12/18
- Arrived in CO and just took it easy for the rest of the day.
12/19
- Did some more birthday and Christmas shopping with Mom for Brady.
- Went to PAFB and purchased customized ornaments for Brady with the year on them for the years (2008 and 2010) I didn’t have for her. Grocery shopped for the week and holiday dinner.
- Had dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant in Colorado Springs – Fiesta Jalisco. Brady did really, really well and survived without incident. She even tried guacamole again and liked it!
12/20
- Casey, Dad, and I took Brady to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo for Electric Safari. In all of our years living in the Springs, none of us had ever gone before and it was a lot of fun. Animals and Christmas lights together?! Guaranteed to be a hit with Brady! Her favorite thing was feeding the giraffes crackers. It was so sweet and she had belly laughs when they got some slobber on her hand! Too cute! I only wish the pics we took had turned out.
12/21
- More shopping – went to Super Target and Kohls to finish things up!
12/22
- Happy 2nd Birthday, Brady!!!
- Baked another Cookie Monster cake that was an epic fail. We’ll just consider the cake I made for my birthday to be her real cake. Seriously, it was so bad I refused to take pics of it or make anyone other than Brady eat it. I blame the altitude and a different oven!
- Casey met with Dave and played disc golf in the frigid weather – they only made it through half the course it was so cold.
12/23
- While I had plenty of eyes to watch Brady, I decided to get my hair done. Mom and I went to the lady that’s been doing my hair in the Springs for years and caught up with her. I had my cut evened out from all the thinning that’s been done to it (intentionally by stylists) in the last year and the highlights touched up. It’s a couple of inches shorter, but other than that looks the same as before.
- We went to Fiesta Jalisco again and had dinner with Dave, Robin, and Rebekah! Again, Brady did really well eating out – shocking!
12/24
- The whole fam ventured out for breakfast at Mountain Shadows. We forgot about the cinnamon rolls (how, I don’t know) until we were done eating so after our yummy breakfast, we ordered a few to go!
- I drove up to Castle Rock to meet Alison for lunch at The Old Stone Church. It ended up being closed for Christmas Eve so we opted for Chili’s and went and hung out there. It was so great catching up in person and not over Gchat!
- I started some of the Christmas baking/organizing. I made a batch of pumpkin gingerbread but because of the leftover cinnamon rolls from Mountain Shadows, I don’t think it was touched.
12/25
- My family bought a Honey Baked Ham so that part of Christmas dinner was already done for the meal. I did quite a bit of cooking aided by a little help from everyone else there. We ate dinner around 4:30 with hopes that we’d have time to eat leftovers later. That didn’t happen and in fact, we barely had room for dessert. There was so much food including deviled eggs, a 14lb ham, green bean casserole, rice dressing, candied yams, rolls, macaroni and cheese, and oranged cranberries. Then for dessert there were FOUR pies – three apple (Grandma bought me a lot of apples), and a pumpkin – and pecan pie bars. The altitude effected the desserts again so they weren’t quite up to par with the ones I made at Thanksgiving but tasty nonetheless. Yum!
12/26
- After waking throughout the night pretty much every night, Brady chose today to sleep in. The day we planned on leaving for Kansas City. We didn’t have anything prepped for our trip so after showering we started making a mad dash to clean up/pack up while trying to eat french toast in the process. We said our goodbye’s and left around 10am local time.
- The trip to Kansas City was relatively uneventful. Brady didn’t sleep very much at all, unfortunately, and each time she tried to snooze it’d be right before we’d have to stop for gas. Combined I’m guessing she got maybe 45 minutes of sleep from this – she did it three different times.
- We listened to football along the way and that made keeping up with our Fantasy Football players much easier and the trip all the more enjoyable. Casey ended up taking first in our league and I took third. Not too bad for my first year playing!
- We made it to Nanny’s house in exactly nine hours (after a quick stop at the store for Brady’s provisions).
12/27
- After breakfast with Nanny, we stopped by Bryant’s to pick up some BBQ, before driving out to Casey’s parents house. I made enchiladas for dinner, watched football, and then just took it easy the rest of the time we were there.
12/28
- Nanny watched our dogs while we were at Casey’s parents (they have 4 German Shepherds and combining our dogs would have ensured a fight). We drove back in to her house to give her a break (apparently as soon as we left the day before, Dudey attacked her vacuum, she put him outside and then Stoli, who’s usually terrified of vacuums, attacked it.) and visit with the dogs.
12/29
- Happy Birthday Casey, Nanny, and Nicole (cousin)!!!
- After a stop at the Apple Store to buy Casey a case for his iPad that I won him and then another stop at Wal-Mart to pick up a gun case for the new shotgun Marvin gave us, we headed back out to Casey’s parent’s house (an hour between his parents and Nanny’s).
- Marvin wasn’t feeling well and so he and Sally offered to watch Brady while Casey and I met the rest of the (extended) family for dinner. The plan was originally Texas Road House but with 22 people and call ahead seating, the wait was still estimated to be 45 minutes and we would be sprinkled throughout the restaurant. We ended up eating at a Mexican restaurant nearby and all of us were seated together at one long table. It was great to be able to see everyone and catch up at one time. Brady did very well and after some initial fussiness (she skipped her nap), behaved for Meme and Hankaw while we were gone (even went to bed 45 minutes early).
12/30
- After stopping for Starbucks and Chick Fil-A, I dropped Casey off at the hospital to sit with Sally and Marvin while Sally got her second round of chemo. Brady would not have survived long in a hospital setting so she and I went back to Nanny’s house to hang out there, visit with her and the dogs. It was a really nice day (mid-60s) but the wind made it a little uncomfortable to be outside. We did give Brady a walk in the wagon to the end of the block and back before putting her down for a nap. I think this was her longest nap since we left Colorado – a little over an hour.
- Brady played for a little while longer and was fascinated by Rachael Ray and insisted on feeding Nanny and I num-nums of what Rachael was cooking. We made the drive back to Marvin and Sally’s and played outside for a little while before the wind got to be too much and then headed back in. I made pasta fagioli (ala Olive Garden but better) for dinner and we watched Dexter.
12/31
- Matt and Julie drove over from St. Louis to visit. We hadn’t seen them since our trip to St. John in June 2008, so it was nice to catch up with them. We spent the afternoon hanging out around the house, before heading out to dinner at Texas Road House (we were craving steak after we missed out on it Wednesday). Brady refused to sit in the high chair, but did pretty well considering and had lots of fun playing with the water and straws. She’s a big fan of the fried pickles (well, pickles of any kind)! We said our goodbye’s to Marvin and Sally and headed back to Nanny’s house. Matt and Julie were able to come with us and Matt was able to help Casey pack the cargo bag so he didn’t have to do it by himself in the morning (freezing cold that night and the next morning – single digits temps before the wind chill). Then we just watched a movie and talked until around 11:30. Brady woke up right before they left (I think it was the movie) and gave them some goodbye kisses! Thankfully they were able to get back on the road to Matt’s mom’s house before the crazies left their New Year’s parties. The fireworks started not long after we went to bed and Dude (who’s terrified of thunder and probably assumed that’s what it was) started trying to push our door down to get in bed with us. Needless to say, we didn’t get that much sleep before our trip back home with a squirmy 2 year old and a 70 pound bulldog in a full sized bed with us.
And 2010 is over.