Merry late Christmas

I hope everyone had as good a Christmas as this little girl did!

Christmas Cheer

My nod to Christmas.
We don't have any family here and aren't traveling so there's not much holiday cheer here. We do have a tree and are having Christmas dinner with some friends here, who were shocked to find out we were not going to be with family for the holiday.

We did go to the 37th street lights yesterday. It was a cold night and we were happy to discover that Lorelei now fits properly in the Ergo baby carrier. She does not, however, fit in her little snow suit. It makes her took much taller than she is, which is kinda adorable.
Seriously....look how long her legs look and then look how tiny her head is.


A little background.... unlike the Trail of Lights, the 37th street lights are simply lights on one block of a residential area in central Austin. It started with neighbors trying to one up each other and turned into an annual attraction. Fast forward 20+ years and of course some neighbors have moved and some houses are empty etc. Supposedly they "aren't as good" as they used to be because it's more just lights, less crazy artistic nonsense, but they are fun and free to see. Also, unlike the Trail of Lights, it doesn't require a shuttle bus to get to, which is a big selling point on a below freezing winter night when hauling a baby around.

A lot of people just drove there and there was a huge line for people waiting to drive down the block, but half the fun is the walking IMO so that's what we did.


We found parking only a block away and ambled down the block and then around the neighborhood before we got too cold and decided to go home to warm up.

A few highlights:

Gnomes being repressed


Flying Spaghetti Monster, or "Hi, How are you?"
Our group's consensus was FSM... The other one would not have come to mind except someone right behind us insisted it was the latter. After comparing both of them to the picture above I can see why someone might think it was the "Hi, How are you" but only if they had never seen the FSM.

I'm not quite sure what the message was supposed to be here.


My favorite, the Sock Monkey Nativity


And a family shot right before heading back to the car
I hope everyone has a great Christmas, and enjoys the days getting longer from here on out.

December photoday

The weather has been pretty weird here. There have been a few days where it has been near 80 degrees out, so me and Lorelei have taken advantage of those and gone for many walks... usually the next day it will be in the 40s or 50s. Lorelei usually babbles and sings for the first block or so and after that drifts off into a deep sleep.


This kind of temperature fluctuation means lots of wind! This is how we discovered that the siding on our shed wasn't attached too well (it is just made of beams and siding, there is no drywall or anything) It looked kinda cool though, and popped back into place easily.

Yesterday we got a Christmas tree. This is probably the only thing my boyfriend will be getting me for Christmas because he's not a big fan of the Christmas season. It's still not decorated though.... because the kitten loves it. I'm thinking I will leave it undecorated for one more day and then just be careful about what ornaments I put on it... or something.

It was another of those beautiful days out so I put Lorelei in this fancy little dress my mom bought her, set her on a quilt in the back yard and had a little photo session with her.

A note for those who wish my buy 5 1/2 month old babies fancy little dresses.... make sure that it isn't a fabric that changes color when wet. This dress was actually a good fabric to choose, though having a few less froofy layers would have possibly made it less attractive to baby noms.

It was moody day for her though, and she decided she'd had enough of it right about the time I ran out of ideas

- - well, she got angry when I stopped letting her eat my camera strap, but nothing was gewtting accomplished that way.