Wonderful Christmas

We hope everyone had as wonderful of a Christmas as we did. Ours was a several day event that started with gift exchanges between me and Ross the Thursday before Christmas. This has become our tradition so we don't have to haul our gifts to Shreveport and back.

The first family gathering was at my Mamaw and Papaw's house on the 23rd. We had fun eating and visiting with everyone. My cousin David is engaged and getting married the same day Baby Taylor is due, which means a couple of things...we won't get to go to his wedding, and things will certainly be different next year!

On Christmas Eve, we started the day by visiting Ross' Grandfather who is in a rehab hospital. Our church made a prayer quilt for both him and Grandmother. After everyone in Ross' family had a chance to pray over it, we gave it to him. It's a beautiful quilt with a large red cross and black and white music notes covering the quilt, which is very appropriate considering Grandfather's love of singing.

We have a long standing tradition of spending Christmas Eve evening at my Grandmother and Granddaddy's house. We start the evening by attending their church's candle light ceremony before coming back for one of the most amazing dinners you've ever had! It was extra special this year because the entire family was there! I can't remember the last time everyone was there for Christmas, which is why there are so many pictures in the Napper Christmas album. To top that off we found out that we aren't the only ones expecting a new baby to be here for Christmas next year. My cousins Stephanie and Jason are expecting twins!

Despite it being late when we got back to my parent's house on Christmas Eve, we still found the energy to open a few more presents...

Christmas day was spent with the Taylors. Their tradition is to have people over for brunch on Christmas morning, so we started with our stockings, ate some more delicious food, and then finished off the presents. After which, we made our way back to the hospital to visit with Ross' Grandfather again. That evening we went to his Uncle Ronnie and Aunt Laura's house for dinner to visit with everyone and see what everyone got for Christmas.

Now we're back in Houston trying to find places for everything and still smiling about the memories that were created this year.

Can your dog do this...

...much damage to a door frame in an hour?

Apparently ours can! I went to lunch with a friend yesterday and came home to this, a half eaten loaf of bread, and poop all over the living room. My best guess is that she decided she wanted the bread, so she somehow got it off the kitchen counter. Then after eating half of it, she felt sick and really needed to go outside. Since no one was here, and she knows it's wrong to go inside, she started attacking the door frame trying to get out...the door is metal, so she wouldn't have made much progress on it. Needless to say, I was upset and she was miserable for the rest of the day. Her stomach was bigger than her head! I guess we'll be getting a new door and frame in the near future...

Rock Climbing Pics

Here are a couple of the pictures that I took of Ross after he was done with his rock climbing experience. I couldn't take any while he was really climbing because I was his belay person...

♪ Happy Birthday to Me! ♪

Yesterday was birthday number 29. It was a pretty good day. After work, E took me to an indoor rock gym to try my hand at climbing. It was fun, challenging, and a good workout. I'm not sure I'm built to be a climber, but I did pretty well and will probably do it again. After a shower, we met some friends at Pappadeaux and then had some birthday cake. Overall, a nice birthday celebration. Thanks to all that called or emailed to wish me a happy birthday. It's always nice to hear from friends and family.

WinDirStat

The December issue of Popular Science includes a reference to a cool, free application called WinDirStat that analyzes your disk space and graphically shows you the results with color coded, appropriately sized rectangles. Given my recent disk space issues, I thought it was pretty appropriate and timely for me to see this now. Below is a screen shot taken from their website (I'm sure they won't mind).

Ever been Limed?

Last night we were driving home from dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, and shortly after we turned into our neighborhood, something bounced hard off the top of Ross' new car...not good. We got home and after inspecting the car, took Bailey for a walk near the area his car got hit. As we approached, there was a truck stopped at the corner (much like we did after getting hit) that had also been hit. There were a bunch of citrus fruits splattered all over the street. We actually found the lime that hit his car. We were pretty sure someone was throwing these since there were no trees over the street in that area. Sure enough, we found a kid sitting in the ditch with a pile of fruits...

Ross let the kid know what he did was not ok and that he's fortunate no damage was done to his car. I think he at least scared him a little, and he made him get rid of rest of the fruit. Who ever would have thought we'd get limed! Kids...is this what we have to look forward to? ;-)

Desk Improvements

After using the desk I built for nearly a year now, I finally got tired of some little issues and fixed them today. From day 1, we had trouble with wire routing. This is mainly because I forgot to leave room for wires when making the sliding shelves. At the time, I rigged a solution by cutting slots for the wires in the shelves but they didn't leave much room for error so we were constantly wiggling wires to make the shelves close fully. Today, I finally fixed the problem. I simply cut a larger notch (1.5" x 5") in the back of each shelf to leave room for the wires. This was done with a simple template I made and a flush trim bit on my router. The first picture below shows an old notch and the template and the second picture shows the results. I can already tell I'm going to be much happier.

Life Group Christmas Party 2007

The Fullilove's hosted a wonderful Christmas party for our life group last night. There was a ton of delicious food and lots of fun for all. While the girls sat around talking about typical girl things, the guys started a fire (in a fire pit) outside...doing the manly thing. The kids ran around, played with dolls, and made cotton ball snowmen...doesn't get much better than that. The adults had their fun too. We did crackers, which are one of Emma's family traditions...they are British. If you've never done them before, they are rolled up packages that you "crack" open (really more like popping). Inside you find a paper crown, a toy, and a joke...explains the crowns you'll see if you check out the album. Here's a picture of all of the girls from later in the night.

Baby Taylor

We had another doctor's appointment today. They did the nuchal translucency test, which involved a sonogram and a blood test. So far everything looks good. They have to do another blood test in a month before we get the final results. During the sonogram we got to hear the heartbeat, which was 141 beats per minute. I'd also lost a pound since the last visit, which is funny to me since I ate like a horse at Thanksgiving and my clothes are smaller than ever. Nothing to worry about at this point though.

Here are a couple of the pictures from the sonogram today. It looks like Baby Taylor is already sucking it's thumb...

Due Date Update!

Today, we went to the doctor for our first detailed sonogram which served several purposes (details and pictures coming soon). One result is that the due date has been moved forward almost a week to 06/07/08. The baby ticker on the main blog page has been updated.

Neptec Christmas Party

Last night was Neptec's Christmas Party at Cafe Annie. We have a pretty big social budget but the only thing we ever do is the Christmas party so it is always at some fancy restaurant and we get dressed up and have a good time. Last night was no different. We had a private room which happened to be the wine room. We shared many appetizers including sea scallops with grilled applewood bacon, 'chicken fried' gulf shrimp with lobster cabbage slaw, tostada of gulf crab meat with avocado relish, wood grilled quail with white cheddar ancho chile relleno, and salad of seared rare tuna with roasted beets and frisee. Wow! This stuff was incredible!

For our dinners, E had wood grilled lamb chops with smoked almond and cocoa recado and I had wood grilled salmon with BBQ quajillo chile sauce. Mine was a perfectly cooked piece of fish (which I ordered medium) and E's was the best lamb I've ever had (also medium). We finished off with pound cake and chocolate cobbler for dessert. Talk about a great meal. Throw in some great service, great company, great wine, and a great atmosphere and you can't ask for much more.