Pre-Christmas Festivities

Here's a little glimpse into some of our pre-Christmas festivities. 

  

Around the House

Owen was super excited to decorate our house. He was very sweet about wanting to help even though I used grabby-Maggie as my excuse to not get a real Christmas tree. (He and Rebecca both got to help decorate Nana's tree - which they loved. And Nana was super forgiving as more and more of her glass balls met their shattery fate on her hardwood floors in the process.) We hung up most of our favorite/special ornaments on this here metal tree thingy. 

 Our family of 5 Mezger ornament from last year. The lucky German pickle.

 Moravian star and of course a Gig'em Aggies shout-out. (I need a good Vandy ornament!)

 Lots of travel ornaments. And of course lots of handmade kid goodies.

 Our play nativity set. Maggie wreaks havoc. Rebecca lines everybody up at attention. Baby Jesus was missing for a long time - I honestly thought maybe he didn't get packed away last year - but Kyle found him hiding out under a bookshelf. Yea!

 Our little Advent tree. We are using the same set of little story book ornaments to walk through the Christmas story with the kiddos. I'll admit it's not every night, but we catch up. Owen enjoys them a lot - almost as much as he likes moving the candy-cane on his little count-down calendar. He is all over knowing what date it is but he says September a lot.

Christmas Cookies with Bee - An Annual Tradition

  Mom's Sugar Cookie Recipe... And my Pillsbury dough. Give me grace, people. :)

 Owen still wears his Christmas jammies from last year - a little short all around. Rebecca was sans clothing as usual - I was able to keep the apron on her for a little bit.

 Yum.

 Maggie joining in on the fun!!!

Yea!!!

 Yum!

Everybody gets a taste.

 Cookie facce?

 The finished products. Owen was very serious about keeping all the colored icing separate while Rebecca was intent on putting every color on every cookie (see Rainbow Angel below)...not exactly on the same page.

 Bee w/ her little bakers.

 Mee w/ my little bakers. (Do I always look that tired? Don't answer that.)

Christmas Performances

 Nana/Franny has been taking Owen and Bailey to a preschool choir "bootcamp" at her church every Sunday evening for the past 5-6 weeks. They sang once on Sunday morning a couple of weeks ago and then had their BIG PERFORMANCE at the church's tree-lighting ceremony the following Sunday evening. I'm not sure I can honestly say the kids did great. How about, the kids did what kids do. And that's great. :)

 Owen kept Rebecca up the night before because he "needed to practice for his big performance" - he kept naming all of the people (all the local grandparents) who were going to come watch - telling R that she could come too. He'd even let her have some hot chocolate afterwards. So serious!

 Then Preschool ended with the traditional Las Posadas (parade of the Holy Family looking for a room at the inn)...Rebecca's class sang two songs.

 Owen's class sang three songs.

 This one had cute hand motions..."way down in Bethlehem"...

Owen/Mommy Date

A month ago I bought tickets to see a play at the Scottish Rite Theatre on UT's campus - a production of a children's book (Junie B. Jones series) play called "Jingle Bells Batman Smells". A bunch of moms from preschool were all taking their kids from Owen's class. I kept it a secret and told Owen last week I had a special date planned with him on Saturday. And here are our feet as we strapped on our ice skates. ?????? What???????

Apparently, I bought tickets for a 2pm showing on December 2nd. I thought I bought tickets for December 22nd like the rest of his class. The show on December 22nd started at 1pm. So we were an hour late - too late to go in. So, in mommy panic, I started throwing out things we could go do. (Owen was so gracious, by the way, he immediately forgave me and then insisted it probably was the ticket person's fault. Sweet boy.) Anyways, we ended up at the ice skating rink on the top of Whole Foods at 5th/Lamar. I was thrilled this is what he picked!

 Here is he on the ice. (He will proudly tell you all about it, including the fact that his skates had 2 blades each since it was his first time.)

 On the rink.

Sharing a green smoothly (and maybe some less healthy stuff) afterwards.

And now it's Christmas Even. Whoa! And I can tell you this...Kyle is in the backyard as I type setting up the TRAMPOLINE we got the kids for Christmas. Shhhhhhhh! Merry Christmas everyone!