Christmas 2015

Phew, how is it almost the end of the year already? Christmas flew by. It always does, but I thought maaaaybe this year since life in Temple (should have been) a little slower, it would last a little longer. But nope! It came and went in a happy flash like it always does. The good news this year is that we had off for the whole weekend! Usually we're off to work the next day, but as I'm not working at all at the moment (mwahaha) and Brendon is on that government schedule we had three days together! It's kind of nice, how the other half lives. We had the weekend to relax after the wildness of Christmas. And the weather was kinda cray, right? It was hot and grosssss on Christmas, but then this weekend winter arrived. There was even a chance of snow last night! I don't think it happened buuuuut, still! I'm pleased as punch that winter has shown its face. I'm a cold weather lover anyway, but being pregnant you run hot ALL the time. A mild winter was NOT what I was hoping for.

GOOD GRIEF, I am talking about the weather. (But really, when it actually happens, it's exciting!) Back to the point, CHRISTMAS! We had a fantastic Christmas. All our family came up to us in our little apartment and I felt super spoiled. Brendon's momma and his little bro came up the weekend before to celebrate. We had a taco feast and played a very serious game of Star Wars Monopoly where Brendon's true dark side came out. He is unbeatable in Monopoly and cut throat, wives get no mercy. Never play him. Actually never play him in any game. He's too competitive.

Our Christmas tree! Every year the day after Thanksgiving we get a tree. From Home Depot. They have this "Promo Tree" deal for trees that aren't quite perfect, it's usually around $20, NO MATTER THE SIZE! So we usually look for the biggest guy we can find, and usually they're awesome! They might have a little more character than the "normal" trees, but I like character. But man, this year. This tree is craaazy. It had holes galore, and crazy branches sticking out every where. It was hilarious. Also for whatever reason, even though it had a freshly cut bottom, it wasn't soaking up water. So it was a crispy critter by the end. I still loved it though.

FORGIVE THE FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY! I've found on holidays it's easier to just bust out the flash than to fight apartment lighting with manually shot photos. And you catch a lot more funny faces with a quick flash. :)

This is the "oh Marie is taking pictures again" collection of faces. I SWEAR we were having a good time! Every year Deb gets us PJ's, it's the sweetest tradition (and my only source of PJ's!). She always picks the cutest stuff!

Superheroes, obviously!

Looking extra pregnant here. It was a fantastic early Christmas, and a great way to start the Christmas week! I'm all about spreading the holiday cheer as far as possible.

Christmas morning Brendon and I got up early (well, we always get up early) and had our little Christmas together. Usually we do ours last, so it was a fun change to open our gifts to each other ON Christmas morning. A nice calm and quiet morning, because we know next year will be very different!

I am going to spam you with repeated photos of our tree. Because I can.

Christmas with the cats, naturally. Sophie is a big fan of Christmas, she sneaks into A LOT of these photos.

Brendon spoiled me rotten, as per usual. I love how thoughtful that boy is. Also he got me one of those giant tins of popcorn, you know the cheese, butter, and caramel? It's already over half empty. I love that nasty stuff.

My sister, mom, and her bf Ray arrived a little later that morning for Christmas round 3! And they rolled up like Santa:

Sophie was in heaven. No cat loves Christmas more.

PS, it was hot! Shorts and short sleeves and an open door because the apartment was getting steamy.

You see what I mean about funny faces? I get free passes because, preggo. And I made Brendon wear Elf hats with me. Because when else?

And I totally busted out the self timer. Multiple times. I don't regret it, we don't have too many group shots over the years.

Later that afternoon was Christmas round 4 with my dad, step-momma, and step-bro. And Santa arrived again!

More group shots! With a Sophie this time! She's so spoiled.

My photo taking slacked off towards the end, by the end of the day I was reeeeal tired! But not tired enough for one last Christmas family photo:

Greg though. Not thrilled. I love this little family of mine! Can't wait until that one that's living in my guts is HERE next year!

