Nutcracker on Ice

Karalee's Brownie troop went to see the Nutcracker on Ice. Before the show they each got to meet about 7 or 8 cast members and get their programs autographed. I enjoyed seeing the costumes close up. They were so fun!

The show was mostly high school aged girls and younger. I was impressed with the skill level of all these girls!

When Kara saw how many little girls were in the show, she decided she wants to take ice skating lessons. I haven't looked into it yet, so we'll have to see. Maybe if she wants to be done with swimming we could make it work. She just has such a busy schedule already. 

My favorite part of the show was during the curtain call, because several of the little pieces of candy kept escaping and skating all over the place. The adults were skating after them to try and catch them, and it just gave me a good laugh. Kara's troop brought the largest amount of canned food to donate, and won an ice cream party from Oberweis. So the girls were all thrilled about that. Kiersten didn't want to go, but I think she really would have liked it. 

Ben has been working so hard on the Christmas lights. Home depot didn't have a 40ft ladder available to rent, so he couldn't do the highest peak of the roof this year. I still think it looks great without it. He also got some musical bells that are on a motion sensor. They are right by the door, which is fun. But it isn't so fun when they get set off all night by deer, squirrels, rabbits, or whatever else keeps making them turn on at 3 AM...

I volunteered to help out with Evie's Christmas party at school. The kids were so cute and sweet. We had 20 little 3 and 4 year olds. They made their snack all together, and then we split them into smaller groups for the other activities. 

They made marshmallow snowmen. It was really cute. Most of them were eating the supplies before they even ha a snowman made. The only problem was trying to get the snowmen to stand up. The kids who just did 2 marshmallows were fine, but those that tried to do 3, all fell over. The kids weren't too worried about it, though.

They also got to make foam ornaments with their pictures in the center. 

playing bingo. I was handing out stickers when they got bingo, but soon realized most of them weren't really paying attention to what picture was called. They were just putting the froot loops where they wanted them. But they were still so happy to show me their ill-gotten bingos and get a sticker. 

One of the parents brought in a photo booth. So the kids had all sorts of hats, headbands, beards, mustaches, etc to dress up in. then they got to sit in the photo booth, and a card printed out with their 4 pictures. I helped Evie pick out these antlers, but I had to run back to the game room before it was her turn. When I got her card, I saw she had switched to a mustache, and the teacher that was in there told me how proud she was to hold it up. She kept saying it was an elf mustache.