Merry Christmas 2011!

Another year gone by -- very quickly, of course -- as LittleBear is now a walking, reasonably fluent two-and-a-half-year-old. (Compare the picture below to his first Christmas in 2009 and last Christmas.)

As we did last year, rather than a traditional Christmas letter, we invite you to look back through our blog from the last year and enjoy (perhaps for the second time) a taste of what life has been like at our house over the past year. If you don't want to read the whole blog (and I don't blame you), here are some of the highlights:

• The year began with LittleBear's first haircut.
• We visited Florida family in February, enjoyed a lakehouse vacation with Texas family in April, visited San Antonio in August (just the three of us) and Los Angeles in December (just the two of us -- LittleBear stayed with Grandma).
• Bethany began a garden in April that lasted into December (see what it produced here).
• LittleBear turned two in June and got a big boy bed in August.
• Bethany began homeschooling LittleBear in September (see weekly recaps here).
• Treat Night at Baylor saw LittleBear as Yoda for Halloween.
• Bethany's "30 Days of Thanks" took us through November.
• And now it's Christmas!

You may notice that Jeff didn't blog as much on this site this year... That's because he was busy blogging away at his day job, helping save the Big 12 and win a Heisman for Baylor (among other things). He also lucked into writing two of Baylor Magazine's four cover stories this year (here and here).

We hope you enjoy the blog, and of course you call follow all three of us on Twitter (@equusbeth, @astrosjeff and @LittleBearB) or find Bethany and Jeff on Facebook. If we haven't heard from you in awhile, drop us a line! We'd love to hear what you've been up to in 2011.

Until then, we wish you a blessed Christmas season and a happy new year!

(As luck would have it, we had an extraordinarily good photo shoot [thanks Robbie!]. You can see more of our Baylor/Christmas photos here. Sic 'em!)

Just For Fun: The Basket Hoop

LittleBear's favorite new sport is basketball. If you ask him, he will tell you all about the "Baylor Basket team," he will ask you to take him to a "Baylor Basket Game" and he will talk all about the "Basket Hoop" and the "Net." It's a good thing that this transition from a love of football to a love of basketball is coinciding nicely with the transition of football to basketball season.

Here he is playing with a "basket hoop" that we found while waiting for our Dr. Enjoy:




And here is his first dunk:



He's so cute!

Christmas At Baylor & Starting Week 2 of Advent

This week has been a fun week of celebrating Christmas and we have Baylor to thank for a lot of it. Thursday night we attended "Christmas on Fifth Street" which is one of my favorite Baylor traditions. The university hosts a campus wide celebration of Christmas which includes a live nativity, horse & carriage rides, a handbell choir, petting zoo, decorated Christmas trees in the SUB, pictures with Santa and this year family Christmas photos (courtesy of Kathryn Krueger Photography).

Tonight we parked outside Pat Neff Hall on campus and listened to a carillon concert of Christmas music given by Lynnette Geary, the university's Carilloneur while eating our dinner. We really enjoyed it, LittleBear especially.


Thanks Baylor for helping make week 1 of Advent particularly festive!

We've been adding more ornaments to our Jesse tree too every day. LittleBear is getting really into it!
Today we start the second week of Advent, the week called Love. We lit the two purple candles on our advent wreath and thanked God for making a way for us to live with peace, hope and joy despite man's sin.

The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet: “I will send my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way”—
³ “a voice of one calling in the wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.’”
Mark 1: 1-3