Overall, even though it was a break from tradition, it was an excellent Christmas. Our family really came through, I am so grateful that they all traveled up to be with us! And family spoiled us like crazy, we ate lots of food (and I cooked! Not something I usually get to do for my family!), and we had oodles of fun hanging out. Lots of laughing, lots of goodness. A wonderful last Christmas before the Seahorse arrives.

Which could be any day now! Eeeee! Hopefully she makes it to her due date but gosh, these practice contractions make me feel like there's no way in heck we'll make it another month. Keep your fingers crossed, y'all! I want a chubby little bundle of Hogan to cuddle on, and the longer she's in there the fatter she'll get. ;)

I hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas if you celebrate! And a marvelous holiday season! I still can't believe the year is almost over. Time flies when you're having fun. :)

Easter 2014

HOPPY belated Easter! See what I did there? Clever girl. Mr. Hogan and I both worked, nothing new, and as per tradition, we dyed eggs, admired them for two minutes, and then peeled and ate them. Deviled of course. This has been going on for years. YEARS. I can't remember when we didn't do this. I remember dying eggs and giggling late at night in our tiny kitchen in Denton wearing bunny ears. The same ones I wore yesterday.

We were kind of on top of it this year, meaning that we at least had the whole rainbow of dye to choose from. However, we definitely bought eggs the day before and left them in our car for 6 hours. So I was that girl, at Walmart on Easter, buying eggs. I was at Walmart because HEB is closed for Easter, because they're nice. I hate Walmart.

SOPHIE! She hasn't graced the blogs presence in a while, so here she is, in all her majesty.

These eggs might look kind of MEH, but they're actually the prettiest we've made in a while. Sad, I know, but that's what you get without an egg dying kit. We do it the old fashioned way.

I have a thing with these kinds of pictures. I think it's like, here, let me hide my face with something so I don't have to worry about looking decent.

Typical Easter in the Hogan household! So typical, that the posts from 2013 and 2012 are eerily similar. Except I'm cuter back then. Fun fact, this blog celebrated it's three year birthday this month. WOOOO!

Usually the next step for Easter related things for us would be to raid the Easter aisle at CVS for clearance candy. However, we are attempting to give up packaged candy, so merp, none of that. Maybe. We don't celebrate Easter at all, aside from this, but this year I really had a hankering for an Easter egg hunt. Why don't adults partake in this? Why do the humans under 4 feet get to have all the fun? Another reason to reproduce? Or not to?

Christmas 2013

By popular demand, the Christmas 2013 post! Forgive me for being extra behind on my blogging. Can we just write it off as December being the busiest month of the year?

Christmas for the Hogans is always an event. We have four Christmases to squeeze in and it's always a little crazy. Good crazy. Christmas Eve we do with Brendon's momma and brother, Christmas morning with my mom and sister, Christmas afternoon with my dad, step-momma, and step-bro, and Christmas night we have our own. And we both worked Christmas Eve. Cray cray! But always wonderful and always worth it. But forgive me this year, I did not take a lot of photos. My energy level was sub par due to December being iNsAnE. Also my camera is still acting funny (??? dropped it too many times? too much flour and sugar all over it? whyyyy??), so the quality has been frustratingly meh lately. But there's a few!

Ask and you shall receive, Jules. AND CAT IN THE PAPER:

Can we talk about that "cellulose sponges" box and how many Christmases and birthdays it's seen? Best box ever. Also, this is my "YAY, COOKING UTENSILS!" face.

HEY GIRL HEY! :)

OH, so my mom and I made these AWESOME little danishy things and they were incredibly easy and reeeeeeally good. Mom, send me dat recipe! It's just slices of canned croissant dough with sugary cream cheese and preserves on top, plus icing. Winner!

And the only photo from Christmas at my daddios (slackerdom was really kicking in):



PAPA LUCHADOR! AY AY! We got him this luchador mask like MONTHS before Christmas and it was decently hilarious. Also scary.

