Our December Dallas trip

2012 has come and gone and 2013 is off and running. I know I keep saying I can't believe how fast life is moving, but it remains true. Everything is moving so fast and there's nothing we can do but hold on and move with it. As usual with the end of the holiday season, I've had my after Christmas freak out and survived. The freak out comes because I know next Christmas will be here in two weeks. I now have to stop and have another freak out, albeit a mini one.

Moving on..... I've been terribly unmotivated to document anything, so with this post, I'll try to catch everyone up. So much funny stuff has happened, and I can't remember any of it. Seriously, just imagine funny stuff and imagine people laughing and there you go. It was that good. And if I think of any of the funny facts before I finish this, I'll be sure and add some.

My 6 family and Maggie went to Dallas for the weekend on December 14th. Part of John and Owen's Christmas present included a ticket to the Dallas/Pittsburgh football game. John, who's from Pennsylvania, had only been to one Steeler game in his life, and when he found out they would be playing in Dallas, I determined to get him there. He'd never have followed through with the details if it'd been left to him. And I'd never have followed through with it after I saw how much the tickets cost if Olivia hadn't forced the issue. So tickets were bought, plans were made and off the 7 of us went. That first evening we arrived in town we Christmas shopped and Fernando's ate, and then fully intended to go in search of enchanting Christmas lights, but we collapsed at the house instead.

Olivia and I fell in love with the big finger for obvious reasons. 

But we couldn't find a good and real reason to buy it. 

We considered buying this herd of cattle for William, but rethought it.

A UT snowman. I'm now asking myself why I didn't purchase him!

This polar bear mom and child greeted us at Anthropologie, an overpriced and full of themselves store. 

An angelic glow seemed to encompass Maggie in the store. 

Happy Hanukkah!

Taking picture roll at Fernando's 

All peeps were almost present.

NOW all peeps were present.

There's a weird thing that could be a Santa hat over my head. 

The menorahs were plentiful.

And Paciugo's was yummo.

And John was seriously stressed about Dallas traffic.

The next morning we were off and running with the dumbest plan on earth....which was to go to the outlet mall on the last weekend before Christmas. Every single person who lives in Dallas was there that day, and there were only 12 parking spots. OK, that's not really true....there were 14, but it was unbefreaking. It took me 20 minutes to find a spot and then when Becky arrived, she put the beat down on someone trying to steal her spot and got one in 5 minutes. She's serious when necessary. In all my years of going to Dallas, I've never seen anything like that mall that day. And I hope I never do again. There are many stupid people in the world, and we saw lots of them there. I just hope Jesus wasn't watching.

After our horrible first stop, we rewarded ourselves with an adorable place called Watters Creek. SO CUTE! It was as nice as the other place was crazy. It was filled with cute shop after cute shop for the pretty people in the world. Which I'm not one of.....but one thing they did have that I found stunning was an olive oil store! A store entirely devoted to olive oil! I'm not a visionary when it comes to olive oil, and it would have been a hard sell if John came in one day and told me we were going to open a store and sell oils from olives infused with all kinds of different things. I would have said, "Ummmm no." The end. Anyway, we bought no olive oil, even though the peeps working there were very enthusiastic about their oils. Also we found a new place to try a hamburger, because I'm still in search of the best hamburger ever. But we all know it will never happen since Big Frank moved his letter to heaven.

The Galleria Christmas tree. Quite impressive. 

Documenting Owen's presence in front of the impressive tree. It'd been 9 years since my whole family was in Dallas together. 

Watter's Creek that I now regularly call Watter's Edge. May never be anything else. 

This random adorable child was in the olive oil shop parked under an olive oil spout. Caitlin was highly stressed about it. 

We ended the day at Pei Wei, which is not always kind to me as people riding in cars with me understands first hand. Sidebar: my son just told me of a day when he was in the truck with three friends and he felt a "gassy situation" coming on. Did he worry and fret about his soon to be embarrassing situation? Ummmm no. Instead he locked the windows and only after he successfully trapped his friends in his soon traveling cloud of death, did he let it rip. Two of them, gasping for air, got their heads stuck in the small window in the back of the truck. I will NEVER understand boys. But back to my Dallas story....we did find THE most enchanting lights in all the land, in Highland Park Village. And at one point I had to "step out of the car." Those there know of what I'm speaking. But then we drove to see a big fancy tree in a nearby neighborhood, and JUST when it got in sight....and I'm not even kidding....the lights went off! It was a shocking turn of events for us.

