Japanese Stroll Garden At Christmas

One of our local parks decorated their stroll garden with Christmas lights this year and we took a walk through to see it. It was a great time! We had never been to the stroll garden before and it was such a pretty sight! There were lights on all the trees and bridges and Christmas music playing throughout the park. We had great weather and Lucy had a super fun time taking pictures of everything. :)

Sweetie Pie The Elf!

We've had a fun time month with our elf, Sweetie Pie! She arrived on Sunday, December 1, and has had fun ever since. She ate some of Lucy's applesauce and played with lots of Molly's toys! She's been a fun elf to have around and we will miss her when she goes home on Christmas Eve.

Santa Claus!

We saw Santa Claus earlier this month! We kind of lucked into seeing him, too! We saw him on a Sunday and had driven to Branson that day to go to Silver Dollar City. It was a beautiful 60 degree day and everyone else in the southwest Missouri/northern Arkansas area must have had the same idea to go to SDC, too, because the traffic was ridiculously backed up! We decided to skip SDC and went to the Branson Landing to walk around instead. We walked into the Bass Pro and Santa's Wonderland area was right at there, along with Santa and no line! The girls walked right up and had their picture taken and then even got to talk with him for a while. It was the best Santa trip I think we've ever had!

First Grade Christmas Party

I got to plan Lucy's class Christmas..well winter party...and it was a lot of fun! I decided to do a Christmas tree theme and everything turned out so good! We had three stations set up and the kids rotated through each station.

At the first station we decorated trees! We used a sugar ice cream cone with green icing. They each kid had sprinkles and licorice to put on the tree to decorate it. I used little cups to portion out the icing and sprinkles for each cup and that worked out so well! We put the cones in a cup to safely get the trees home.

The second station was an ornament that they could stick together and I also had a picture of each kid to put on it. After the ornament they kids used crepe paper and bows to decorate each other as a Christmas tree.

The third station was Christmas bingo! Everyone has to love Christmas bingo, right?!

Each kid got a goodie bag with a pencil, stickers, activity pad, candy cane, capri sun, and a Christmas tree snack cake.

I think it was a great party and had a lot of fun doing it!

Silver Dollar City!

We went to Silver Dollar City a few weeks ago and had the best time! We went on a Thursday afternoon thinking it wouldn't be too busy that day as compared to a weekend day. Silver Dollar City is notorious for being packed on the weekend during the Christmas season. We are not fans of large crowds like that, so it was worth it to us to take Lucy out of school a little early and get home a little late on a school night to avoid the crowds! My parents went with us, too, and they hadn't been to Silver Dollar City in over ten years!

It was a perfect night. The weather was maybe 55 degrees and the crowds weren't too bad at all. The girls had fun riding their rides with Poppy (you can watch here) and we all rode the carousel together! Ross, Dad, and I took Lucy and Molly on Fire In The Hole for the first time....the girls were not fans and came out crying! I guess roller coasters are still a few years off for our kids. :) Other than that, we had a great time looking at all the lights and enjoying the scenery!

Positive Principal Referral

I received a call this week from Lucy's school principal. When I saw the caller ID pop up as her school I thought for sure it was the school nurse calling to say she was sick and needed to go home. Instead it was her principal calling to tell me Lucy had received a "Positive Principal Referral" from her teacher for good behavior! First, I was totally relieved that it wasn't the nurse, and second I was so surprsied and excited about this call! I did not know our school did things like this so was completely surprised! Her principal said that Lucy is such a good student and is very well-behaved, always does the right thing, never gets in trouble, and is responsible. For this award Lucy had her name mentioned on the school announcements and also got to pick a prize from the principal's treasure chest.

I'm so very proud of Lucy! She really is a good girl and I'm so glad she's mine! 

An Epic Christmas Saturday

Last Saturday was an epic day for us! At 9am we went to the theater to see Frozen 2 for a friend of the girls birthday party. At 12:30 the girls, Gumma, and I had lunch at Panera and then headed to the Symphony! The Springfield Symphony put on a special Christmas matinee that was free and kid-friendly, so we decided to go! I think the girls enjoyed it and they did pretty good sitting through it, too. It lasted right at an hour and the last few songs we all got to sing along, that was fun!

After that we headed out to James River for their Christmas program. James River is a mini mega church here in Springfield and one of Lucy's classmates had invited her to the show. She really wanted to go, so we did. It was quite the performance! The first 30 minutes could be described as a Branson show and the last 30 minutes a typical church Christmas show.

All in all it was a long day, but a fun day!