December... and Christmas!

So I've been slacking lately on posting things and this is my attempt to catch up! Sorry.

As you can see in my last post, a big part of our Christmas this year had to do with Walt Disney World in Florida. However, here are some photos of other things we did in December.

Celeste's class took a field trip to watch the Bay Area Houston Ballet & Theatre group perform The Nutcracker at the University of Houston Clear Lake. It was a little chilly, so Celeste put on my UHCL sweatshirt to keep warm. I don't know what it is about wearing my sweatshirts, but she loves doing it. Here are some photos of her with some of the cast members before the performance:

As part of her treat from her teacher, Ms. Minchew, Celeste and the rest of her class were given little toy nutcracker ornaments.

The next day, I bought Celeste this cute little Fraser Fir from Lowe's and she decorated it all by herself!

Then I began decorating some of the rest of the house... with Aunt Cyndi's help!

This just cracks me up. It looked too blah without anything on top... but it provided tons of laughs for me and Aunt Cyndi after I did this to it. Probably not appropriate for blog posting...

This tiny poinsetta from Lowe's is so cute!

Some garland, ribbon and ornaments on the antique vanity. My favorite part of this was actually the 2 lotus votive holders that Eric bought for me from the Nutcracker Market!

We kept the outdoor decor simple this year...

And finally...'twas the night before Christmas...

...and all through the house...

...not a creature was stirring...

Finally, it was Christmas morning. I got the bike down from the attic, set it up, and went to wake my two sleepyheads.

After a few hard blinks, Celeste was wide awake and present time was ON!!!

All bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, Celeste loves her new bike.

Celeste tied her new robot dog (gift from Nana and PaPaw) to her new bike and they strolled through the house together like this.

She loves playing with Barbies, so we bought her a cute little Barbie house and she got some more Barbie dolls... and a Barbie car! So they're all set to live in my living room now, ha.

We had a great Christmas. I love this time of year, it's so beautiful and a bit romantic. The best part of it is watching Celeste's reactions to everything. It was awesome.

Disney!!!

We had wanted to take Celeste to Disney World around Christmastime and some close friends of ours (whose son is Celeste's age and friend) were able to come too, making the trip even more fun.

We didn't tell Celeste about the planned trip to Disney World until the moment we picked her up from school after her Christmas party on Friday, December 16^th. We arrived with a newly purchase, hot pink furry "Rockstar" duffel bag, packed with lots of Disney things and activities to entertain her during our long drive ahead. And we told her where we were going, and here's a photo of her reaction!

We met the Baker family at Chic-fil-A and Celeste grabbed her new luggage and rode in their car for the first leg of our trip.

We had such an amazing week of vacation! Here are some of the photos from the trip.

Here's my favorite photo from the Nemo exhibit at Epcot.

Celeste was able to meet most every princess and several Disney characters. But her favorite princess is Rapunzel. Perhaps it's because of her long curls and how often the kids at school say she's like Rapunzel, but regardless, Rapunzel is her favorite. And on our final day at Magic Kingdom, Celeste got to meet Rapunzel and get her autograph and photo.

Some of our best photos are from Epcot.

We had so much fun, but were glad to be back home, whew! Just in time for Christmas. ;)

Black Friday Preparations!

So every year, it has become tradition to go out and buy our Christmas gifts with all of the crazies on Black Friday. This year, my aunt and cousin were in line at Target, while my sister-in-law and and I were in the Kohl's line late Thursday evening. It was so much fun! We were totally crazy, yes, but people watching was hilarious.

Target has been putting out these hilarious commercials for the last couple of years about their Black Friday sale that crack me up. Here are a couple of my favorites from this year's.

So by the time Luwannah and I actually made it over to Target, we had to mimic some random parts from the Target commercials. We just couldn't find a red parachute to run down the aisle with though!

Oh, and yes, those are socks on Luwannah's feet...and flats on mine. The heels just weren't cutting it for the all-nighter.

This next photo was in the Victory Lakes shopping center in the JCPenney/Sports Authority area. Seriously, this was the security that night. We were laughing our tails off... no one was in the SUV. The policeman was in this lifted box thing. I can just imagine it now, "Thief! Stop! Freeze!! I'll be down in about 5 minutes!!" (humming/squeaky sounds start while the thing slowly lowers towards the ground and the criminals make their escape...)

I have to say, I did most of my shopping online before venturing out to people watch... so it was nice not having to stress about getting a certain gift for someone. Everything was so smooth and I even got my first little annual JCPenney snow globe!

Taylor Family Christmas Photos

Well, it's been 2 years since we've had our family pictures taken, and Celeste has grown up quite a lot since then. So last Saturday, we made it over to Portrait Innovations for our Christmas pictures. Here are some of the photos!

As part of the bribe to get Celeste to come and take photos with us, I told her that she could pick out anything she wanted from her clothes to wear and that we would take some special pictures of just her in that favorite outfit. Eric's eyebrows shot up when I told her that, and we both knew it would be interesting to see what she would come up with. She did a pretty good job, and it is totally her!

For this last pose, the photographer had been enamored with her hair and told her to turn around and face the camera. Well, he took about 3 shots of this same pose, and she turned around for each one. It was so cute.

Hard to believe how quickly time flies. Has it really been 5 ¹/₂ years since I had this little baby girl?