December - The Blur

As you may have noticed from my lack of blogging, I've been a little busy recently. December hits me like a freight train every year with Molly's birthday so closely followed by Christmas. I just set myself on auto-pilot and pray for the best.

We started the month with Santa's annual visit to our neighborhood. Every year Santa makes a special trip to visit the boys and girls and it is one of the bests reasons around to live here. I took lots of pictures of the kids with the big man, but this was my favorite. Could my boy look more angelic??!!

Molly asked for a Littlest Pet Shop themed party for her 6th (6th!!!!!) birthday. Apparently Molly's rule for party themes is to pick the most obscure thing around. I'll never forget the "Goat" cake she had to have for her second birthday. The goat was of course Vincent Van Goat from Baby Einstein fame. But I digress...

Twelve 6 year olds came to Molly's party. We dressed as "Pets" with ears and whiskers, played games like Scoop the Cat Poop and Musical Leap Pads, made our own personalized pet chow from the Pet Buffet, and adopted a Littlest Pet and made a take home box for it. There was also the requisite cupcakes and present opening.

In an amazing show of delayed gratification, Molly chose to wait until her actual birthday to open her presents from the family (even though we told her she could have them on her party day!) So on her actual birthday, she waited until after dinner to open all her family presents. It always makes me happy to see that she is genuinely pleased with any present she receives, regardless of what it is. However, the absolute hit was her Nintendo DS, as you can clearly see by her face in this picture.

Molly's birthday was closely followed by her school's Christmas program. Most of you readers know that we chose to send Molly to Christian school and we couldn't be happier with our choice for so many many reasons (but that is another post.) One of those reasons was something that wasn't really even on my radar... the celebration of Christmas. As a public school teacher, I am quite familiar with that choreographed dance that those in the public school system do around Christmas. You don't say CHRISTmas. You don't mention JESUS. You make snowflakes (as if we know what those are) and you discuss every other holiday in December EXCEPT Christmas. This, my friends, is NOT the case in Christian school. Truly, there was nothing more perfect for getting you into the Christmas spirit than listening to 200 six to eight year olds singing Christmas songs about Jesus and telling the Christmas story. My personal favorite song? "What's a Savior Like You Doing in a Place Like This?" Perfect.

Finally, we ended the month with yet another trip north to visit both sets of grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins for Christmas. We spent Christmas Eve and day with Drew's family. There was snow on the ground and what a treat it was to get out and romp around in it. Then it was up to my family to visit with Great Grandma, see the train display that Grandpa put together for us, and have a special lunch/movie date with Aunt Laura and "Aunt" Lori.

So that was December. Sorry for the backtracking, but I feel like I needed to get that out of my system before I could move on to the next post... Twenty Ten!