We're back to blogging!

Yeah, I know, I've been a lazy blogger. Very lazy. In my defense, I had some distractions over the summer, including being out of town for about a month. Then I sort of forgot that I had a blog. Whoops!

Anyway, I'm back to blogging and hope to keep up with what is going on here at Casa De La Garza.

Today, we put up our Christmas tree. It's a beauty. We have an artificial tree, but it's full and pretty, and looks amazing with all of our special ornaments on it. It's about 12 feet tall, so it's a chore to get the lights and ornaments on the top, but totally worth the effort.

Now that it's up, we'll leave it up well into January. I love sitting in the dark with the tree lights on.

Olivia had a great time unwrapping the ornaments and remembering the story behind them. She did not remember the Royal Doulton 2001 ornament from Aunt Ronya and Uncle Jim, and she made a big fuss over it. It has a picture of Mary and Baby Jesus, painted onto a china plaque.

We also added a few new ornaments to our tree: A Hannah Montana ornament that plays "The Best of Both Worlds", a Peyton Manning limited edition ornament and a bulb ornament full of Tootsie Rolls that Olivia bought for me at Target this week. I was able to have the ornament to put on the tree but can't eat my Tootsie Rolls until Christmas.

Right now, the Princess is happily occupied watching "Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys", a rather odd sequel to the original Rudolph. I have to say, it just isn't Rudolph without the stop-motion animation. Olivia doesn't seem to care. Maybe it's all the sugar running through her veins...she's working on a big mug of marshmallow-lovers hot cocoa, courtesy of her Memaw.