Up All Night- The Growing Prysocks

For all my lovely Oxford and {especially} House 9 friends:

Do you guys remember our xangas?! I stumbled upon them tonight after not reading them for years and I was blown away.

We were so cute and sweet and encouraging of one another! We have cute names for comments like "notes of encouragement" and "banter" and "sparkles." We posted what music we were listening to.

We had silly posts, serious posts, virtual pets and were, basically, stinkin' adorable.

So if you HAVEN'T looked at your xanga lately, you should. And you should be sure to read all the sweet and funny comments.

I love you all so much!

Stephanie

This year for Christmas, David and I were unable to go back to Texas to visit family and friends. It was our second Christmas with just the two of us and, while we missed our families, it was so much fun. We slept in, started a fire in our lovely fireplace, and even had a "White Christmas." It was so much fun to keep adding to our Christmas traditions and start dreaming about future Christmas-times as our family grows!



On Christmas Eve, David and I bundled up and went to our church's Christmas Eve service. There was lots of worship, Christmas carols and a wonderful sermon about the birth of Christ. Here we are, happy to be together for our second "grown-up" Christmas!

After church, we drove around to look at Christmas lights. This has been a tradition in my family for years and is easily one of my favorites. We did not have much luck, sadly, as most houses seemed to have their lights turned off. We decided it must have been because of the storm and we're hoping that Virginia steps it up next year!

Afterward, we came home and watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation which is another of my favorite traditions. David and I love watching this every year and always struggle to wait until Christmas Eve to watch it. We missed watching it with my mom, dad, and my brother, who can quote almost the entire movie, but we still had a wonderful time.

We had a great Christmas this year and felt so blessed by God, our families and our friends! Thanks to everyone that reads this blog for being such great blessings in our lives! We love you all!

After our fun day of sight-seeing, we came home and watched the snow. We knew things were supposed to be bad, as Myranda's sister (who lives in Connecticut) called to let us know her flight had been canceled for the next day. We turned on the TV and our trusty Weatherpeople told us all about the "Winter Wallop": the worst snow storm Virginia had seen since the 1920s!

It started snowing that evening and before we went to bed, the ground was already covered with several inches.




It continued to snow all day long. Myranda and I enjoyed the snow from indoors, but David and Beesly loved going outside!



By the end of that day, it had finally stopped snowing. We measured the snow that had accumulated on our balcony and, as you can see, we measured 19 inches! We aren't sure what the news was reporting as the final number, but we feel confident it was well over two feet.

David was able to arrange his schedule so that he had the Friday of Myranda's visit off from work. We took the day to do some intense sight-seeing. We planned to hit two Smithsonian Museums (American History and Natural History), the National Archives and several of the outdoor monuments.

We may have been a tad ambitious.

Next, we went to the Popular Entertainment exhibit, which I was very excited about. They are apparently working on expanding the exhibit, so there were not as many items as I thought, but it was still pretty neat.





I can't wait to go back when the exhibit is complete, they have so many more wonderful things that we'd love to get to see!

After we finished up at the American History Museum, we ran over to the Natural History Museum. It was amazing. I only posted a few pictures because they honestly don't do this place justice. Everyone just needs to see it.




But, honestly, as pretty as the Hope Diamond was, some of the jewels in the attached exhibit were even more amazing, in my opinion. If you like pretty, sparkly jewelry at all, you should come see this exhibit sometime in your life. It was stunning!



In case you were wondering, it's nothing like National Treasure. The room is very dimly lit and there are a ton of security guards. We took a few pictures of the documents, but because the documents are so old, it's difficult to tell what the pictures are actually of!

After the National Archives, we braved the cold one last time and....went home. We were exhausted and freezing and laying down for awhile sounded like a great idea to all of us. While we didn't see the monuments, we still thought it was a pretty amazing day!

The week before Christmas, my AMAZING friend Myranda came to visit from Texas. She's been planning the trip since we found out we were moving and it's been something that I've looked forward to for months.

Myranda and I met my sophomore year of college and became great friends over the next three years. She was even wonderful enough to be a bridesmaid in me and David's wedding! Even though we haven't lived in the same city for almost 4 years, we still manage to keep in touch and see each other often. Her visits are always wonderful and this one was no exception!

The first thing that Myranda and I knew we had to do was make boeuf bourguignon. We loved Julie & Julia when it came out and were both dying for Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1.

The entire process was so much fun and it was great to get to cook with a good friend! The meal was absolutely delicious and I think I'd love to make it again sometime!

The next day was Baking Day. I have no pictures for this day but I REALLY wish I did! David was having a Christmas party and I offered to cater with some of my baked goods. It was insane. Just to give you an idea, here is the list of all I baked: 4 dozen Reese's cookies, 7 dozen sugar cookies, 3 dozen red velvet cupcakes, 3 dozen chocolate chip cookies, 2 dozen pumpkin muffins, and 2 dozen cherry nut pound cake muffins.


The next evening, we all piled in the car, braved the freezing temperatures and went to see the National Christmas Tree.

Remember how we had a blog and posted on it fairly regularly? That was fun, right?

Well, we became crazy busy during the last few weeks of December and didn't have time to post. And, honestly, I was feeling a little lazy during the first few weeks of January and tried to avoid the computer as much as possible.

But we're back! We had many adventures in December including visits from a friend, the worst snow storm Virginia has seen in years and, of course, Christmas! So starting Monday, we're officially back. We're going to be posting all the fun things that happened in December and try to get back on track. The posts are going to be picture heavy for a few days, but bear with us.