We've barely turned the calendar page over to December, but the holiday festivities have already started!
On Wednesday night, my partner and I took our class (plus our own kids) to an outdoor shopping center that actually--get this--PAYS classes and children's groups to go caroling through their stores! To earn a donation of $5 per kid, we spent a few days practicing songs and then brought our bundled-up bunch to spread some (admittedly early) Christmas cheer to all the over-achieving shoppers busily crossing names off their lists already. Not a bad use of child labor, right? That money we earned is going to help us finish off shopping for the family our class "adopted" this year, so we feel that totally justifies exploiting our kids' cuteness.
I braced myself for some Keira drama that night, because she didn't know any of the songs we'd been practicing in class, and I figured there was a pretty good chance she'd end up tearfully declaring she couldn't sing and wanted to go home. I love it when I'm wrong! She took her little songbook and set about being the best professional caroler there ever was. As we walked into each store or restaurant, I'd hear her asking my partner, "Which song are we going to sing here?" and then she'd start looking for the right page. She followed along as best she could, and chuckled when we came out of one restaurant as she said, "I spent half of 'Feliz Navidad' trying to find the right page!'" Of course, when we collected up the song books at the end of the night, Kiwi wanted to keep hers to study it for next year. Talk about your over-achievers!
As usual, Ellie-Bug was just along for the ride, without a care in the world. She enjoyed her treat from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, rode along in the stroller, and practiced making random silly faces.
Before we left, the movie theater gave each of the kids a big bag of popcorn to reward their efforts, and Ellie managed to spill the entire bag onto the floor of the car on the way home. Oops.
On Friday night, we met Auntie Lisa, Uncle Johnny, and cousin Brandon for dinner downtown, and then walked around to check out the Festival of Lights. One of these days, I'll figure out how to take nice-looking pictures of Christmas lights, but I never seem to get around to it.
They had some fake snow falling at one point, so the girls had a great time frolicking around and then showing off their snowflakey hair.
Every year, this is where the girls get their picture taken with Santa, and it's always been the same Santa. Not this year! Oh, well. It came out really cute.
That caroling thing is awesome, more places should do that. And I think it's great that you are using the money earned for your adopted family(s). It sounds like they will be getting a lot of great things thanks to all of your hard work. Your family photo looks great with the Christmas lights (of course, you didn't actually take that one, hmmm...)
ReplyDeleteAs for your swing set, I've never noticed that it's rusted and didn't realize you needed a new one, though I must admit, I won't necessarily miss that flat swing part where Ellie stands up swinging like a madwoman. It always makes me so nervous!