The Week Before Christmas

As written by Beth: We enjoyed the rest of our visit with Jamma and we were all sad to see her leave. Each of the girls had their own "Jamma Day" during the visit where they stayed home from school to have one-on-one time. Caroline enjoyed it so much that she concocted an illness to get to stay home another day. By Monday night her eyes were goopy, so we took her to urgent care and discovered she had a double ear infection and pink eye in both eyes. The perscription knocked both out pretty quickly and by Wednesday she was goop free and back to school .

Before Jamma left we celebrated Katie's birthday and Christmas with her. Jamma delivered some very exciting presents including hockey skates, a princess tent and tape recorder with dual microphones-- which Caroline enjoyed very much!

Friday we celebrated Katie's actual birthday. Jamie made her his famous fried egg sandwiches for breakfast and she got to open her present from us-- tumbling classes and some gymnastics/ballet outfits, which she then wore for the next two days.

On Saturday we worked on some Christmas projects. Katie and I made a cute little snowman decoration from a kit and we finally got our second tree up, which is in our office in the front of the house. This tree has "rainbow" lights and is full of Katie's favorite colors and there are many non-fragile ornaments. I also let Katie apply her cluster technique(and didn't even rearrange them after she went to bed!)

Saturday afternoon Katie and I got dressed up and went downtown to see the Nutcracker ballet. She asked questions during the entire program, so thankfully I had brushed up on the story and could answer her. Finally, during the second act I gave her a candy cane to quiet her for a brief period of time. After the curtain came down, she said "I want to see it again!" but then when we were in the car and I asked her what her favorite part of the ballet had been, she said the candy cane!

On Sunday, Grandma and Poppy arrived and after a rest, we went to see Santa. Neither of us was scared of him, but Caroline was very wiggly and didn't last long on his lap! After that we went out for dinner and drove around to see some Christmas lights.