Phew

Wow, The month of December absolutley FLEW by! It's amazing just how Chaotic it can get, but in the end we pulled everything out, had a nice holiday and are ready for the new year.
We began the month with the typical fare. Christmas Parties, Christmas programs, and Winter break from school kept us busy. Not to mention Rene and I work schedules around eachother to minimize the ammount of time the girls have to go to a sitter.

The week of the 15th, Chloe and I left Isabella and daddy and went to Colorado in hopes to meet our new niece and cousin Molly York Steele. We got to spend some great time with Cousin Amina, Grandmomom, Grandpa Steve, Sarah and Ben, but Molly proved stubborn and wasn't born until 7:59pm on Wednesday December 17th. Chloe and I hopped on a plane back to Texas the next morning. We did get to meet her though and it meant the World to me that I got to spend the day that Molly was born with Amina, hopefully making it a wonderful day for her. We went to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo and had a awesome time. They have a huge herd of Giraffes that we got to feed rye crisps too. Chloe wanted the craker, but the Giraffe thought otherwise. By about the 3rd cracker she wouldn't even hold it anymore!

I came home and worked for 2 days and then we were full on into Christmas. We did Christmas baking with Oma on Tuesday. After 12 hours of baking we had all of our Christmas goodies. I love baking the things for my girls that I had as a girl growing up. Russian tea cakes, Sugar Cookies, thumbprint cookies, Date nut pinwheels, and Even two apricot "Christams trees" were made that day. Along with some excellent Chicken and dumplings for dinner.
Needless to say we were more than ready for Christmas! We spent Christmas eve at Oma and Papo's house having traditional german fare for dinner and opening presents that Santa had dropped off since it was already Christmas day in Germany. Christmas day was spent with an absolutley rediculous ammount of toys and goodies. Dinner at our house was Prime Rib with horseradish cream sauce,Ham, potatoes, asparagus, and bread. For dessert we had some of the goodies we had baked earlier in the week. Everything about Christmas this year was amazing! Whirlwind, crazy, Chaotic, but in the end AMAZING!

I'm looking forward to 2009. My gut tells me this is going to be an awesome year for me and my family. I'm very optomistic. We have some really exciting traveling to do early this year and then some big projects for the house, so the rest of the year will be spent at home. We are headed to Disney world at the end of February with Grandmomom and Grandpa Steve and then Rene and Isabella are headed to Germany with Oma at the beginning of April. Both are going to be amazing trips.

Wow, I feel caught up now. And well I should. We are well into 2009. Isabella is back at school and our life has regained normal Controlled Chaotic levels compared to the super charged chaos we expirience around Christmas. So from our house to yours...