Early Allred Christmas

The Allred men are now scheduling our lives around gun tournaments. Between the hectic holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas there happened to be one here in San Antonio, so Jacob’s parents came for a visit. We were all so happy to see them. Anna and I drove to the airport to pick them up. She of course fell asleep since we had played very hard at the library and we were nearing nap time anyway. But she woke right up to the voices of our guests and her and Grandma chatted all the way home.

We bought our Christmas tree, almost by accident, on Black Friday. We had gone to a tree lighting in Bulverde and wound up at Home Depot. Jacob helped me put it up before the grandparents showed up but we were itching to decorate it. Anna loved hanging all the ornaments. The heavy ones were a bit of a challenge on our fake branches but we figured it out and Anna was a bit sad when we ran out of ornaments. Since then we’ve actually made some more so she could decorate the tree again.

That girl loves the magic that is Christmas, especially the lights.

We took Anna out to see Frozen and she loved it! We had a hard time explaining dead parents to a two year old. “Why is she sad?” Anna asked. “Oh, her parents aren’t coming home.” “But adults come back!” she replied, quoting a Daniel Tiger song/mantra. “Well, yes yes they do.” Please change scenes already! But even now she’ll tell us that we saw that show, with Grandma and Grandpa and popcorn and water. She made us draw an ice castle on the chalkboard and put ourselves in it. We also showed them our little mall we like because it is never crowded and has tons of children’s activities, and we wrapped up a bit of our Christmas shopping.

While the boys were freezing their shooting fingers off on the coldest day ever in San Antonio, we made cookies! Okay so maybe it wasn’t the coldest EVER but definitely our coldest so far with a high of 35 that I’m not sure it reached. I lent Grandpa a coat but forgot to give them my handwarmers from my track and field days. I made a new lemon dough recipe in the food processor and we loved the outcome. I also loved that we could roll it right away. Anna picked out the shapes, rolled, cut, and was very eager to use the spatula. The sprinkles had the largest holes ever made but Anna learned quick how to properly decorate a cookie. Oh they were so good. We made some without sprinkles for the odd Allred men who prefer it that way. Anna was a huge helper in the kitchen. And when she was finished (about two sheets of cookies in), she took off her apron and ran to the play kitchen that the Allred’s brought as her early Christmas gift. She played by herself there for a while. It has been really great. To treat ourselves after all that hard work in the kitchen we ended up going to get pedicures. Anna was a very patient little girl with very red toe nails after it was all over.

On Monday we braved the sprinkling rain to explore the town a bit. We visited the zoo and saw Thelma and Louise, the two headed turtle the size of a silver dollar. Whoops, I meant to say spoiler alert! So tiny. We split some pizza before heading downtown to visit the Alamo and walk around the River Walk. The chill kept us from being too adventurous but I’m glad we were able to show off our town some.

On their last day in town, we stayed home. Anna got so much attention! They read books, made smoothies and hot cocoa and french toast in the play kitchen. Anna really enjoyed visiting with her grandparents. I said something about fixing Grandma’s bag before they leave and her face dropped. Where are they going? Oh it was sad indeed.

Thanks for coming to visit, Grandma and Grandpa!!