Christmas Owl & Christmas Ornaments

I love having good friends.  Especially owl-loving, creative friends.  When the postman brought this to the door one day last week, I knew we were in for a treat...

We opened the box to find this inside...

 

Towns was ever so happy to read it aloud to us...

 

 Since she got to read the poem, Cate got to search for the prize inside...

 

 A perfect spot was found on the tree to hang our Christmas Owl.  Isn't it amazing the how the behavior is so much better around Christmas?  There couldn't be any correlation, could there?  It has to be that our children are just that obedient...

And moving right along before lightening strikes...

Thanks for the super fun treat, Jess!

A couple of weeks ago, Towns asked me to teach her a Christmas song she could play on the piano.  My heart totally and completely burst with excitement.  I've been waiting for that moment for a really long time.  I began piano lessons in 3rd grade.  And while I didn't love it at the time and most days had to suffer through the practicing, it was the best thing my mother ever made me do.  Once I was able to sit down and play with both hands (the main goal of anyone just starting out), I started to love it.  So the fact that my blondie showed an interest in it was beyond exciting for me.  We sat down on the piano stool and I proceeded to teach her Jolly Old St. Nicholas.  That's the first song my mom ever taught me to play, so it was only fitting.  She learned it in less than five minutes and has played it endlessly ever since.  J will be the first to tell you that we have entirely too many lessons and classes in the afternoons already, but he suggested she start taking piano lessons.  I think I'll teach her myself until that doesn't work out anymore. She's been a quick and eager learner so far. I knew she enjoyed learning, but I didn't realize just how much she loved it until I saw this in her folder from school...

That's her sitting at our piano.  The words made me smile.  I didn't get it all in the picture, but at the bottom she wrote "I love it!!!" in huge letters.  Precious.

I'm not sure how anyone around here could miss the opening of Gigi's Cupcakes, but we did.  How a cupcake loving family let it come and go without being the first in line is beyond me.  Not to worry.  Friday afternoon after school, that's where we were.  It was packed.  As in line out the door.  All Cate had talked about during our wait was the strawberry shortcake cupcake she'd had her eye on.  The last one.  We finally make our way to the front of the line and just before we could tell the cute girl behind the counter that we'd take it, someone else took it.  Cue the river of tears.  She ended up with another swirly pink confection of the cherry variety which I knew she wouldn't like.  But pink is pink, so I went with it.  Towns got the midnight chocolate cupcake and I opted for wedding cake.  Since it was such a traumatic experience for Buggy, I couldn't help but suggest we consume even more calories by taking our cupcakes next door to Zen Beri.  Can't have cupcakes without a little frozen yogurt, naturally.  Twenty dollars and two pants sizes later, we were happy campers...


The good news is that the we burnt off the calories by dancing the night away on the childrens stage at Barnes & Noble... 

Those two clowns kicked off their shoes and went to town.  I'm not sure that that stage was really meant for that sort of thing, but our children don't discriminate.  A stage is a stage is a stage.  Actually, I was mortified and wanted to crawl in a hole when I walked in from shopping around to see this commotion.  Please notice that their father acts as if nothing is going on around him.  He's so laid back like that.  I'm definitely not.

 Do you know what this is?
This is a picture of three little girls who were dying to get a party started Saturday afternoon.  Ella's party, that is.  The new four year old decided to skip the traditional party and take two friends to Build-A-Bear.  Cate had been waiting for that moment for, oh, two weeks straight.  She came home with a purple bear covered in peace signs and wearing Hello Kitty panties.  Then she cried because her daddy and her sister laughed at her panty-wearing bear.  I told her that I loved her choice and that it was the prettiest thing I'd ever seen.  She does not like to be laughed at, that's for sure!

Sunday the little ones and I had it on our own.  After church, we had lunch at their pick...

 And since it was a little warmer than usual, we went on a "baby adventure" per Cate's request...





Everything in Cate's world revolves around a baby.  She'd prefer the real thing, but settles for dolls.
After our stroll, we came inside for a little craft session...

We made salt dough ornaments which was great entertainment!
The girls decided that these ornaments would make good Christmas presents for their classmates...

Towns ended up ditching the conventional cookie cutters and made peace signs instead.

So 1st grade!

Cate can't stand to get her hands dirty, and this face proves it...

We painted them with silver, pink, lime green and sparkly red paint.  And voila...check that off the to-do list.

Now all we have to do is wait for the whirlwind of class Christmas parties next week!

Do you know what today is?

  

And do you know how long Towns has been waiting for it?  She's got a book called Book Fair Day that has sparked her excitement.  It started at 8 a.m. and we were there precisely at 8 o'clock.  She flew through her morning work so I could accompany her.  She thought that meant she could pile up books for days and I'd swipe my check card to pay for them.  Insert the concept of a budget!  The book fair topped my list of exciting things at school when I was young, and I love that she loves it too.  So far, there's not much about school she doesn't love.  I just hope it stays that way!

The countdown is on...eleven more days until Christmas.

Are you ready?