All Things Christmas

This holiday season has been busy! Here are some of the highlights:

Sadie and I continued our annual tradition and went to see Ballet Arkansas perform The Nutcracker at the Robinson Center.

We met up with Karalyn, Gus, and Bess. We had great seats, thanks to Groupon (our favorite way to save on fun events like this)! We were in the last row of the orchestra section, which was perfect because the kids could stand and dance by/behind their seats without bothering anyone.

The girls were excited for the show to start!

As always, Ballet Arkansas did an amazing job. Sadie was shocked and thrilled to see Mysti on the stage (She is the daughter of Sadie's ballet instructor.) As I suspected, as soon as it was over, she lamented over her decision not to do ballet this year...

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This was our first year to do Breakfast with Santa at the Children's Hospital. Karalyn and her crew go every year, and since we were going to miss our neighborhood's Breakfast with Santa, we decided to join them. Firemen were there cooking and serving the breakfast (pancakes, eggs, sausage. bacon, etc.). It was pretty cool.

Here is a photo of our Santa photo. I couldn't scan it because you need ink in your printer to do that, and, as always, we are out of ink...

The Hospital always has "the real Santa" (as opposed to our clubhouse who had a twenty-something Santa who sipped on a McDonald's soda cup the entire time...).

Sadie had a ball!

She was able to call the North Pole and chat with one of Santa's elves... (I think she was a bit in disbelief):

And write her letter to Santa (click to make it big if you care to read it)...

And mail it to him! (She got everything on her list, plus a surprise item, and when she saw it, she said, "But, I didn't order this!")

She also made quite a few crafts and got two tattoos (arms) and was proud to show it all off.

After breakfast, we headed back to Motley's Tree Farm. This was our second year to go, and we are excited to make this an official tradition.

Does this photo look familiar? Sadie has grown some, though!

We picked out our tree pretty quickly this year. Not too big; not too small; but just right...

Afterwards, Sadie wanted to ride the train again, but didn't have her cousins around to join her, so I had to oblige. It was a bumpy ride, and I felt a bit silly sitting in the cow car!!! But there were other adults who rode other times. I think. Or so I will keep telling myself anyway...

And the pig race made our Christmas tree farm trip complete!

Since we just put in hardwood floors in our living room/dining room area, the live tree went up in the den. A room that is "owned" by Sadie and all her junk. Hooray.

So we put up our artificial one in the living room.

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Sadie's school celebrated Christmas with another Mustang Mission (donate toys with the prices on them so less fortunate parents can buy them at huge discounts), Christmas parties, concerts and more.

Here is Sadie's reindeer from art class:

On the last day of school Friday, December 16th, the Kindergarten thru 6th graders performed Christmas songs in Chapel. The day before, the Pre-k classes reenacted the story of Jesus' birth (costumes and all) and I kicked myself for not having my camera. They were precious!!!

Anyway, Sadie's 1st grade class sang Santa had a Christmas Tree (think Old MacDonald had a Farm...)...

And We Wish you a Merry Christmas.

It was very cute, and they all wore the reindeer sweatshirts that they made at school: a footprint for the face, handprints for the antlers, googly eyes, a pom pom nose, a ribbon, and a bell! Too cute.

It has been a great Christmas!