Merry Little Christmas

With the house building and puppy craziness, we stayed home this Christmas and enjoyed some quiet time together.  It was a very lovely week.

Elayna’s new Elf-on-the-Shelf, Linda.

 

 

  

Shelby and Elayna opening presents:

  

House Update–Day 228

We opted for the rock façade on the exterior of our house and are so happy with the results.  It looks beautiful!!

  

Additionally, the granite countertops are in!!  Woo-hoo!

  

House Update–Day 223

Can you see it?  The fresh, perfect, unblemished driveway? 

     

Meanwhile, there’s tile, tile, tile everywhere…

Master bath and shower:

  

In the great room:

  

Some Mom Validation

Elayna’s preschool program asks the kids to ‘journal’ every morning when they arrive.  Most entries are fairly benign (‘What did you do this weekend?’  ‘Draw something that begins with the letter P’)

But every once in a while, the journal entries are very touching and sweet.

 

I do love this girl….

Elayna’s Holiday Program

 

Elayna’s pre-K class celebrated their last day of school with a little program and gingerbread house decorating.  The kids sang 3 songs

 

 

House Update–Day 219

We are ready for tile!  Its been fun seeing our design choices take shape and remembering what we picked out in June…

 

They’ve also laid out the driveway – I’m sure we’ll have concrete laid soon.

  

Welcome to the family, Shelby Sparkles

 

I suppose our house doesn’t feel right without a dog.  We decided to welcome a new puppy this Christmas.  Hopefully, she’ll be potty trained before we move into our new house!

Shelby is a sweet bundle of love.  She’s all energy and happiness and we all love her already.  Elayna LAUGHS so much playing with her and is very proud to show off her puppy and tell her classmates about her.  It’s a very good friendship already

 

 

Of course, she’s still all puppy!  She has only 2 gears:  fast asleep or terror.  She’ll chew on anything in sight and thinks Elayna is one of her litter-mates.  There have been pounces, scratches, bites, and tears.  She’s still waking us up twice at night to go outside and house-training is hit or miss. But she’s filled our house with fun and it is definitely fun to have a dog around again.

House Update–Day 214

I was shocked today to discover some significant changes at the house:  cabinets!  And the stair railing!  And the AC units!  It is definitely feeling more like a real house every day

 

 

  

Parade of Lights

Last Christmas we discovered the Carefree Festival of Lights and had a great day.  The parade is gorgeous, food and snow is fun, and they have a beautiful fireworks display.  We really enjoyed our selves a lot.  This year, our church small-group proposed building a float for the parade and we jumped at the chance to help! 

We spent a good portion of the afternoon assembling the lights and float.  The kids decorated shirts with glow-in-the dark paint.  I think we were very festive.

Aaron and I both missed participating in the festival:  eating the fair food, seeing the decorations, walking around town.  But Elayna had a GREAT time on the float.  She is a performer and she loved waving to by-standers and shouting ‘Merry Christmas’!  She had a blast and that made all the hard work worthwhile.