Camping, Christmas, & Catch Up

First off Happy New Year! We enjoyed bringing in the new year with a simple and fun evening with some friends.  We always love eating at Alamo Cafe and then went to see Lincoln (Cody was interested, me not so much...).  Afterwards we went over to our friends to hang out until midnight and played a fun game of Balderdash.  I was sure I would win until right at the end when I was passed up lol.  Oh well.

Now to jump back a bit for some quick catch up...  The semester finished fairly quickly for both Cody and me.  Cody is loving his part-time job at Rackspace and that job will be continuing throughout the spring semester.  He finished his semester of grad school still maintaining his 4.0 and I am very proud of my hard-working husband : )   He only has 1 semester left (whoop!) that 'should' be a little easier and lighter of a load.

Teaching got pretty busy and stressful for a while (which is sharing nothing new) but thankfully the light of winter break helped to get through and I am almost ready to go back this coming Monday.  I'm hoping to hold off counting down toward Spring Break until at least mid February.  Surely that won't be too hard since my kiddos this year are amazing and everyone will hopefully be energized and refreshed for a while after the break.

Cody had his 27th birthday in November and we enjoyed a weekend in College Station to watch the A&M vs. Missouri game.  It got c-o-l-d at the game but was a lot of fun.  I think what I enjoyed most was just how happy it made Cody to go watch the game together, and of course to eat at Layne's once again.

December was a busy month full of two camping trips and of course Christmas.  I also enjoyed a day at the Witte Museum with my dad and youngest brother, Aaron, exploring the mummy exhibit.  While I'm sure some people would disagree, we all thought it was really fascinating. Towards the beginning of the month, Cody and I went on a camping trip with our church small group to Pedernales Falls.  We enjoyed campfire hot dogs and hamburgers for dinner followed by s'mores for dessert and hiked down around the falls twice.

Guys setting up one of numerous tents for all the couples.

We all packed into Pete and Kimberly's truck to head down to the falls.

Group shot at the falls. (I don't remember whose pic this was but thanks!)

The girls on the trip.

Just sitting around the fire.

The night we camped was the night of the Heisman announcement -so of course we had to listen to it to hear Johnny win : )

The next morning we hiked around the falls again.

Quick kiss while hiking.

The boys starting to explore.

We had a blast with our group!

One of the benefits of living in the same area as both our families is that we get to see both of them at Christmas.  We started off the day with my parents and brothers and enjoyed opening gifts, hanging out, and a delicious ham lunch before heading over to Cody's parents and grandparents.  There we enjoyed a second round of gifts and a wonderful turkey meal.  It was a fantastic day full of family and fun.

We celebrated our own Christmas together on Christmas Eve : )

Enjoying a delicious Christmas lunch.

Thanks Loves for taking the picture!

Cody and me on Christmas day.

Opening presents with the Hendersons.

Cody with his parents.  -Note the matching A&M hoodies : )

Cody and I had enjoyed camping with our friends so much that we planned another short trip to Pedernales Falls just a few days after Christmas.  Originally it was going to include all 3 of my brothers but that ended up falling through, so it was just Cody and me -oh and Callie and our neighbor's dog, Dax.  While we still were glad we went and had a nice trip, let's just say we won't be too eager to take two dogs camping again any time soon.  One dog -maybe, two dogs... probably not. Some of the things that happened on the trip:  We knew it'd be cold and brought plenty of layers to stay warm, however it was already colder than expected as soon as we arrived.  The layers started to go on immediately!  Then we realized we forgot the blankets for the dogs.  Each of us though the other had packed them, and so in fact neither of us did.  It was cold enough that we really were a little concerned so we set up the tents (yes tentS -we had one tent for us and a separate tent for the doggies) and then I was tasked with finishing setting up stuff inside the tents and staying with the dogs while Cody drove to buy blankets at wherever the closest place was he could find.  (And hot chocolate that we also forgot.)  He told me he'd be about 10 minutes, no problem.

Cody's new tent that was an awesome Christmas gift!
-Also we bougt a double person sleeping bag after another couple from our small group had one at the first camping trip earlier in the month.

