Festivus...and more

You gotta love Noble... Christmas Nativity on the ice planet, Hoth

We've had a BUSY week. In general, I try and avoid scheduling so much...but at Christmas time it's hard not to. In contrast, this is how my sister and her family spent the week. (Can't wait to get down there for a visit next month.) The rest of us (most of the rest of us) toughed it out in the cold with our own Christmas fun:

"All the cool kids at the back of the bus..." On the train at the Pioneer Village

We got together with the Sullivans (including my Grandma up from Silver City, New Mexico) at This is the Place Monument (the Historic Pioneer Village) for Candlelight Christmas. Christmas as it was observed on the 19th Century frontier: colder, darker, quieter. I think stuff like this is pretty cool. (I'm glad my kids do too... so far). We ran into my cousin Brian, who is the biggest Civil War reenactor junkie of all time (and apparently does the pioneer thing on the side - here he is as a shepherd outside the live nativity).

The kids had their Christmas Sing-Around at school on Thursday...and that's always kind of a big deal because Christmas excitement is thick in the air.

Here's Grace (shortie on the left) singing with the second grade. I only got off a few decent shots because I was crammed in the very back corner of the room with Sully. The place was packed with parents and grandparents.

I also finished up the Christmas shopping, did 8,000 loads of laundry, helped the kids make Christmas gifts for their friends and teachers & went with all our 19 Activity Day girls (including Jessie) for a Christmas/skating/pizza party at Classic Skating. (I have to tell you, you'll never see more heavy eye-liner and badly fitting ratty tank tops ANYWHERE.)


And, of course, I snuggled as much as possible with Sully.

Here he is attacking me in the kitchen this week. My favorite part of this picture is his teeth visible through the binky...grinning.