Is It Christmas Yet?

We have had a fun last few days and I thought I would share some of the highlights.

Friday evening we took our yearly pictures for our Christmas cards. Yes, we really plan ahead. I grabbed my camera and my tripod and we broke into went to our local historical society building. I shot about 300 pictures and got a few really good ones…and some that aren’t so great. I will let you decide which category this one falls in.

The cards have since been ordered, picked up, addressed and mailed. Boo-ya!

On Saturday afternoon our neighbors across the street had planned a block party. The big hit of the day was the “snow”. It is actually Zamboni droppings from a skating rink. Our neighbor had gone on Friday night and picked up 2 truck loads and then again Saturday morning to get another load. The kids loved it.

It was surreal to be sitting there in 80 degrees weather with the misters on and kids were running around throwing snowballs at each other.

On Sunday Big Daddy and I were treated to an impromptu Nativity play.

Roo is quite the little dictator director and had even arranged for angels to appear.

It didn’t take long for chaos to rear it’s silly little head and it turned into a whole new show.

I tried to get a picture of sweet LaLa, but Ham decided it was the perfect time to, well, be a ham.

Big J was not impressed and wanted nothing to do with it. He is 12 you know.

On Monday evening was Einstein’s first band concert. Since it is his first semester they are only playing the bells and haven’t moved on to playing drums yet. The bells sounded awesome and weren’t overpowered by the rest of the band.

And it’s a pretty big group of kids in the beginning band.

I did take a short video, but Ham was on my lap and I actually got motion sickness trying to download from all the wiggling so I didn’t want to punish you by putting it here.

Tuesday evening was Big J’s band concert. They have a pretty small group of kids in the intermediate band.

He took his turn playing the bass drum.

And the snare drum. He also played the hi-hat on another song.

Of course we were treated to the Trash Can Band too. They did an wonderful arrangement of the Carol of the Bells…on trash cans. It was amazing.

They have included a couple of different instruments in with the trash cans. Big J got to play the cymbals in one song. He has tried to explain the subtle difference on playing them, but I just like it when he crashes them together and it messes his hair up. I am so easily entertained.

The concert ended with a Christmas Medley with the full orchestra from the high school and I couldn’t believe how great they were.

With the concerts right after each other I was really impressed with how good these kids get in such a relative short time. And it was fun for Big J and Einstein to see the high school perform to see what they want to aim for.

Finally Wednesday was calm and only the boys had scouts. So LaLa and Mollie had time to snuggle. LaLa carries this poor cat around like a rag doll and Mollie just lets her.

Harley was glad to have us home…just so he could come in and sleep on the pillows.

I thought finally tonight we would have an evening all together, but Big Daddy didn’t get home from work until after 8pm. So maybe we will have a quiet evening…in January.

And a December post wouldn’t be complete without a gratuitous Santa shot.

This was taken at the girlies’ school. It’s that a great Santa?

 

***Disclaimer***

Yes we did jump the fence to get into the Historical Society…and then we realized the gate had been opened the whole time. Nice!