had a camera with me on the drive to work. Horsepen Bayou was steaming. Literally, white steam rose from the warm water in the cold air. Just beautiful. It was definitely our coldest morning this fall and it felt great!

The Wedding

I have been remiss in posting about Brad & Amanda's wedding last month. Here are just a few of the images.... We really had a lovely time and Amanda is now officially a "Kelly girl".

Brenna & Cameron share a laugh with Amanda while waiting for the ceremony to begin.

Brad, Debbie, and Bryan. As much as we missed Donna at this event, we are very blessed to have Debbie play such an important role in our lives.

(More later....)

Thankful

We took some time on Thursday to step out of our hectic, crazed, out-of-our-control, life to remember those things that really matter in this world. Four of the seven are sitting at the kids table in this picture. (Alex and Laurie were somewhere else, and baby girl Henley will be with us next year.) Because no matter how bizarre life can be, it is the people in our lives that are the most important: our family, both here and far away, and our friends, both old and new, that matter.

Hope everyone had a thankful Thanksgiving.

Almost finished painting....

Now that the bathroom is finished, we've been addressing the bedroom on the other side of the wall. For the past 3 years it has served as guest bedroom/playroom. Cameron has asked to move in and make it "her" bedroom and we agreed. The contractor rebuilt the wall - and we had to pull down the wallpaper on the other 3 walls. We thought we'd paint only two walls, and leave wallpaper on the other 2, but it didn't look right, so we pulled down the other two today and painted the whole room. Since there is wood paneling under the double-layer of wallpaper, we only pulled off the top layer and painted over the bottom layer. It's not perfect, but it will suffice.

We painted two walls, ALL of the white trim, and some of the bookshelves. We still need to do the doors, but since they can be removed, we'll do those another time (say... March?)

Cameron picked out Icy Violet for the color. In the sunlight it looks very lavender. In night, without natural lighting, it looks quite pink. We'll move in the furniture tomorrow - and then hopefully we'll be able to use our living room again and put the Xmas tree up on Sunday in the few hours we'll have between church and Daniel's birthday party.

Because life isn't crazy enough....

So I mentioned in the post below about the latest plumbing issues....

As we're desparately trying to get the interior of the house put back together (you've only seen photos of the bathroom - the bedroom and living room are completely torn apart still), this is what our backyard looks like as of last night.

(notice the gas line in the middle)

The picture doesn't really capture the depth perception of this tunnel - it goes under the house about eight feet directly below the kitchen/garage wall to give them access to the kitchen pipes. I was tempted to climb under there on Monday night, but last night it was full of water from the day's rain. I hope it dries out enough for the plumbers to get underneath Thurs and Friday to replace the pipes and show the Water Authority engineer.

So close, almost there...

The contractor finished his part of the bathroom job on November 2, which means we've spent the last two weekends taping wall cracks, spackling, and priming and painting the cabinets and walls.

Bryan really let the girls step up and have a hand in helping.

We added two little cabinets for toiletries on either side of the mirrror, but the girls can't reach them. (oops)

And we added a cabinet over the toilet to hold towels. We still have to find towel racks and decide where to put them and buy some colored towels. Though we'll likely just put our old towels in there and continue our favorite mismatched look.

The girls brushed their teeth in the new bathroom this morning. I lost a lot of drawer space with these cabinets, so I've got to be creative in thinking of new ways to store all their things. The boxes are still packed in the dining room. I hope to get them unpacked by this weekend, if I get a free evening.

Bigger problems this week. We came back from the wedding Oct 27 and the washing machine motor burned out, and since it cost more to replace a motor than to buy a whole new machine, we got a new machine. When we hooked up the new machine, it drained harder (?) than the old one and we had sewer backing up into the kitchen sink.

Today a plumber is digging a60' trench in our backyard and tunneling 8 feet under the house to build a new drain from the kitchen sink/water heater/washing machine to the main city sewer in the backyard. (I checked, it's not covered by homeowners insurance.) Merry Christmas.