January Happenings

January is not my favorite month. It's long, and cold and boring, no special occasions, not even a real holiday besides New Year's Day which gets lumped into Christmas celebrations (When I was working full time, I did get MLK day off, but Matt doesn't, so it was just a normal day this year). Despite the dreary month, we did manage to find some fun things to do as a family.

-The biggest event of January 2012 was OSU's Fiesta Bowl win, but I've already written about that.

-Matt planned a special date day for us one Saturday. We went ice skating, to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie, and out to dinner. Nathan spent the day and night at my parents' house, so we got several hours of uninterrupted quality time together that day. It was fun doing special things together just the two of us.

-The next Saturday we drove to Stillwater to take Nathan to his first OSU basketball game. We watched the OSU Cowgirls play OU. Matt's parents and my grandparents were at the game too. We decided to go to the game for the sole reason of spending time with our families, but it turned out to be a great game, the last two minutes, anyway, and OSU came away with another Bedlam win! Nathan was a little uneasy with the crowds and noise. He stayed pretty close to me the whole game.

Matt had fun playing with his new camera lens. He got some great shots. We were up in the second level on the opposite side of the court, and he was able to get this close!

We sure have had some fun memories inside that arena. Back when our men's basketball team was good (like Final Four good), Matt and I got season tickets one year in college. It is such a fun atmosphere. We're glad Nathan got to experience a touch of that excitement.

-We booked our vacation this month! We had been throwing around vacation ideas for several weeks. We were all over the country, literally, but we finally nailed it down and booked it. This May Matt and I will be celebrating our anniversary with a cruise to the Bahamas! We are super excited. Our good friends are cruising with us and I know it will be a great week. We are most looking forward to this:

Our cruise ship docks at Nassau, and we booked the shore excursion that gives us access to the Atlantis water park for the day. We have been dreaming of going to Atlantis for several years, but the price is just too high to get to and stay and eat at the resort for any length of time, so we were thrilled that this was an option (that's what sealed the deal for us to take a cruise for our vacation). Hopefully we'll get a full experience with just one day there, or if not, we'll probably be saving our pennies to go back at some point.

-We also drove to OKC last Saturday with Matt and Erica to get together with the Evetts. We had a great time catching up with them. We visited at the mall for a while and then had dinner at Olive Garden. We sure miss Brandon and Mindy since they've moved and are thankful for their continued friendship despite the distance.

-We've had hardly any snow this month, just a tiny dusting one morning. Nathan is too young to really play in it anyway. The weather has been unseasonably warm which has been nice, but I do sort of miss the snow. I don't want massive amounts of it, but one good snow storm would be fun.

Outside of these few special things, life has been pretty normal this month. I spend most of my days chasing Nathan around the house and listening to him giggle. My Ladies Bible Study started back this month after several weeks off for the holidays. Matt and I have been reading good books in our spare time, and spending most of our evenings at home relaxing after Nathan goes to bed. Maybe January isn't such a bad month after all, but I will admit, I'm pretty partial to February, although May might be turning into my favorite month of all.