Christmas

We spent Christmas in warm (if not sunny) Louisiana with my family. It was warm enough that Anna spent Christmas morning in a onesie and humid enough that her hair had a bit of a wave and for most of the visit, she had a large curl on the top of her head. It was adorable and untameable. Anna got to meet the family's dog Carter who was quite patient with her. She would put her hands in his mouth and tug on his beard and he never snapped at her. But after a few days, he did learn to keep his distance.

Anna began crawling two weeks before Christmas, so she enjoyed roaming the house with Grandma while I went back to sleep or went running. In fact there was so much to do and see that Anna had a hard time taking naps. With all the extra people around to watch her, I didn't mind too much except that she didn't seem to sleep as well at night, which is why I started going back to sleep after Anna had breakfast.

Even though I have an eleven-year old sister, Anna was pretty much the first one up Christmas morning. While everyone else snoozed away the morning, she ate breakfast and then we got everyone else up. Santa brought her a train that plays music and chugs across the floor and we gave her some wooden blocks and a shape sorter. It was fun to watch her eyes light up when she first saw the train. But like most babies her age, her favorite thing about Christmas morning was the wrapping paper and she was happy to crawl around and play with discarded paper while everyone unwrapped their presents. My brother thought it was pretty funny to stick bows on her back while she was crawling around. She was okay with that until she noticed them and then of course she wanted to play with them.

We were sad to leave the seventy-degree weather for cold Utah. And Dan was even sadder when he got to our car and discovered that it was covered in layers of ice and we didn't have an ice scraper. After driving the car around to warm it up, he found an ice scraper at one of the parking lot bus stops, while Anna and I waited in the comfort of the airport. It was a long night and we made it in the door of our house around two that morning. But it would have been an even longer night if our nice neighbor hadn't plowed our driveway for us.