A Brief Stop...

And then on to Louisiana. We're home for just two days - enough time for laundry and catching up with work emails and then we're off again. We'll be gone till Tuesday.

We had a blast in Iowa. Owen was an angel on both flights and with all our side trips. We got about 7 inches of snow on Saturday night, which was fun. Pictures to come later.

One thing we will leave you with is a picture of Owen opening his first present. The kid had a blast. He knew exactly what to do. It was so funny.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from the Hammetts!!

We hoped to get a few more posts up before we left for Christmas, but it just snuck up on us! We leave Tuesday night for the frozen north. We're there for a week, back home for two days and then it's over to Louisiana to thaw out a little.

We hope you all have a great Christmas. It's been a great year for us and we're very thankful for all of our family and friends. We're also very thankful for a few weeks to lay low and enjoy life. We hope that you can all do the same.

And a very Merry Christmas to our friends the Johnsons who just made a big move back to the US with a 2 year old and a 1 month old - we hope you guys can get some rest over the next few weeks and catch up with everything that's happened over on this side of the pond.

We'll leave you all with these pictures from our church small group Christmas party. We made gingerbread houses. Merry Christmas!

Christmas Cookies

When we were in Louisiana a few weeks ago we participated in the time honored tradition at the Hammett house of baking Christmas cookies the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Owen wasn't so sure what to think of all these big people acting silly and coloring cookies, but he thought it was a fun thing and he can't wait to be able to fully participate.

Owen's First Christmas Tree

We went a few weeks ago and picked out our Christmas tree - Owen's first one. We'd love to say that we went to the forest and chopped down the most beautiful, special tree for Owen's first Christmas. But we live in a large metropolitan area, so we did as everyone else - went to Home Depot. Didn't matter to Owen. He had a blast. After we got it decorated we hung two shiny ornaments at the bottom that he likes to sit and bat around.

Owen tells us that this one is good.

Putting the star on top

How 'bout them Cowboys

For having lived in Texas for over 4 years, we haven't really adopted many Texas teams. No offense, but college teams in Texas aren't all that to us. Although my Cubs have historically had about as much success as the Rangers, at least Cub fans stick by their team year to year. I have adopted one new team since coming here, the Mavs, but this post is not for them.

The team of my childhood is back! How about those Cowboys!! 12-1, NFC East champs and headed towards a first round bye. I think I have a man-crush on Tony Romo. Marion the Barber-ian is a stud! I'm even starting to warm up to TO. It's been a fun season. And with the new stadium within sight of my office, there's only more buzz going around. So, while I was one of people that voted against the stadium coming to Arlington, I must say that I don't really regret it now - until we have to live with the Sunday traffic!

Maybe I need to try to find my old Cowboys t-shirt from high school with the Tazmanian devil wearing a helmet....hmmmm, maybe not.

Owen's Favorite Christmas Decoration

Of all the things at Christmastime that we thought Owen would be impressed with (lights, ornaments, the tree, nativity finger puppets) we never would have guessed that he would love snow globes! We had a snow globe train that we didn't know what to do with so we just stuck it on a shelf above his changing table. Every time we go into the room or he gets up from the changing table, he immediately wants to look at and touch the snow globes. It pretty funny...and awfully cute!

Greetings from Balmy Texas

For all of our friends in places that actually have 4 seasons, we thought we'd send a quick greeting from always warm Texas, where today, December 8, it is currently 77 degrees. This is after it hit 80 yesterday. Tara went for a walk yesterday and had all the old ladies saying "Isn't it lovely today?" Sure...for September!

Here are a few more pics from Thanksgiving in Louisiana.

Talking to Granny

Meeting Aunt Robbie and Dixie (the dog)

Sporting the tie bib that Larry and Laura gave him.

Catching Up

There's no way to go into detail about all that has happened since we stopped putting up posts regularly. So we're just going to throw up some pictures of what has happened.

Halloween with Daddy Luigi

The cutest picture ever

Underneath Anne's Christmas tree

What do you think this is????

Does anyone have a clue what this mess is?

Would you have guessed that it is - or was - two pacifiers?!

This is what happens when you sterlize pacifiers a little too much. Tara put them in the boiling water to be cleaned and then we got into our tv show and forgot about them. They were on the stove so long that this is all that was left in the pan! And talk about stink!! This was the night that the cold front came through and we had all the doors and windows open and the fans on. It was absolutely putrid. It took almost 2 days for the smell to leave the house. So, lesson learned...hopefully.

We emailed this to some family members to see if anyone knew what it was and everyone blamed this on Tozer. Poor Tozer - gets blamed for Tara's mess!