December Rewind

It's now a new year, all the holiday bustle behind us. But, I'm going to rewind and catch up on December (and date this post as such for record keeping purposes and coherency in the annual blog print out book). This post will take us up to Christmas Eve....

On December 7th, Adrienne had her preschool Christmas program. This was our last darling Christmas program for a preschooler in our family. Tear. After 5 years of preschool between the girls, this will be it! Adrienne was VERY excited about her big night. So excited, in fact, that she hastily buttoned her sweater all crooked and I didn't even notice. Love it. 

This picture is my favorite. Jillian insisted on getting in a picture, and Adrienne wasn't too thrilled about her big sister getting in on her time in the spotlight.

Enjoying obligatory refreshments in the gym after the performance

The following week, Adrienne had a long-awaited play date with her new friend Paige. Paige is in one of Adrienne's preschool classes and also goes to our church. These girls had such a wonderful afternoon together at Paige's house. I literally had to drag Adrienne to the car to go pick up Jillian at school, and she shed huge crocodile tears as we drove away.

Jillian asked to write her own card to accompany her teacher's Christmas gift. She loves Mrs Davidson (and so do I)!

Another performance 'last'....Adrienne singing for the moms at Bible study with all the preschool aged kids

Matt and I went to two holiday parties for work. We never get pictures together just the two of us, so I demanded a picture before the second holiday outing. I impatiently waited for him to join me...

I realized as I counted backwards that this is in fact our 20th holiday season together. To throw it wayyyyyy back, here are a couple of 18 year old kids going to a dinner in KC for Matt's college student council during the holiday season of 1996. Ha!

We finally decorated Christmas cookies on the 19th. I got smart this year and just made a small batch. We each got 6 cookies to decorate and then eat as we saw fit. This means no grown ups were forced to consume a cookie that had been decorated/licked/glopped upon by kids. Excellent.

Adrienne came home from church on the 20th with Baby Jesus. Making Baby Jesus out of a sock was a new idea to me...

On the 22nd we headed to church so the kids (and later myself) could rehearse for singing on Christmas Eve. This picture sums it all up--Adrienne was a total charming ham, and Jillian was uber serious and focused about the task at hand.

Finally, on December 23rd, we got a little bit-o-snow! The girls were elated and promptly ran outside to make a snowman. They did really well--no adult help on this one!