December catch up

during the month of december joe had quite a bit of vacation saved up from the year. and with his company you cant carry it over to the next year so you either use it or loose it. so we got to spend alot of time together as a family during the holidays. after the rush of christmas and visiting lots of family, we decided to take landen to play his first game of mini golf. i wasnt sure if landen holding a golf club would be dangerous or not, but he did really well!
we had to show him how to stand and how to slowly put the ball, but he had it down in no time. the course was really wet and had lots of puddles from a previous rain. but good thing he wore his rainboots!
he was kinda sad when he realized that his body wouldnt fit into the little mini buildings. we tried to explain to him that the ball would go in one hole and come out down below, but he just didnt grasp that concept. lol
we were also lucky enough for the month of december to have my brother Buddy and his girlfriend Chelsea stay with us for three weeks. Bud is in the air force and has been living in Texas for the last three and a half years. he tries to come home and visit about every six months and some visits are longer than others. but this was by far the best visit for us! they got to stay at our house so we got to see them and hang out all the time. landen hasnt spent much time with his uncle bud, but he LOVES playing with him.
while they were in town we did lots of fun stuff. of course they were also here for christmas, but i think that needs a blog entry all to itself. one great day while they were here, we all got in the car and drove down to santa barbara to enjoy some NICE california weather. the guys all built a really cool lookin sand castle, the babies played in the sand (taylor tried to eat it lots of times) and the girls enjoyed walking around all the shops when the tide started comin in. it was crazy to think we were all wearin shorts at the beach while back in texas it was snowing cats and dogs!
not exactly sure what compelled her to continuously eat the sand, but apparently it tasted very good. if i turned my back on her for one second she would have a mouthful. she was even lucky enough to find the primo of all hidden treasures in the sand beach, a USED CIGARETTE! yeah thats right, had to pull that one out of her mouth too!! EWWWWyou can kinda see the beginning of the mondo sand castle in the back on this picture. but i was just trying to capture dad and landen playin in the sand with the buckets. the water was waaaay to cold for landen to play in, but he still wanted to wear his water clothes and played in the sand and chased birds.