Adagio Recital

After a fun day at the Ice Odyssey, the girls and I headed back to town to see the Adagio dance recital!  We have lots and lots of friends that are a part of this dance troupe, so we were very excited to go.  We saw them all perform back in August for the first time and just didn't want to miss their Christmas performance.

I'll be honest and say that I thought having a recital at Christmas was a lot to ask of both the kids and the parents.  December is such a busy month without all the practices and performances that come with a recital, but after seeing what they did tonight, I was totally WRONG!  Yes, it's a lot more work to add this to your calendar during the holidays, but it was so worth it for everyone, because it was fun and absolutely beautiful!!  Livie wanted to get "fancy" for her friends, so she picked out her fanciest dress, put a little lip gloss on, and was ready to see them perform!

Madie was excited, but not excited enough to break out the make-up and get into a prom dress or anything. ;-)  She couldn't wait to see everyone she knew.  We circled all the names of our friends in the program, so we knew who to look for and when.

Our friend Laura's daughter, Tessa, was in 4 routines.  She is just fabulous up there!  Such a natural talent and so stinkin' sassy!  We love it!

My friend and co-teacher, Katie, had her youngest in this group.  All the costumes were Christmasy and gorgeous!  Even the stage and all its decorations were perfect.  Absolutely loved every bit of it!

Katie's oldest daughter and my friend Lisa's daughter were in this one.  So, so cute!  They too did a great job!

We were waiting to see Tessa when we saw Jenna!  Had to tell her what a great job she did and get a quick picture of her and Livie, since they are such great friends. :-)

Tessa came out right at the same time as Jenna, so I took another quick picture of her with her sister, Emma, and Madie.  Such great friends, those 3.  Just a really fun night with my girls, getting to see all our friends' little girls perform. 

Ice Odyssey

I just happened to be driving through the downtown area and discovered it was Ice Odyssey Weekend!  Yay!  So, I hurried home, picked up Pete, Noah, and Livie and headed back to town to pick up Madie and go see all the great ice sculptures. :-)

A Didoughs Pretzel place just opened up, so we hit there first and got some yummy pretzels to start our trek off right!  It's really little inside and the place was packed, but we got there right before the crowd, thank goodness.  When we left, the line was out the door!

They had a mini-golf course made with ice sculptures, but we didn't stay for that.  We wanted to head down the main street and see what other sculptures they had.

As we were walking down, we ran into Santa himself!!  He had an elf friend and a little sweet snowomen. :-)  Livie was especially excited to see Santa!

Right after we saw him, we saw an ice sculpture made of him.  Again, Livie was super-excited!

Of course, we had to hit the bookstore - our favorite place in the world!  But, we managed to leave without buying any books this time.  When it's this close to Christmas, I try to stop from buying things.  It was hard to walk away though.  Books are our weakness!

This was another favorite sculpture of Rudolf.  The girls like this one a lot!

We bought a new camera on Black Friday, so we gave Madie our old one.  She loved getting it out today, so she could take her own pictures.

We needed to go to the local coffeehouse, because I needed a gift card for a Christmas party I'm going to tomorrow night.  They had a bunch of goodies that people were selling.  We bought a great little gift basket for Tater.  I'll share that with you in a minute. :-)

This one is of the Little Drummer Boy.  Noah's trying to march in place and act like him.



This is the gift basket we got.  Only $8 and it comes with lots of homemade goodies and dog toys!  I think he's going to be very happy on Christmas Day!  It was a fun little surprise to see the Odyssey happening to day and we're so glad we got to go!  Tonight, the girls and I are headed to see a recital at the high school.  I got an email yesterday telling me they didn't need me to work today and I was pretty bummed about it.  Now?  Not so much, because if I HAD worked, I would've missed out on all this fun!

Junior High Concert

Christmas season is in full swing now!  Madie had her Christmas Choral and Band Concert tonight and she did a great job!

My sweet little band geek getting ready to go back and join her fellow musicians. :-)

While we were waiting for Pete and Livie to show up (Livie didn't get back from dance until right before the concert began), we checked out the Book Fair in the library.  Noah found a couple good books and, just like his mom, had to dive right in.  Love that at least one of my kids is a bookworm like me!

She was just hanging out, waiting to begin when we first sat down.

Soon, she was up and singing with the group.  She even got to play some weird drum thing for a special number. 

Livie was getting hot and bored, so I appeased her with a lollipop.  The monster was satiated....for a while.

Madie's chorus was just made up of 6th graders, so we sat through the 7th and 8th grade chorus, before getting to hear her play in the band.  She also had a special part in this.  She had to get up and read a few lines about each song before they played it.  She and another girl and boy did this for 2 of the songs.  She is such a star! - and I say that without any bias at all. ;-)

A fun night to watch Madie!  This busy girl is finding all sorts of things to be a part of now that she's a 6th grader.  Love that she loves being involved!

I always try to get at least one picture of her with a friend.  Almost missed our chance, because the place cleared out pretty quickly, but she got to take one with her friend Lexi. :-)  We had a really great time!

Sabic Party

People.  Do you realize that it is December 2nd and it was 65 degrees today?!!  AMAZING!!  Today was also the day that, despite the warm temps, we had our Christmas Party at Sabic.  This is something we look forward to every year and usually have the best time.  This year might have been the best one yet!

