My kids are crazy and I have videos to prove it.

Erica drove us to see the Festival of Lights. She still needs to sit on someone's lap to see over the steering wheel but other than that she's good.

We went after it snowed last and it was so pretty and cold.

 I'll miss this--them being all little and easily entertained by Christmas lights and music.

I'll drag them along even if they don't want to. I don't love it but to not go means they are big and they will never be big. 

I found this cute little mug at DI when I was looking for white elephant gifts. I bought it for me because I liked it.

I looked it up and these sell for $6 on ebay and is 25-60 years old. Not bad for 75 cents. It sits in my kitchen windowsill so I can look at it while I do dishes. I may use it for hot chocolate. 

 This is a shed in my neighborhood on fire. I still haven't got any details about how it started or what was in there but no one got hurt. 3 large fire trucks came and shut down the street so that was cool.

I got some Christmas lights from my mom that were my aunt Ilona's. Surprise! They play music. 

It sounds like a doorbell playing Christmas music and James loves it so much he climbs onto the counter and turns them on and then I turn them off and he turns them back on. It's a fun game we play. I'm losing.

Speaking of James getting into stuff-- this is the scene I found after getting out of the shower one day. I heard the distinct sound of ripping wrapping paper and caught this little monster in the act.

Here's what he had to say for himself.

Last week Sarah got to sing at some school district meeting with her school choir. I took her along with Max Stephenson. 

I have a feeling this is the first of many choir performances I'll be taking her to.

And then a few days later family home evening we went to watch Sarah perform in her choir at school.

Then afterwards we played a little game of charades--Christmas animal edition. 

Tuesday we saw the new Spiderman movie. We all loved the movie and enjoyed the recliners. I'd like to see it again without a wiggly, sticky 2-year-old on my lap but he did great considering it was his first movie and it was 2 hours long.

Yesterday Sarah performed as Scrooge in her class play of "A Christmas Carol." She had originally gotten a different part but the boy who was to play Scrooge kept missing school so she was subbing for him a lot and then they just gave her the part instead.

She sure likes being in front of people. She gets nervous and giggly and if I make eye contact with her it makes her grin and break character and that's funny to me.

Erica was kind enough to model the stocking cap I made for her costume. Sarah was at school so I fitted it between the size of her head and mine. "Big on you and tight on me. That should work."

These are a couple of other Christmas sewing projects. One is a table runner that I lined with hot pad material so we can put hot pans right on it. (Genius, huh?)

Second is this ribbon countdown. My mom has a Santa one that I loved as a kid so I thought my kids needed one.

I glued this ornament on the top and love how it turned out. It wasn't as much of a hit with my kids as our other advent calendars but I think it's because they don't love mini candy canes like I do.

 Erica built this fort and wanted her picture taken with Teddy or Sally or whatever her bear is named this week.

Today was their Christmas program at school. I was even one of the good audience members that stayed for the entire thing instead of ducking out after my kids were done even though I usually do duck out and James was grumpier than a pregnant lady on the 4th of July but the principal asked us not to. 

Nothing brings me more Christmas joy than Henry's face in this song.

And cute Sarah singing again.

Tomorrow at noon Christmas break officially begins! I have to brave the stores one more time to get what seems like very random things and wrap a closet full of presents and make some amazing desserts. 5 days and counting. Let's do this!