A Holiday Potpourri

Has it really been 3 weeks since my last post? Hmmm...so it has!

Well, I guess I'd better hurry and get a post up on my poor blog before I get sucked into all the momentum of Christmas and become crazed and incoherent like I do every year. Here are a few things we've been up to as of late:Cade returned from Ireland - hooray! He was able to see lots of gorgeous scenery like this while he was there. Cool, huh?

(FYI and totally off-subject, my tooth is feeling just fine now thanks to a root canal that took place just hours after publishing my last post. Thanks Dr. Jacobsen, for taking away my extreme physical pain for a small fortune. It was so worth it!)

3 words: Viva La Coldplay! (What an incredible concert). Cade and I both love Coldplay and it was great to sing along to all the songs and rock out like a couple of idiotic teenagers. Aaahhh!

Jason started basketball. He's by far the shortest kid on the whole team, as half of them are a grade older. But of course Jason sees that as a challenge and plays even more competetively. That kid is brutal out there and when he does something awesome, he casually glances over at us with his cute little half-smile, which we are inclined to return two-fold.

Hannah had her first dance recital of all time. She was a train-wreck at both dress rehearsals, hanging on my leg and other such nonsense so I was obviously very concerned she wouldn't be able to make it through the performance with me (and my leg) out in the audience. That's where bribery comes in. I let her pick out a cute little make-up set at Walmart for her to have AFTER her performance. I told her that if she felt compelled to hang on my leg, we would have to return the present. It worked! She was all confidence and smiles up there on the stage...what a little diva! Here she is in her skimpy-little-costume-that-I-had-no-control-over. Enough said. She also had a cute and modest Cindy Lou Who costume she wore for her Grinch song "Where Are You Christmas?" (Like the hairdo?) That was so precious and I was beaming with pride the whole time. She hasn't stopped talking about her recital so I'm hopeful that her jitters are a thing of the past now.

This may not be blog-worthy to you, but I miraculously configured Rachel's hair into little pig tails the other day. I only did it that one day because they were a lot of trouble and came out easily, but someday soon these cute little piggies will be a regular occurrence.

Is it just me or is this girl flippin' cute? She was even saying "cheese" at the time, that's how confident she felt about her adorableness. My little Santa Momma!

I finally got a around to this old thing. I mean, it's the perfect size...if you're a little person, which I am not. I really need a new tree but there's always something I need more than a dang Christmas tree and I never seem to have mutiple hundreds of dollars burning a whole in my pocket...so there it is in all of it's six-foot (that's being generous) glory!

Other Items of Blog-Worthiness, But Alas, No Photo Documentation:

1. Thanksgiving Dinner. It was lovely...thanks for asking.
2. Adam and his new braces...and headgear..and palate expander. (Now you know why a new Christmas tree is out of the question this year!)
3. Making chocolates with my mom. We had some great mother/daughter bonding, and the chocolates taste delicious but they're not very pretty like Grandma Peterson's, so I've made the difficult decision to not give them as neighbor gifts this year and eat them for myself. We may try again and if they don't turn out I'll eat those too, and so on, and so on.