Riding around at Christmastime is always fun cause people come up with the most clever things. This car has an ornament holder on its roof, making it the largest Christmas ornament ever.  

Then it was off to Highland Park

These pictures don't do this justice.

It just can't be described or conveyed in pictures.

It was gorgeous. 

GOR GEOUS!

Then we went home and slept and blah blah blah got up the next day with much to do and see. On Sunday, off the football people went, John, Caitlin, Olivia and Owen to brave the crowds and watch football on a huge TV in a stadium. Makes. So. Much. Sense. But not long after John and Owen sat down in their seats in the stadium, something super gross happened. A female vomited on their backs. That's right.....vomited. They never saw her or it coming. By the time they realized what happened, it was over and she was gone. And somehow, and I don't even know how, they managed to clean themselves up and still enjoy the game. If it'd been me, I'd have been screaming, "I've been hit!!!" Causing police and concerned citizens from all areas of the land to come to my aid. Seriously so unbefreaking. I don't think there's any way I could've stayed after that incident. It's the grossest thing ever to be. But anyway, the cowboys won, BOO. And even though I can't stand the Steelers, I was sorry they lost since my peeps were in attendance. And even though the adversity of the vomit occurred, the vomited on ones and the non vomited on girls all had fun. Personally I don't see how.

As they were about to leave the house.

Couldn't choose which one.

Outside Cowboys stadium.

The girls turn.

Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. This was the only thing I was jealous of missing...not the football.

Nose bleed section is still quite pricey.

Meanwhile, as they were being vomited on, Becky, Carrie, Maggie, Emma and I were on the trail of Christmas giftings. One of our stops was at a Barnes and Noble bookstore, and that's where an occurrence occurred. I found a cute puzzle of teacups for Emma, who I was shopping with and who loves puzzles. Well, I bought it right under her nose and successfully made it to my car without her seeing it. As I was trying to hide the puzzle in the back of my car, I put my purse and my two month old iPhone 5 on the back bumper so I could hide the $15 puzzle. Success! We got in the car, left and not long after, I realized I didn't have my phone. And not long after THAT, my phone was found in the middle of the street smashed to smithereens. What? What? Yes that's right. Who does that?? That would be me. Even as I type this, it pains me.

Hurts so bad. 

So the $15 puzzle plus the new phone ended up costing me, $275. Yeppers, vomit and a smashed phone. ACES!! Then yesterday, Emma completed the puzzle for the second time since Christmas, and discovered a piece missing. #@$%*!!!! One more dig of the spur. It took two weeks to get my phone back, and as a little tease, I didn't think they charged me for the replacement. But they did. When I did get it, it didn't have a sim card in it. I mean really. So John went to the phone store and got one. The next day, FedEx arrived at my house with a huge envelope containing my teeny tiny sim card. Now I have a spare. You can't make this crap up people. But I'm happy to report that since we've been home, no one's been vomited on and I haven't killed my replacement phone. Score!!

Then we were off and headed home and when we stopped at the Sonic just outside Dallas, we saw this Steelers truck . Doing this to your car makes absolutely no sense to me at all.

When we made a pit stop at Texas roadhouse, Olivia bought me the cutest sassy snowgirl ever.

But after I got home from Dallas and didn't have a phone to document everyday life, I have no idea what happened. Therefore the week leading up to Christmas is a total blank. Just picture me phoneless and reminding myself hourly how stupid it was for me to leave my phone on the bumper of my car. SO STUPID!!

Then Christmas was upon us, but I'll address it in its own post at a later date. But during our holiday time off, my family has successfully wasted as much time as we could vegetating at our house and watching the movie Pitch Perfect so many times we can quote it. SO GOOD! Then Caitlin had to leave the day after Christmas to go to Shreveport to prepare for ULM's Independence Bowl appearance, which ended up being much less than stellar. But again, it deserves its own post.

So as it turns out, it's taken me multi days to complete this post. MULTI. With trying to get my house in order after the holidays and thawing out after the ULM football game, it's taken forever!

Other posts will be forthcoming. I just don't know when the forthcoming will be.

I've been thinking if life were a song, it would be called, "If it's January, why isn't it snowing so we don't have to go to school on Monday?" Or some such thing as that.

Gone to the barn peeps.