School Parties

Last week was full of school parties for both girls.  Mary Grace's school had a special Christmas lunch for Kindergarten and Pre-K families on Wednesday.  I enjoyed a lunch of turkey, dressing, green beans, sweet potatoes, and red cookies with Mary Grace.  On Thursday and Friday mornings, Elsie had Happy Apple parties.  They both started with a short singing program in the sanctuary at church.  They sang several songs, including, "Happy Birthday, Jesus", which is one of my favorites.  It's so sweet to hear all of those little voices sing, "Jesus, I love you!".  Thursday afternoon brought a Christmas party at Miss Julie's house, complete with a visit from Santa.  Mary Grace's Kindergarten class had a cookie decorating party on Friday afternoon.  I was blessed to be able to attend all of these parties (except for Miss Julie's).  The photos above are from those.  I love the first one.  That's Mary Grace and Ella-Morgan at the Kindergarten cookie party.  This might be one for the CCHS yearbook in about 12 years!  That's Mallory and Maleah with Mary Grace in the next photo.
SMES also had a Polar Express party a couple of weeks ago.  I guess I didn't take any photos there but both girls really had fun.  Santa came to that party, too, and one of the photography studios in town, Studio S, was on hand to take photos of the kids with him.  That was an especially nice treat since we don't have a mall around here.  No mall, no mall Santa!
Now the kids are out of school for Christmas.  I am working three days this week and then am off until the new year.  We are getting ready for our second annual Christmas cookie decorating party and are looking forward to having lots of friends over for that on Thursday afternoon.  Then we have one more party to go to as a family on Thursday night.  After that, we'll be heading out for Christmas.

Nutcracker!

Hello, friends and family!  We've been up to so much and I haven't updated in so long that I'm just going to start with our most recent happenings and, hopefully, work my way back to Thanksgiving over the next couple of days. 
Most recently, these girls went to see the First Coast Nutcracker yesterday afternoon. I purchased tickets for this event early in November and have been so excited to start this tradition with our little family. But yesterday morning, I worried that we still have so much to do to get ready for Christmas that we didn't really have time to give up for this event.  I'm so glad that we went anyway.  It was a nice, peaceful break from the Christmas rush and really a fun show.  We had great front-row seats and the girls were enthralled with the dancers and costumes.  It was a feast for the eyes and ears, as the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra provided the music.  We were just in front of the pit, which the girls thought was so cool!  Mary Grace's favorite part was "when they got married" and Elsie's was "the green boy".  She thought it was so funny when he got a spanking and was carried out.  I loved the costumes and set.  They were so elaborate and really beautiful!  As for Stephen, well, he says he's had his "culture" for the year!