Ok, so if you know me, you know that craftiness is not really my thing, so this project that you see is a huge deal!! Zanna was a sheep in the No-Rehearsal Christmas Pageant at First Pres.... we forgot to take a picture of the actual sheep inside of her costume, however, I really just wanted to show off the crafty success!! Aunt Mule, watch out :)
Aunt Mule stealing some kisses from Zanna, Zanna enjoying the train tracks, the newlyweds Ryan and Lauren enjoying their first Christmas, and Mimi getting some Zanna love!! Every year when we were growing up in the Demarest house, Santa left a new item for the train track, and this year, Santa went all the way to Mimi's house and brought some of the train stuff to start the tradition for Zanna! Mimi even said she'd keep the Santa trains at her house (THANK YOU MIMI :)) during the year!
So, Cam and I realized that the last time we had raked leaves was in February, when I was trying really really hard to do any manual labor that would then cause..... LABOR.... and, so since it's December, it was about time to rake them again :) The Sunday before Christmas was a gorgeous 70 degree day (while we enjoyed looking at pictures of Grammy and Poppy's snow angels in Belgium in 7 degree weather!) so, we took advantage of the day..... Zanna wasn't too sure about sitting in the leaves by herself, but when Mom came along to save her, we got a little bit of a grin......
We had lots of cousin-time last week. Before Brynn came to visit, Luke and Katie came to see us. Luke is exactly 2 weeks younger than Zanna and they had a great time playing together on Thursday night. I took work off on Friday to play with babies while Katie went to a meeting for her work. It seemed that the babies were on exact opposite schedules, as soon as one woke up, the other was ready for a nap, but I managed to catch a few minutes of togetherness in the crib :) We are looking forward to Luke and his family's visit at Christmastime! 
The Austin Museum of Art had this cool project at the Holiday Sing-A-long where you could make something out of an LED lightbulb, clock battery and twist ties, and Brynn made a Rudolph nose (as well as bracelets, rings, etc.) :) She shined her way down Congress...
Brynn, Zanna's cousin, came to visit last weekend and we had so much Christmas fun! On Friday night when she arrived we made a nativity scene with decorated sugar cookies, and then Saturday we went to church for the Day School's incredible Gingerbread House Party where Brynn made a fabulous Gingerbread house (and enjoyed some candy on the sly as she decorated :)) and then Saturday night we went to the Holiday Sing-A-long at the Capital building and tried to stay warm while we sang Christmas carols and wandered down Congress Avenue amidst the newly lit Christmas lights. It was such a fun-filled weekend and we hope that Brynn (and Bridger!) come stay with us again soon! 
Never mellow, always crazy!
As I said in the previous post, Ryan and Lauren just got married. It was an absolutely beautiful, Christ-centered ceremony at Camp Louchridge, a Presbyterian Camp in Tulsa. The chapel looked out over the camp and was just breathtaking. However, you wouldn't know that from my pictures... when I got home and looked through my pictures of the weekend, these were the only ones even taken at Camp Louchridge... whoops! At the rehearsal, Zanna practiced walking against the pew and particularly loved that she could see through the chair to her daddy standing on the other side :) We also really enjoyed our short but special time with Grammy and Poppy visiting from Belgium. Unfortunately, we never got one with everyone looking at the camera, but it's still cute :) Zanna loved being with her Grammy and Poppy- they were amazed at how much she had changed since the first time they met her (at 6 weeks old). She showed them all of her tricks- crawling, standing, laughing, clapping, singing, waving "hi" etc. She pulled out all of the stops :)
