The White Christmas

We never go out of town for christmas. We decided many many years ago that when we had kids we would stay home for every christmas. It was a great plan but this year things outside our control happened and we needed to go out of town for christmas. ugh. His Royal Highness' mom offered to come down to visit and take all our gifts back to her house early so that we would have room in the van for our luggage. It sounded like a good idea at the time.... that is until we realized that there was a massive winter storm headed toward the DFW area and she had all our gifts held hostage in that area! She's a smart one..... she also got me a Chi (real, not fake...) for christmas so she's also a giving one. But for the sake of this story, we'll just say that she's a smart one... very cunning and wise. If you want to make sure that your grandchildren come to see you, take all their gifts hostage.

So we headed off from 60 degree Houston on Christmas Eve in hopes of arriving at his parent's house by dinner time that evening and with plenty of time left in the evening for telling the christmas story and making cookies. We had no idea then that we would talk about the christmas story at Jack-in-the-Box while sharing fries instead of cookies.

A winter storm had descended upon the DFW area and our trip quickly turned into a slow steady crawl on texas ice skating rinks, known to some as roads. The only place we could find open to eat was that Jack-in-the-box hours after we should already arrived at his parents and it made a great lesson to teach the girls about how Mary and Joseph searched for a place to stay the night before Jesus was born. Eight hours later and after three hours of driving no more than 25 mph, we finally pulled into his parent's driveway and decided that we would not drive again on the ice, even if it meant we were stuck there long than expected. I was frazzled and seriously almost threw up a few times while driving. If I was by myself it wouldn't have been so bad but my heart was in the back of the van and their lives mean everything to me. I swore up and down at that point that I would never travel for christmas again..... until....

I woke up to this....

My first white christmas.... ever....I'm approaching a higher number birthday wise than I care to talk about and I've never had a white christmas. I honestly don't remember ever playing in snow as deep as we played in that day. It was magical.

The rest of the day was wonderful. The older princesses loved christmas morning even though Princess Newbie had to be woken up to join up and was grouchy. Here are a few pictures of our morning for all of you to enjoy.

Don't worry about Princess Newbie though.... she got the best gift of all. A grandmother to hold her and fuss over her for hours and hours that day. Now that's one blessed baby....