Lincoln Lake

It has been COLD here for the past few weeks and I am just sick and tired of it. I really am in a much better mood when the sun is out and I don't have to scrape ice off my car and wear long johns every day. There was an "8" on the weather forecast the other night and I almost cried. I looked at Tyson in all seriousness and said, "what are we going to doooo?!" Clearly, I'm not a big fan of the cold weather.

This past Saturday, however, was glorious!! The weather was so, so nice! And even though we have about a million and one house projects on our list, we decided we had to take advantage of the sunshine and non-frigid weather.

So before we hung out with these little pumpkins...

we went for a picnic and hike at Lincoln Lake, which is just about 15 minutes from our house. It was probably my favorite trail we've done so far. It was longer than we expected, but the views were beautiful, the hike was just difficult enough,  and did I mention the weather was nice?!?

Oh, and we found a giant rooster on the side of the road. 

playing catch-up

So...in case you haven't noticed, I'm a terrible blogger. I've thought about just forgetting about this thing, but it doesn't feel right to leave and it sho is a happy day hanging. I really don't have anything interesting to blog about. at all. But maybe I'll try to keep up with it until I do. I would like to look back on it one day and remember all the ridiculous things I deemed blog-worthy.

I'll do my best to make this short and sweet, but let's play catch-up (because I know all of my 2.5 readers are dying to know what we've been up to since October).

Tyson and I are beyond blessed to have some pretty precious children in our lives. I think they will do just fine until we have our own :) They really do bring us so much joy and make our lives a little bit more fun. Halloween, for example, is a lot more enjoyable when you have 3 princesses and one prince charming to hang out with.

In November, we were able to make it back home for my dear friend, Catherine's, wedding. I actually had the honor of singing during the ceremony. I was sick and had no voice up until the day before the wedding, so we won't go into detail about that little performance. Everything about the wedding and reception was so beautiful and classy, just like Catherine. It was so nice to be able to spend some time with friends, although that time is never, ever long enough! We were even able to squeeze in some time with our Birmingham family, which of course, didn't last long enough either.

Once we made it back from our whirlwind trip to Alabama, we started getting ready for Thanksgiving. Since we had just traveled 10 hours both ways, we decided we would stay put in Arkansas and host Thanksgiving at our house.

We found a pile of cotton to play in...

Had some sleepovers...

Worked on some projects for Christmas gifts (many more of these to come, now that I know what a talented wood-worker T is)...

We traveled all over the US over Christmas. We are crazy and possibly still recovering from our travels, but it was worth it. We started in Oklahoma with Tyson's family, came back to Fayetteville on Christmas day, headed back down to Alabama the day after Christmas, spent a couple of days with T's grandparents, a night in Birmingham with my family, and finally ended up in God's country (Auburn) for a few days. I don't know how many more times we'll be able to do that over a 10 day period, but we got to see just about everybody we loved, so I don't think either one of us regret a second of it. Except for maybe the 3 hours stuck in traffic due to snow and construction where we really thought we might be losing our minds.

We were back in Arkansas for about 4 days before we hopped back in the car (but this time we rented a sweet mini van) for another 10 hour drive to San Antonio. In that 4 day period, however, we celebrated this guy's 26th birthday...

We went to San Antonio for the Annual Beltwide Cotton Conference. We visited The Alamo, walked the Riverwalk, went to a Spur's game, and enjoyed the "National Beer of Texas" in the bar that Teddy Roosevelt supposedly recruited the Rough Riders in. Tyson presented his research and won 3rd place in the competition. I had no idea what he was talking about, but was proud, nonetheless :) We enjoyed our time in Texas and would like to go back when there aren't meetings involved, but we were really glad to not be living out of suitcase once we made it back!

Oh, there's also been a lot of this going on...

So, help me.