So I finished blowing up the air mattress, setting up the sleeping bag, the dog's tent stuff... put on more layers... played with the dogs... sat in the dirt with the dogs because Cody took everything else with him and didn't even leave me a chair... and waited for what felt like forever.  The dogs were already slightly annoying -barking at every other dog and even just every person that was in any close proximity to us.  They were extremely restless and so I stupidly (yes, stupidly is very appropriate... even Cody had told me earlier that at no point on this trip did he want to have to walk/handle both dogs at once, that we always needed to have one each) thought to myself 'I don't remember it being that hard to walk both of them' and attempted to do so.  I barely managed to just get both of them off their stakes before thinking I was going to lose a finger.  They tangled me up all around my legs causing me to almost fall down a couple times, and in trying to get out of the tangle I managed to tangle my hand good in their leashes and again though I was seriously going to lose one or two fingers.  I'm sure I looked beyond ridiculous to the people slowly walking by our campsite.  I think we only made it about fifteen feet before I gave up realizing how awful this idea was and then struggled to get them each tied back on to their stake again.

While I was bored waiting for Cody to get back, I did have the camera and so I took some pictures. Here is our two tent set up. 

Both doggies tied up to their stake.  I don't know who was more bored and impatient while waiting... them or me.

Finally Cody arrived back about 50 minutes later (felt like SO much longer, although I will argue that even just 50 minutes is quite a while to be stuck by yourself outside in the freezing cold without even a chair to sit on).  We did have a nice rest of the evening together and enjoyed another round of hot dogs and s'mores.  The rest of the shenanigans happened in the middle of the night and the next morning.

Already cold still during the afternoon.

Cody, with Callie in his lap, at the fire.

Roasting our dinner over the fire.

We got all ready for bed after setting up Callie and Dax all nice warm and cozy in their dog tent.  It was frEEzing and we finally were semi-warm and fell asleep.  We both woke up in the middle of the night and it was somehow even colder than when we went to bed.  Seriously cold, and of course, I needed to go to the bathroom.  Cody checked in on the dogs and we bundled up like mad.  But after Cody looked in their tent they refused to settle back down.  Callie started whining so we decided to take the dogs with us on our trip to the bathroom.  Afterwards when Cody and I were putting the dogs back in their kennel in their tent, somehow that we're not quite sure, one of them (and I'm not specifying which) managed to run out. It took a second to realize what just happened (I mean really... remember it's beyond freezing in the middle of the night, one minute there's two dogs put nicely back in their kennel, and a second later we see one dart away into the pitch black woods surrounding us.) and when we did Cody and I just stared at each other in shock.  It was definitely a moment of 'oh my gosh, what do we do now?!'  Cody grabbed a light and went off to look while I searched in our tent for another light to join him.  Thankfully in a few minutes Cody was heading back with the dog in tow and we were beyond relieved.

The night was far from over though as Cody and I finally were back trying to get warm in our tent.  We, however, could not fall asleep due to Callie being the biggest baby in the world.  She is extremely needy and I guess after seeing us in the middle of the night she decided she could not be content being separated from us.  She would not stop whining and we could not fall asleep.  Once again Cody re-bundled up and went to bring Callie into our tent so hopefully she would be quiet and we could sleep.  At first all was well and we slept, I think, for a while at least.  It was a restless rest of the night though as Callie must not have been comfortable herself and decided to readjust herself and move probably every half hour until morning.  And being a small tent and a small air mattress to begin with, a dog walking all around and over and often on us definitely made it hard to sleep.

When morning came I woke up and found myself literally buried in our sleeping bag.  Seriously.  I was scrunched up in a ball to stay warm and my head was down in the middle of the sleeping bag.  When I woke up I kept scooting up to get my head out and kept thinking "where is the top of the bag? why am I so far down here?"  It was kind of funny -until I finally made it to the top of the sleeping bag, only to immediately see Callie's face in my face and then hear her start gagging/heaving... some awful noise and I knew what was coming. I yelled at Cody that she was about to throw up, not exactly knowing what I wanted him to do... unzip the doors and push her out of the tent in all of 5 seconds maybe... but it happened too quickly and before we knew it Callie threw up IN our brand new double sleeping bag - right by my head and pillow. I scrunched back down in the sleeping bag to avoid the ... you know... while Cody frantically searched for something we packed to clean it up.  While searching for something to clean it up, we discovered that this was Callie's second vomit and we must have slept through her first - as Cody's new A&M hoodie definitely had already been thrown up on.  Needless to say this all woke us up quite quickly.

Anyways.  We did, after some clean up, enjoy a nice camping breakfast of an egg scramble with tomatoes and hot chocolate.  Then we went down to the falls to hike around with the dogs and did have a great time out there.  We did overall enjoy our trip and were glad we went... but like I said, next time we'd prefer to go without the dogs.

We hope everyone reading this had a wonderful Christmas and New Year and will have a great January to kick of 2013! -And I don't know why I am incapable of being more brief in my writing, but props to you if you read through all my rambling to get to the end of this post.