Very last Christmas photos!!!

I did it!

Merry Christmas.

Waiting patiently

Another new Christmas tradition:

Pepere reads "The Gas We Pass"

The girls and their Abuelita

<3

(and their Parmesan??)

Yay!  Perfect.

(too bad it took 10 minutes to get one with Hollie's thumb out of her mouth!)

...and by that point they were leeeeaning!

So after all that, gift-opening commenced, and the camera was set down somewhere and forgotten about.  You can imagine.  Hollie had to play with each gift before opening another, so it would have taken all day had we not helped her along!  And we really didn't have all day, because that same afternoon we hopped a plane for...

...Phoenix!  Quite a change of scenery.  As we stepped off the plane, I think all three of us took a simultaneous deep breath of the cool, dry air, and our lungs cleared as the allergies we'd been battling the past five days just disappeared.

But not really.  While we were there, we would occasionally have a good cough, and say, "Sorry, I'm still getting Portland out of my chest!"  We loved Oregon, but we're just not used to all that green-ness.  

PHX kept us pretty busy, as usual.  It's still home to us in many ways, so over our four-day stay, there were a million restaurants to revisit (a few, twice - In N Out!), thousand friends to catch up with, and beautiful warm weather to enjoy, not to mention Christmas dinner, which was postponed a day just for us (thanks again Mom!) and Daniel's birthday (24 - holy moly!).  Poor guy had to make his own cake: tres leches (yummmm)! 

Okay, no more parentheses (I promise).

Unfortunately, the camera got taken out a grand total of ONE time while we were there.  I took what would have been a beautiful photo of my dad and Hollie lying outside in the hammock, but it just didn't turn out.  Sorry, Dad.  :(

So, by the end, we were ready to be home.  Hollie did great on all the flights, even, I might add, on the way home when Mr. Grinch's nasty-wastier twin sister happened to be sitting in the row in front of us.  I'm not gonna give you the whole story here.  Got a little bruise on my mama heart, and someday when I can stop kicking myself for not giving that woman a piece of my mind, then we'll be able to laugh about it.  And maybe wonder if she regrets what she said - who knows?

Sorry to end on that note!  Really, we brushed it off and we're okay :)

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In other news...we did Hollie's FIRST HAIRCUT last night and it was a beautiful success!  There are pictures, but I hear little lady waking up from her nap, so watch for those...later.