it's been too long

oh my gosh, I can't believe how long I've gone without posting! Does anybody else ever feel completely uninspired? That has been me for the last couple of weeks. I've still been keeping up with reading, but I been seriously slacking with posting! I think the busyness of the season is killing my creativity, as well as my time allotted to blogging. I think my blogging will get better after the holidays are over...let's all hope so anyway!

It is officially winter here in Oklahoma! These last couple of days have been so cold with wind chills at 0 degrees! It's freezing...and as of this morning very icy! So icy in fact, that I had an accident this morning. First, let me start by saying that J had an accident last week. He was coming home for lunch one day and the person in front of him stopped suddenly, so he hit his brakes and just slid right into the back of them. Good news - no one was hurt, bad news - the car is no longer drivable. So, I've been driving to get H (the baby I nanny for) every morning, then coming back by our house to pick up J and take him to work. Then I've been going to pick him up after work. We're planning on getting an estimate to see how much it will be to fix it, then we'll decide if it's worth it or not (the car isn't probably worth a lot to begin with.) Anyway, so this morning I was driving to pick up H, and I was being so careful! I'm usually pretty good at driving on ice. I kept tapping my brake to test the road and I was going so slow. When I turned to drive into their addition, my car didn't cooperate. I just kept sliding straight and slid right into this brick statue thing that sits at the entrance. Such a bummer!! The good news with this one is that the car is still drivable, the bad news is that I was driving our "good" car, and now it has several huge cracks in the front bumper! Two wrecks in the same week? Really??

Anyway, so it started off as a kind of bum day. Hopefully it will get better though. I have a hair appointment at 3 today, which I'm pretty excited about. I LOVE getting my hair cut. Anybody who knows me would probably agree that I am like a hair chameleon. I love changing things up all the time! It's not that I'm never happy with my hair cuts, I just love to change it up every time. Anyway...I think I might go out on a limb this time and go short. My hair is already pretty short, but I've always wanted to go "daringly short." I'm not planning on a pixie cut or anything that extreme, but you never know!!!! I just love cute, short haircuts, and it's so fun to wear fun little clips and headbands.

This past weekend we went to Duncan to visit my in-laws and have our family Christmas. It was such a great weekend! Saturday morning we celebrated my mother-in-law's birthday.

We made her this "fruit arrangement" instead of a birthday cake

Isn't she pretty??

I don't know if I've mentioned before how much I love my mother-in-law. She is so great. She's one of the most giving, sweet, thoughtful, easy-going people I know. I aspire to be as easy-going as she is. She is so supportive of J and I. She's never demanding of us, and she always loves us no matter what crazy thing we do (like moving to Thailand for a year:) Plus, she's just plain fun to hang out with! During our time in Thailand, she was so thoughtful. Almost every other month, she would send us this huge box of things from home - things we needed and things just for fun. I don't know what we would have done without her!! I will seriously never forget how much she helped us during our time there. Anyway, I want to wish her a super HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! Happy birthday Debbie- you're the best!

So, our celebration of Christmas was so special and fun. After the birthday fun, we did our yearly tradition of making cookies and stew for friends around town. The whole family pitches in to cook, then we pile in the car and drive around to friend's houses and sing Christmas carols and drop off the food. It's a tradition we started three years ago, and it's one of my favorite thing about our Christmas. After that we came back home, ate dinner, and then opened gifts. My mother-in-law is outrageous when it comes to Christmas gifts! She does so much. And it's so sweet because she gets so excited about giving them to us. This year she wrote little clues on each gift tag and we all had to guess what our gift was before we could open it. It was such fun! Anyway...there is no way I can list everything I recieved from them, but a few of them included a sewing machine, a foot massager, a new addition to our Willow Tree nativity scene, and Nike hatphones! I really just feel so blessed!

"The McCoy kids" at Christmas

And last, J, O and I had a little photo session for our Christmas cards.

That's all for now. I hope everyone has a great Tuesday - stay warm!!