In recent years they have had a bunch of games for the kids to play.  With the smaller number of families attending, it's given our kids the opportunity to play them a lot more and get lots of prizes.  Each kid walked home with a bag full of prizes (that are now all over my living room).

Before they really got into their games and other activities, I was able to round them up for a quick picture. :-)

One of our favorite families was there too.  This is Jayson.  He and his wife and family are our dear, dear friends.  They have 4 kids that are all the same ages as ours, with one bonus one. ;-)  Jayson and Pete have worked together for years and are great friends. 

 About an hour into the festivites, a magician came in to entertain the kids.  Now, we've had magicians before and, honestly, I've never been that impressed.  This one though?  WOWZA!  He was so entertaining and so amazing with the kids!  They had the BEST TIME! 

Livie got called up for the first trick and she wanted Noah to be her helper.  The magician put soft clown noses in their hands and was able to make Livie's disappear and reappear in Noah's hand.  When Noah opened his hand and saw that he had 2, he was like "WHOA!".  It was hilarious!  He couldn't believe his eyes!  All of the kids were engaged and excited to see what the magician was going to do next. He didn't do anything I haven't really seen before, but his personality was so fun and so sweet, that he really made the experience one the kids really got into. I made sure to tell him that too!  Just so much fun!  Now, of course, the kids came home and tried to do every magic trick that he did, but that just means he did a great job. :-)

Here are our kids with the Thirys.  Such great friends!!

Oh, and did I mention that not only was the magician awesome as doing his magic tricks, he is perhaps the most impressive balloon artist I've ever seen!!!  He made balloon animals for an hour for these kids!

Hello?!  Monkey in a palm tree?  Sure.

Can I make you a giraffe?  Why, of course!

I mean, check out his belt!  That's a pretty fabulous balloon-making tool belt he has there! 

Now, when the kids get to age 12, they are no longer invited to see Santa and get gifts.  But, they do pick special people to become elves and, guess what?  Madie got invited to be an elf this year and she's only 11!  Here she is with one of her great friends, Emma - oh and Mrs. Claus too, of course.

Mrs. Claus read "The Night Before Christmas", before inviting all the kids to come up and receive their gifts.  Madie, being an elf, got to help pass them out.

Livie got a Monster High doll and car.  She was thrilled!!

Noah got a remote-controlled helicopter that really flies.  He too was over the moon!

Had to get a picture in here of Madie and all the elves.  How cute is that?!

Madie got a gift card for $30 for her present this year as well as a $20 for being an elf!  How lucky is she?!

Here are the kids with their loot.  Gotta say, Sabic really does a great job of including families and making things like this special for them. 

Here is our favorite family, the Thirys!  Just love them to pieces!

Here is our little family.  What a fun day for all of us!

As I saw Laura and Jayson leaving, I had to take a picture.  This is what leaving the Sabic Party is always like, only we usually have coats to carry too!  We always leave with our arms full of goodies like this.  But, hey, isn't that a great way to end the party?!  We met up with them later at Cracker Barrell for our annual "Let's meet up for dinner after the party" date.  What a fun day and a great way to get ready for the holidays.  Now, if only the weather would hold out.  I could definitely handle the 60s all winter long!

And... The Tree Is Up!

We started getting the decorations out yesterday after church, but really finished it all up today when we decorated the tree!  Thought I'd share some pictures of our decorations. :-)

This is our front entry. Please excuse the backpacks piled up everywhere and the bad paint job.  We're hoping to tackle the foyer painting/hook project in a couple weeks.  Pete has the whole week before Christmas off, so I plan to put him to work!  We forgot to add our mistletoe last year, but this year it's up and ready for someone to walk under and get some kisses.

Our tree goes up faster and faster every year as the kids quickly go through all their ornaments and hang them on the tree.  We used to have to help them and they pretty much do it on their own now, with us helping add some too, of course.  Still have to remind Livie not to hang them all around the bottom, but other than that, they did a great job!

We got all the decorations up on the bookshelves yesterday and moved our chairs around, so there was room for the tree.  The girls are holding some of their favorites.

Our three sweet, goofy kids are ready for Christmas!  Wait.....

... make that our FOUR sweet, goofy "kids" are ready!  Let the countdown begin!

Santa's Village

My mother-in-law gave me a church back when we lived in NY, when we were first married.  Guess that's going on 13 yrs now.  And, it was going to be part of a Santa's Village.  I didn't have a place to create a village though, so it's been sitting on my bookshelves for all those years... until TODAY!  After buying the new buffet back in October, I realized that I now had the space for a cute little village, just like I have been wanting for a long, long time.  When I saw one of my besties on Wed night, she gave me my bday present, which happened to be another building for my new village, so I knew this was definitely the year to make one!

I went out last night, after a busy and tiring day of work (I'm working the next 4 Saturdays at a factory packing boxes with toys for Walmart.com to make some extra money for Christmas), to buy a few more buildings and accessories and put the girls to work making it!  They had the best time creating our new little village.

This is the one my best friends, Michelle and Teresa, gave me for my birthday.  It's a dance academy!  How cute is that?!

Here is the finished product, courtesy of my two brillant girls. :-)



This is a really bad picture of it all lit up.  Hard to see how pretty it is, but take my word for it.  It's adorable!  We want to find a few more pieces and will probably continue adding to it, but it's filling up the space nicely.  Hopefully in the coming week, we'll get around to finishing the rest of the house and get it decorated for the holiday.  I love the holiday season!