The entire month of December seems to have come and gone without mention...perhaps because it was such a busy month. Here's a quick recap: We started the month with Penny as a flower girl in the wedding of Dan's cousin, Tim. She was pretty nervous and Dan was wondering whether we should pull her out, but she's such a ham, I didn't believe for a minute that she wouldn't live it up out there with her basket of petals. I was pretty darned proud of finding a dress that tied in the color of the bridesmaids' dresses (plum) and the flowers (lavender). It was Penny's first time wearing tights and, like me, she was plenty excited to not have to do that again. I am sad that all my pictures of the event are horrible.
All December, we did an Advent calendar with activities for each day. Penny would pull an activity from a jar at night and that would be what we tackled the next day. We decorated wrapping paper, the tree, the house, cookies; we sang songs, watched movies, told stories about our favorite Christmas memories; we wrote letters to family, Santa, and friends; we bought presents for kids in need - it was a nice mix of things. Here you can see Paul writing his letter to Santa. He delivered everyone's to the mailbox at Macy's (Macy's makes a donation to charity when you do that). He was a little sad to be at the mall and not shopping.
We heard about a spectacularly lit house and went on an evening expedition to see it. With 16,000 visitors last year, we decided to go on a school night before school was out to keep things manageable and that totally worked in our favor. It wasn't quite as exciting as the house we used to visit in Ohio when I was growing up, but properties in NYC are smaller, so I suppose it's understandable. It was still pretty impressive with its animatronic scenes and incredibly lit house. Plus, money collected from visitors gets donated to the pediatric wing at Dan's hospital, so it's a nice way to help kids and entertain kids at the same time.
Christmas Eve was perhaps the most fun. We had our second annual cousin sleepover. All Dan's cousins came over for some cookie decorating fun. We put the kids to bed at a more reasonable hour this year (10pm) after reading the Christmas story from the Bible and Twas the Night Before Christmas. Then the grownups got to play a card game. The game was a rare treat.
At the whole family Christmas dinner the next day, we got to enjoy the fruits of our labor - eating our gingerbread cookies. No one dared desecrate the gingerbread carousel we had constructed. The kids did the animals, while Dan's cousins in their twenties got creative with the other decorations. They never had cookie baking when they were growing up, but now they're getting brave with it. They made their own chocolate chip cookies in the shapes of superheroes to share at the Christmas Eve party. Maybe we need to get them a cookie sheet, though, because they did bring them in the roasting pan they used to bake them.
All in all, it was an amazing month and I think we built some great memories. Now it's just a matter of recovering from the rapid fire activity and getting back into the swing of school. We had started walking to school again (two month hiatus because of endless colds and insufficient cold weather gear), but arctic vortices have curtailed our efforts. Does the weather not understand how many cookies I have to work off? Sheesh! The kids were asking to walk, thankfully, so we will get back into it before long, I'm sure. I need to get a picture of us with my little makeshift sled we had to use when the car wouldn't make it to pick up Penny for school. Apparently, passers-by were snapping photos as they crawled along in their SUVs. I'm excited that I didn't pass out from the effort of dragging Paul and the backpack 3/4mi uphill to school. I do wish I had a pic of Zoe eating snowflakes while strapped to my chest. I couldn't really see what she was doing and she is such a cutie.
