2011 Week 50

This is our final week before the start of Christmas break and there has been a lot packed into it!
Saturday was the town's Christmas celebration. The kids got to see Santa (silly me didn't even take the camera since last year they had a professional there. This year is was just someone with a point and shoot and though they did print out photos for us for free, they aren't very good), which they have been really looking forward to. Kaitlyn had rehearsed Tyler so that he would say exactly what he (or she lol) wanted. It was pretty funny to watch him rattle it off. Ty requested a DSi with a Monster Truck game. Kaitlyn wants a bike.
That night was also the town parade. It was kind of chilly but not too bad. Kind of a fun idea to have a parade at night, though I think a lot of the floats could have piled on a LOT more lights :) We ended up next to one of the girls from Kaitlyn's class so the two of them had a great time together. Tyler was really excited at first but the long day and the cold got to him and halfway through the parade he retreated to the chairs and the blanket.
In between the two events we squeezed in a party with the neighbors - fun!

The kids were excited to start opening the 12 Days of Christmas gifts that Grandma Jackson sends every year. Tyler has taken to waking up incredibly early, then waking up his sister - no matter how often I tell him not to! So we have a really big chunk of time in the mornings before school.

I played photographer a lot this week. My friend asked me to take maternity photos for her so one day I did a session with her and her husband and another day we did a solo session for her.

Also of note this week, though not in the happy category - On Monday night shortly before we were due to leave for dance class, Tyler decided to throw a pencil at his sister. Not something he should be doing and I don't know the story around it. What I do know is that all of a sudden Kaitlyn is wailing and when she gets downstairs she has blood pouring out of her forehead. It turned out to be a LOT of blood for what was actually a very small cut. But we're talking scary amount of blood here. Enough to make me get dizzy and almost pass out in the middle of dealing with it. But deal with it we did and she is fine. Of course she couldn't face making heading out to dance class after that - not that we would have made it out the door on time. We (Tyler and I mostly) spent the next hour or so cleaning up the blood trail that led from the playroom, down the stairs (hitting each and every stair more than once), into the living room, then of course into the powder room where we dealt with most of the problem. Kaitlyn was worried she would get a lot of questions about her cut at school the next day, but it was so small no one even noticed it.

It's funny how things ripple though. Because we missed dance class we didn't get the final details on the dress rehearsal for the recital, nor did we get her costume. So it took me some extra time to track down the info and she had to do the rehearsal in not quite her full costume (we got the shirt while we were there and tossed it on over her clothes so at least she kind of looked in costume). I also didn't get to do my set of errands that I had planned to do while she was in class which meant I had to spend the next morning getting the yarn for some hat orders and running around getting other things while I was out instead of finishing up the orders and working on other Christmas prep as planned. I also forgot to pick up the candy for Kaitlyn's class party so we had to leave extra early for school on Thurs to grab that on the way. On the plus side, the grocery store was giving away flowers that day. But despite the setbacks, we are now almost completely ready for Christmas - yay!