Merry Christmas!

Our Christmas Card this year. (This is a picture I took of one of the actual cards, since the website wouldn't let me copy it or save it to another location. Figures they wouldn't trust people like me to do something like this. So you will have to settle for this lower quality version for the blog. Sorry. It's the thought that counts, right?) Merry Christmas, everyone! We love you!!!

Love, Autrey, Shilo, Dylan, & Baby BOY Duke

Grapevine Polar Express Train

Mimi and Papa were here the past 2 days and took Dylan on his 1st REAL train ride on the Grapevine Polar Express. He was so excited before we even got there. He was wearing his train conductor overall outfit, but it was too cold to go without his big jacket over top of it. Here we are in front of the train. Dylan, of course, had his eyes glued on it in fascination:All aboard!
Lookin' out the window:
Santa brought Dylan a giant bell necklace. He has been wearing it every waking moment since that ride. (He is napping as we speak. The only way I could coax it off him was to have him put it around his elephant's neck, who sleeps with him. I was ok with that, since elephant won't accidently choke himself.) It's fairly loud. I know where he is at ALL times. I'm not sure if I want to feed him grass or throw money at him. Also, Dylan saw me trying to put his souvenir ticket with our other family keepsakes and he insisted on carrying it around. Too soon, I guess. He was pretty cute waving at Santa and saying, "Merry Christmas, Santa!"
Fun little train ride. Although, they had a very energetic pre-teen 'elf' MCing the ride. She came out of nowhere and shouted/asked me what I wanted for Christmas. Scared me so bad I about jumped on Autrey's lap. She did make it up to me by taking this picture after my heart stopped racing:

Thanks for the ride and the fun shopping weekend, Mimi and Papa! I got a sneak peek and Santa is being very generous this year!

Stockyard Santa

Aunt Elaine and Aunt B were awesome enough to come down to be with us to help take care of Dylan (and the rest of us) while I had my cerclage on Friday. I had slept enough and was hopped up on enough vicodin that I felt well enough to go to the Fort Worth Stockyards with them Saturday night to get out of the house for a little while. We saw a Texan Santa: The funniest thing? This video of Autrey chicken roping:



We came home and Autrey finished building Dylan's tool bench. With the help of his assistant, of course:
Dylan loved it! He's a regular Bob the Builder.

Thanksgiving in Utah

Since my parents went with the aunts and uncles/grandma and grandpa Holdaway on a Hawaiian cruise (I'm not jealous in the least *cough, cough*) we went with the Duke's to Utah for Thanksgiving so we could attend Tyler's blessing. Ironically, that's the event I don't have any pictures from. I'll have to steal some from Allyson's blog, after she takes a break from unpacking her new house to post them.

The Children's Museum: Corn clean up on aisle 5!The helicopter on the museum's roof: Video of Dylan dancing to the jukebox music with Maggie at the rental house:

Chilling with their string cheese on the warm windowsill:The ADORABLE turkey shirt I made with some of my ward friends:The Hogle Zoo on Black Friday, after we slept in until 8am thankyouverymuch:The Hogle Train:Mimi's Christmas outfits:D'ya hear there were some cute bears at Temple Square to see the lights? It was cold enough there to have Dylan put on his Lightning McQueen snow boots. There was snow when we first got there, but it melted when it rained. Oh, well: Video of Maggie and Dylan running down the hill outside the rental house:




We were lucky enough to see Aunt Elaine and Aunt Brenda twice while we were there. They took us to Guadalahonky's for dinner the night before we flew home: A better one of B:Happy Thanksgiving! I'm thankful to be in my 2nd trimester! Woo hoo!