So again, sorry about the lack of photos. Your girl was sleepy. I assure you it was magical and wonderful and full of my favorite people in the world. It was a fantastic Christmas, followed by two more days off! I had a strike of genius and decided to take a day of vacation the week of Christmas so, three days off! First time since August. It was perfect. Having the two days after Christmas off with Brendon to do absolutely nothing (seriously, I'm not sure we even left the house on the 26th) was the best. Best best best. We have worked the day after Christmas since we've been in Austin and having it off was SO NICE. 100% worth working Christmas Eve. And now we know.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas if you celebrated and a relaxing Wednesday if you didn't. I know I owe the internet more posts, and they're coming I promise! For the three of you who read this regularly. (52 weeks of baking recap! 2013 review! New Years! Etc!) I no longer have the responsibility of blogging weekly with a baked something or another, so I'm going to have to work on becoming interesting so I can still fill my corner of the web with blabber. Because I know you'd miss me.

KIDDING.

Holiday photos 2013

This year for our holiday photos, we went ALL OUT. For realsies. Did you know that my favorite Christmas movie is Elf? Well, if you didn't now you do. I LOVE that movie. I feel the same way about Christmas as Buddy, I'm all about it. So when brainstorming ideas for our Christmas card, Elf costumes happened. Not sure if it was Brendon's idea or mine, but they came out better than I could have imagined. They are so fun and I want to wear that Elf dress everyday. And of course, we had to document. All over Austin.

These costumes took forever to make, but mostly because I have been INSANELY busy. I used Simplicity 2542 for Brendon's jacket and our hats, New Look 6110 for his pants, and Simplicity 1913 for my dress. Brendon's jacket took the most work because the pattern was incredibly plain and unfitted and shaped incorrectly. It took a lot of work to make it Buddy the Elf's jacket, but I'm happy with it! My dress was super easy and only took minor altering. They're both made of cheapo felt, which was SO EASY to sew. You never have to finish your edges! And it makes a pretty warm get-up.

We definitely got plenty of looks and comments and people taking our photo, with and without asking. It was REALLY FUN! There's a preschool next to the Hey Cupcake and of course all the kids were outside when we stopped by. They were losing their cool and it was the cutest.

Aaaand we finally found the Austin postcard mural! We have been driving past it all the time and never knew. It was recently (as in less than a month ago) revamped, so it was super bright and pretty! And definitely on a relatively busy corner. I was so scared our tripod was going to get hit by a car.

And here's the Christmas card winner:

Probably looks familiar if you're on our extra exclusive Christmas card list. Kidding. Actually, I lost my Christmas card address list in the great computer crash fiasco, so we kind of had to start from scratch. So sorry if we missed you! Technology always gets the best of me.

I'm not sure how we'll top these pictures next year. This was so fun. SO FUN. And I'm so glad Brendon was more than game for sporting Elf costumes all around Austin and having ridiculous holiday fun in public with me. He's my favorite.

Holiday photos 2012 and 2011. We've come a long way.

Wassailfest 2013

As seems to be tradition since we moved back down south, we went to Wassailfest down in New Braunfels! (Here's Wassailfest 2011 and 2012) This year my mom, her friend Ray, Brendon, and I were joined by my sister and step bro! The more the merrier! Also, this year it was incredibly cold. I think everyone in middle America is enjoying a rather crazy cold spell at the moment. It's been hanging in the thirties or below for the past few days, which is rather wild for Texas. So we went a Wassailing in the cold, and it was very cold, but not as bad as I thought it would be. The buildings provided shelter from the wind and the endless supply of wassail kept you warm!

We also stopped by this bar called Pour House where a couple of my sisters friends (my sister knows EVERYONE in New Braunfels, seriously) were playing music. They were great! And it was a cute little place and the bar has swings to sit swing on. Coolest idea ever. There were fire pits and heaters to keep you warm outside, it was actually really nice!

Of course, because that is my luck, my camera died part way through Wassailfest. This blurry shot is the only one we got of the two of us. No picture in front of the tree this year, but that's okay! We'll get one next year!

It was a really fun evening full of holiday cheer and good folks. Although life has been crazy lately I'm very glad we were able to squeeze this night in. Last year we did TONS of holiday stuff, and this year I feel like we're just frantically trying to get everything done day to day, much less anything extra. Brendon finishes school this next week and I am very excited about that. Hopefully that will help slow things down a bit. This is my favorite month of the year and it is FLYING by! Slow down December, I love you!