Two More Days!

My goodness the excitement is building for Christmas day! Tessa asks me constantly how many more days until Santa arrives, not to mention the birthdays! Today is my Dad's birthday, tomorrow is Lucy's birthday (Any suggestions for how to make a cake for a dog as that is what Tessa really wants to get her). I'm thinking of molding rice with small round cake pans and/or cookie cutters? Could be an interesting project...

Tuesday was my last day of school for 2011 and to celebrate, each of my four periods had a party of sorts. My last class had an "Elf" themed parties where they brought in various foods to recreate Buddy's syrupy pasta. At their request, I tried some. Not too bad.

Tessa helped me assemble one of those gingerbread Christmas tree kits yesterday morning. It turned out quite cute! And I sadly just realized my phone has some editing features, so I experimented a bit with this one. I took both kids to daycare on Wednesday so I could get all the presents wrapped, grocery shopping done, clean the house, assemble a princess bike and train table (one hour for each - glad I didn't wait until Christmas Eve), etc. So glad I did. Now, I am completely free to enjoy my break with them without trying to get a million things done at once.
This picture is a tad random, but the other day the kids were playing by themselves in the basement. They will occasionally do this for 15-30 minutes each day while I cook dinner, but they were abnormally quiet. When I went down, I discovered why. Tessa was climbing onto the slide and laying on her belly and Morgan was climbing on top of her; then down they went! Probably not the safest activity, but they sure did love it. They were cracking up after each slide down and it was nice to see them playing together as opposed to fighting over the same toy. (There's been a lot of that lately, mostly due to Tessa).
These next couple are from last Saturday. We went to Krohn Conservatory with my mom and then out to dinner with both of my parents. Morgan LOVED the trains, especially the Thomas one. His vocabulary is pretty outstanding these days. It's kind of surreal to believe that two months ago we were recommended for speech therapy and now the kid probably has over 20 words. Some of his new ones include: book, thank you, please, Tessa, Lucy, hello, train, choo-choo, and more. It is so nice to finally hear words and not grunts. Alas, back to Krohn...

Tessa loved the nativity scene. She could have stood there and stared at baby Jesus for an hour if we had stayed. I am so looking forward to the next few days. It is such a great joy to see your kids excited about things and this year I think both kids are old enough to share in the magic.

Merry Christmas, everyone!