And the Winner Is?

ahh... smiles... Rose slept all night again last night... whew! Now if I can just sleep all night - it'll come! But the trade off - she's been more clingy during the day.. so, still, most of my stuff to do has to wait 'til after they go to bed.. with only one room to play in it's hard to get her distracted by new things.
Emily... well, she came home with good news today! It's down to just her and one other student in her class to see how represents her class in the school spelling bee. She's doing so good - we practiced her words (well, the first side of the sheet - the sheet goes from grade 1-8) and we'll see what happens tomorrow. If you want to look over the word lists, you can view them here... she knows all the ones on the first document and most of the 5th grade words.
http://schoolcenter.fayar.net/education/components/docmgr/default.php?sectiondetailid=41267&PHPSESSID=1020fb6e6ccb2b419f8fe0eb294a1974
And Miss Nora... into everything but such fun! She had a great time at the library today, was so excited to Miss Allison and loved making her Little Bunny Foo Foo puppet!
After Emily got done with homework we had a special delivery... a box from Miss Carol (Maggie's Mom).. the girls love getting a box from her... they dug into their new clothes and had to try them all on right then and there!

While the girls were knee deep in clothes, I took a peek at how things are coming along - you can see in this picture how they are painting the stairwell (see along the handrail)...
The bonus room is painted...
Closets and doors are painted and mostly in...
Finishing touches going up...
The plan is (as long as the carpet gets in Thursday) to have everything done Friday - the city inspector is due here Friday afternoon!!!!
Getting ready for bed I found the jammies that Rose already had that matched the new pair that Nora got - so I had to take a few pictures... while doing that I caught a picture of Rose's new trick...
Standing on her own!! She's letting go more and more and standing without support on her own.. uh-oh!!!
So as we get ready for bed and packing (Morgan leaves in the morning for a GK-12 meeting in DC), I hope that Rose sleeps and that we all rest well... and hoping that things will stay on schedule to finish up this week... that means I'll have all weekend to put the rooms back together.. yay!!

It's a Monday

We made it through our Monday back after being off all last week. Whew! Rose actually slept all night last night so let's see if she can do it again tonight! Emily was oddly enough ready to go - early! Can you believe that? EARLY!! She even had time to play her piano - so before we headed out to school we were listening to "Carol of the Bells" as she played away.

The rest of the day was shopping, school pick ups and piano lesson. Emily was running through her spelling bee list - they are holding a contest in class to see who will represent them in the school wide bee. We also got an email today from her GT teacher with a video she did in class. Here's the link if you want to check it out:

http://sharing.theflip.com/session/5caf1c99c9af48e7009d69caa99fc738/video/33660931

Back to the Grind

Today was a little introduction "back to the grind" from having a week off... the idea of only having 3 weeks of school will help me get through those next few weeks of chaos and busy plans. But this past week of lazy mornings and unplanned days have been nice.

This morning I had the luggage pulled out, meals planned for the week, church stuff together, laundry done and sorted and then we headed out to church. Bought a new set of Advent candles since one of our's broke last year... then to Mass... to lunch and then home to finish some things up for Brownies. Emily practiced her piano...

Nora meandered about and was playing "doctor" giving everyone shots and bandaids afterwards...

Then off to Brownies we went, home again for dinner and then bedtime - but not before lighting the Advent wreath and kicking off the Christmas season.
Now I sit here, waiting for Emily's bedtime so I could hit the hay. I am just beat... so tired... I really wish Rose would sleep all night - and Nora too.. we had both of them up last night... whew!

Santa and the Elves

Santa's little helpers were busy busy today! A winter wonderland cascaded around the house today - well, as much as it could with everything else packed in these few rooms down here! We held off on getting the tree today which we usually do since things are just crazy and Morgan's heading out of town this week. So, we'll get the tree next weekend... anxious little elves trying to wait patiently! :o)

But we got out all other things Christmas today.... manger scene...
Stockings (need to make Rose's - we planned it out last year so that it doesn't match our other ones)... guess I need to find where we stashed the yarn huh?!
Little Santa's... :o) the littlest one was sleeping...
Here she is... the littlest elf!!
Here's Nora as a "present" ... well, it was first "the Chinese dance" - you know... from the Nutcracker. I actually was hanging these on our columns out front and couldn't put this one up because the permit for construction is stuck there so I asked her to bring it inside for me...
Here's Rose's funniest expression... she does it when she's excited about something - or sees Morgan walk up with a handful of Chocolate Chip cookies...
As we were eating lunch, we noticed this beautiful pair perched out back...
Then it was time to get ready to head to the mall...
Nora and Emily got their lists together...
And then we got in line... the girls were so excited - Emily, older calm excited and Nora, out loud screaming "SANTA" excited....
They chatted...
Rose met Santa for the first time...
A little more chatting...
Then time to let Rose sit on Santa's lap for the picture...
Great shot... great end to a really nice day!!!!

Thanksgiving Day Wrap Up

Here's a run through of our day yesterday - it was fun filled packed with good food and fun. We had a yummy breakfast casserole, watched the parade and got our feast together. Weather wise we had rain, thunder, snow, sleet, freezing rain... the whole package. You wouldn't know it now looking outside (except for the cards still in a frozen case of ice) but it is cold outside and the wind chill even colder. Anyway - we're pretty pooped today - after staying up way too late watching movies and finishing up Christmas cards (they'll be going out today). Then right when we were going to go to bed - Rose decided to wake up and stay up for two hours. So I was ever so thankful that the girls slept in until 7:00 this morning! Yes, that's sleeping in... we've cleaned the house (as clean as we can make it with construction stuff and extra furniture tucked here and there) but the girls are itching to get Christmas stuff out... so we'll see what we can do. Then we are heading to the movies this afternoon. First time we'll be to the movies since November before Rose was born. Have a great day - hope you ate well yesterday and had good company... enjoy the pictures from our day!