...And may all your Christmases be white

Early Christmas morning, we opened the curtains to a surprise - a little dusting of snow falling from the sky. Not much - about the amount Austin gets in a good February - but they'd predicted only a slim chance of the dusting in the first place, so we were pretty pleased with our white Christmas. We shuffled upstairs, opened presents with the baby, celebrated our powdered sugar-covered wintry scene. Around 9, I put the littlest elf down for her nap, snagged a little warm cranberry bread and coffee, and settled into some stockings and presents with the Miller clan. Then, around 10:00, the scene changed. Wonderful, fat flakes started drifting downward from the heavens. It snowed...and snowed...and snowed. For the rest of the day. No blizzard, very little wind (a rarity on the Amarillo plains). It was beautiful. We had no choice but to stay right where we were - in our PJs, fire roaring, Christmas movies on, with a warm Christmas mug of coffee in hand - and enjoy the snowfall.

Later that afternoon, we bundled up our little lady (baby it was COLD outside) and introduced her to snow:

It was a bit of an arctic tundra out there. We didn't stay long.

But the next day...well, the next day was really perfect.

Snow, in case you didn't realize, makes dogs frisky.

Maddie has always been a snow dog. She was just a few months old for her first winter in Lexington, Virginia, and she bounded through that stuff with gusto, even though she was the size of a guinea pig. At 9 years old, she doesn't miss a beat (though she has slept pretty soundly since we got home).

Georgia's first snow day. As usual, she keeps her sentiments closely guarded.

Meet Clarence, my and Eliza's first-ever snowman. He has a carrot nose, yucca pod mouth, and two eyes made out of milk-bone dog biscuits. We've been sent a few pictures of Clarence in the days since we built him. Snowmen, I've learned, don't age gracefully.

Goodnight, pretty Christmas plains. Thank you, Daddy Jack and Cita, for a wonderful Christmas. And for letting our dogs, our baby, our baby stuff, our Christmas stuff, our stuff stuff, trail all over the house while we were there. It felt like there was no containing the toys/baby shoes/clothes/whathaveyou that were shed, collected, deposited elsewhere as we traipsed in and out of the house, up and down the stairs. And thanks for ordering up that beautiful snow just for us - a magical first Christmas for our new little family of 3.