It's that time of year when the days fly by, and a month is suddenly almost over in the blink of an eye!
We've been busy with merriment, frolicking and mess-making, all par for the course for December!
For the first time in a long time, we had a tree in our living room the very first week of this crazy month, and have been able to enjoy it... and the train underneath it! -- since then!
This train gets played with and adjusted every.single.day.
Jingle the Elf came back to play this year. He has yet to outdo his greatest feat in our family lore, tipping over the Christmas tree in 2010 -- but it's still referred to often, since his latest stunts are much more lame. They mostly involve him being frantically moved from room to room either as we're heading to bed, or more often, just ahead of kids blearily stumbling from their bedrooms in the morning.
Christmas jammies have been worn every night, and our big box of Christmas books, which we store with our Christmas decorations, have been read nightly. We've read
Mr.Willoughby's Christmas Tree almost nightly, Snowmen at Night is a close second, and The Polar Express, Merry Christmas Curious George, and lots of miscellaneous reindeer, Santa and elf books are in the mix as well. This is one genre I never get tired of!
We saw "Frozen'd" not once, but twice in the theatres, and downloaded the soundtrack to my phone. It's played on a constant loop ever since, in the car and at home.
I'm teaching Clara's kindergarten Faith Formation class on Sunday mornings. Doing crafts with this little girl is the highlight -- managing the other kids makes it a little less fun!
Joey kept busy with his own crafts during an impromptu playdate with his nearest buddies, Sebo and Teo, who are usually at our doorstep within minutes of school being out for the day. On this day, they decided to color penguins and sell them to neighbors. Luckily, creating 30 penguins kept them too busy to begin their door-to-door sales pitch before dinnertime, but I could not stop smiling over their gleeful proclamations every few minutes: "We can sell these for at least $5 each!!" "We'll be RICH!!" "$5 times 30 is.... we'll be RICH!"
Most of this month was extremely cold, but I bundled up and took the dogs on a trail walk one morning, and loved this view from above our little town. The dogs, as always, loved the cows.
Clara and Molly had a sleepover at Grandma and Grandpa's house while Tim and I went to see The Book of Mormon and stay overnight in the city. The girls visited the new San Francisco Zoo playground, saw Santa (Molly didn't venture on his lap), and met up with all of their cousins at Grandpa's faculty dinner, where babysitting included a petting zoo and pony rides!!
That same night, Joey got to spend some quality time with cousin Marco, where he played chess, gobbled up yummy food, and, after a house or car alarm went off in the neighborhood, announced, "They must be cooking something crazy like my mom does." I think he's ready to move in!
Clara and cousin Tommy were treated to ice skating at Union Square and a children's holiday-themed symphony. I think the ice skating was the bigger hit, despite lots of falls!
Molly took a break from playing with cousin Lucy at her 4th birthday party to snuggle briefly with me...
We fit in an eye checkup during the last week of school, and Clara had to bring along her doll with her own miniature specs.
The girls and I went on a big expedition to Stanford Shopping Center to see the brand-new American Girl store, along with one of Clara's best friends, Molly. Clara wore this perma-grin the entire time (and so did McKenna, her much-loved doll).
Finally, this week we sat down to do some serious work... addressing, stuffing, stamping and sealing all of our holiday cards. I'm not sure how I would have managed without these two little helpers and their camera-shy big brother, who acted as quality inspector, and made sure all stamps were in the right corner.
We're looking forward to catching our breath after we have even more fun this coming week!
