'Twas the week before Christmas

Evie had her Christmas party at school on Thursday. She somehow ended up in a group with her best girl friends. She was pretty excited to have a similar dress to her friend Sabrina. They couldn't stop noticing it every few minutes.

The craft went pretty well. We had all the moms and teachers assisting with glue, so it didn't get too messy. They all named their snowmen, and some of the names were pretty funny. Evie named hers "Evie Miller the snowman".

This is her class gingerbread house. I asked her what she helped with, but she said she didn't remember. She knows she put some candy on the house, and ate some candy too.

When she saw Santa, she pointed and shouted, "Hey! Don't you remember I already saw you at my Christmas party?"

I reminded her that she didn't have a chance at the party to sit on his lap, so she changed her tune, and wanted to talk to him after that. He asked her to leave out some cookies for him, and she said she would, but added, "this year, take a bite of all the cookies. Last year you didn't try my purple one."

Sweet girls loved Santa. One of her friends said for Christmas she would like "the same thing as Evie asked for". Her mom was pretty quick to jump in there and remind her to ask for the same toy she'd written her letter about so Santa wouldn't be confused.

I ran the bean bag toss, and some of those kids were great at it. One of the boys kept backing up each throw, and was nailing it from clear across the room. Evie's friend wanted to peek through the hole, and as I stepped back to get a picture of her, Evie smacked her right in the kisser with a bean bag. She didn't cry, though. The other kids thought it was hilarious.

After school, the girls wanted to play in the snow. It had all melted except for on our deck, so I let them slip around out there for a little bit.

They were very excited for Ben to get home because it was his birthday. They were anxious to give him the little things they'd made.

Ben asked me to make this stocking, but then didn't seem to like it, so I am super glad to have stayed up late several nights making it. It's the wrong yellow, wrong width, wrong length. So maybe I can do a better job next year.

They love him just as much at 33 as they did at 32!

On Friday Kara and Kiersten both had their winter celebrations at school. I was in charge of Kara's, and got busy with the kids, and didn't even remember to take pictures. I think they had fun. We played winter scattergories, winter trivia, and made pop-up "winter greeting cards". I did my best to keep it non holiday specific, but it's hard sometimes. She had fun, and Evie liked getting to hand out the prizes to the game winners. I didn't go to Kiersten's party, but popped in for a second to get something from her teacher. It looked pretty fun too, and she was very excited to tell me about it when she got home.

On Saturday, we went with a few of Kiersten's friends to see Annie. It was cute. I don't always love remakes, but this one was good.

Kara had a buddy to sit with too.

And we haven't stopped singing the songs since Saturday. Even Evie is singing along, and she didn't even go to the movie.