Christmas 2018

As I mentioned on our Thanksgiving post, our time in Texas is coming to close much quicker than we expected.  Thanksgiving and Christmas proved to be challenging as our normal holidays routines competed with other immediate priorities.  We discovered that despite our short time in Texas, we were moving...again.  This is an unplanned change for us.  We had hoped to have a longer stay in Houston (or even just the USA) since it feels like we’ve barely just returned from Canada.  But God had other plans for us.

This time we're preparing for a move to Britain.  Jacob has been transferred to the United Kingdom.  Our new home will be Edinburgh, Scotland.  If fact, Jacob is already there, which is what caused the disruption to my usual holiday routines.  He moved across the pond in early December.  We’ve spent the better part of the holidays managing the mountains of paperwork that goes along with international moves, arranging temporary living for Jacob, applying to British preparatory schools for Brenna, and searching for a new place to call home.

Because of all this, we were just excited to have Jacob back home for Christmas.  We mostly spent our time close to home, enjoying the downtime.  We finished up school with some fun Christmas themed activities and hung out with friends in the neighborhood.  Brenna was excited to be pick for a solo in the schools Christmas Choir Concert and we were also proud to find out that she was selected by the WLMS staff as Student of the Month.

With just a few days to spare before Christmas, I snapped some quick pictures of Brenna as we made our way out the door for a family dinner out.  The objective was to have a picture to build a Christmas card, which would later become a New Years card because of how late it was.

Our first outing was just down the road to Dayton, TX to see the Great Christmas Light Fight 2017 winners.  The Wright family really knows how to put on a Christmas light display with over 100,000 lights synchronized to music.

We enjoyed some holiday baking.

On a whim we decided to spend a few days in downtown Houston.  We decided this specifically to see the late night Houston Zoo Lights.  Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate and Zoo Lights were canceled both nights of our stay.  We made the most out of time by visiting the Houston Museum of Natural Science and spending a lot of time at the hotel's indoor pool.  We made our way through the butterfly center, the planetarium, and lots of exhibits.

We closed out 2018 without a lot of fanfare, sitting on our front porch watching the neighborhood fireworks.  Unfortunately, at the end of the holiday Jacob had to return to the UK without us and this would be the beginning of a very long 6 months ahead.