December Daily - Days 13 and 14

I guess the catch-up bug didn't stick around because I find myself posting 2 days at once again.

Darn it!

In my defense, I had trouble getting the girls letters to Santa to print properly yesterday otherwise I would have finished Day 13 then. Oh well. I had a brainstorm this morning so gave them another go.

Considering how interrupted my sleep was last night it's surprising my brain had enough juice to remember my name, let alone figure out how to print 3 4"x6" photos from a PDF document! Greg and I had one of those long talks late into the night that are great but seriously cut into your sleep time! Then LC woke up at around 2:30 and joined us in bed. Then Greg's alarm went off and I felt like I had just got back to sleep!! Turned out I HAD! She'd been playing with his alarm clock earlier in the day and it was only 3:30AM!!! Greg didn't figure this out until he was up, showered, dressed and fully awake! And LC too!

He's napping as I type - poor guy!

Hmm ... so's LC ...

Anyway, here's my latest pages for you to peruse.

Day 13:

I wasn't sure what to do with the girls today that I could put into this DD and then I read Ali's post for the 12th about her kids letters to Santa and I knew I had my story! After they wrote their letters (LC and Paige got help from me but Marley did hers all by herself this year - so proud!), I scanned them and we put them in an envelope to post.

I toyed with how to add their letters into the album without adding huge bulk and eventually decided to print them off onto 4x6 photo paper. As I said above, I had problems with this initially but as you can see, made it work! I'd also come across a letter that Marley had written to Santa earlier in the month. One side has her requests for Santa, and the other has Paige's. I LOVE that she can read now and is rapidly learning how to spell so writing her own letters and lists is becoming easier for her. I thought enclosing this example in an envelope seemed appropriate. Then I realized the front of the envelope would be a perfect place to do my journalling. Yes, even on little sleep and with the stresses of the season closing in on me, I can still come up some zingers!! :)

Journalling reads: "Today Marley, Paige and Christine sat down to write to Santa. It was so neat to see them first decorate their letters with stamps. I helped LC a little but she understands the concept of stamps and quickly covered the table and her hands! Paige only wanted to say "hi" to Santa in her letter. I had to prompt her a lot! Marley ran out of room for all the items on her wish list! She's got 4 other lists scattered around the house!! Enclosed is a letter I found that she wrote earlier."

I stamped the main page with snowflakes in 3 different shades of green then mounted Paige's letter onto patterned paper before putting it over the snowflakes. A few Santa embellishments later and the page was done!

Here is a close up of the letter inside the envelope. One thing I will say about Marley is that she had been surprisingly consistent in her many wish lists. The letters read thus (with all her punctuation, spelling and capitalization too!):

"To: Santa this Year I want a Moon Dough ice cream set. a gogomy walking pup. a Bardie video Girl. a zooles small playset. a candy cane. a justin Bieber cD. a silly bands set. a zhozho pet with houes. Love Marley and I love you more!"

"To: Santa. this Year I want: a oLivia Claus Book. a I have to go Book. aBoo hoo Bird Book. a Bad kitty vs uncLE Murray Book. a zhozho Pet with House. a Moon Dough Pizzakit. a Bardie fashion fairy tale Doll.

Love Paige"

She's hilarious! I just hope she's not super disapointed with what Santa actually ends up bringing!

The back of the page has Marley and LC's letters  on it.

Day 14: 

Tuesday was the day of Marley's Christmas Concert. Her school opens up the afternoon dress rehearsal to allow extended family to come and see it. I took the younger girls to this performance last year and Greg went to the evening performance. It worked well so we didn't see any reason to change things this year!

On the back of the cover page (since it was a solid paper this time not a transparency) I adhered a 5x7 photo I took of the program boards. I'm not sure if they were handing out programs at the evening performance (forgot to ask Greg and he never said anything) but all they had in the afternoon were huge  boards on either side of the stage.

The main page has a cropped picture of the entire ensemble from the finale song as well as a shot of the back drop I took before things got going. The concert was only grades K - 4 which I thought was too bad - I'd have liked to see the older kids!

The back of the main page has two zoomed in shots of Marley. In the top photo she's singing, in the bottom photo she (and her class) are wiggling their reindeer tails at us!! LOL! She was giggling last week that there was going to be a surprise during the concert. Guess this was it! The journalling strip talks about that and then I added a dimensional sticker of a reindeer.

I should be able to get todays page done tomorrow.

I think.

It will be about Paige's Holiday Jingle, the annual Christmas show that Delta Gymnastics puts on. I have to say that Greg and I had concerns she would freak out and not go on. She did indeed freak out but at home before we left. Eventually we just had to grab her clothes, load her in the van and hope she'd have a change of heart once she got there. Sure enough she did and the show went really well! We were SO proud of her! We both struggled with shyness as children (Greg especially) so know what it takes to overcome nerves and perform our best. Way to go Paige! We love you!!