So, because Anny has been under the weather on and off since Thanksgiving, and I'm not a proponent of the Christmas Letter thing right now, we have put ours off until Valentine's Day.
That being said, in my last post I wrote about a last-minute idea for gift giving, a home-made (by Abby, mostly) frame for a picture. I could not post the picture, though, as gift-getters had not gotten gifts. That has changed as of today, so here is the picture, for your ooh's and aah's!
We have both had the same idea in regards to Christmas gifts for our families. By "both" I mean that I had an idea in September, and began to put that plan into motion. Last week Anny "had an idea" that sounded pretty much word-for-word what was described to her in September... Yes, we "both" had an idea - and I'm sharing that idea with you!
When my office moved over the summer we found lots of supplies that were untouched from the move 5.5 years prior. We redistributed some of those items to organizations that could use them - and in the case of legal sized manila file folders, I am such an organization! We got them for the sole purpose of letting Abby pain them until her heart is content. Some days that is three brush strokes and the fun game "clean the brushes and make the water splash" and other days it's quite a long ordeal. I hate to throw things away, and hate even more to spend money on paper for her to paint. Win/Win!
Enter - the plain manila file folders:
With a bit of planning, we had about two dozen of these folders with some sort of paint on them - some were heavily painted and some were not so plentiful:
We cut them into pieces that accommodated the cut-out that we wanted - a Christmas Ornament to show through our perfect Abby picture! (I will not show you the picture yet - you have to wait until everyone getting their picture opens it!) After finding just the right pieces to make our list complete, I drew on the ornament shape (which is the size of our drinking glass, plus a small square on top) and Anny cut them out. We are all about shared labor in our house!
(This was the template one, thus no paint)
The final product looks a lot like this, but with the real picture in it!
With every Ornament-Shaped-Picture-Frame, we are giving each recipient a regular picture frame to put it in.
Total time invested:
Abby - a few minutes about once a week painting whatever she wanted!
Anny - Three months to "come up" with the idea - 20 minutes of cutting and ten of putting pics in and taping it to the back.
Rob - About an hour of picture taking, but it was an outing unto itself, and a negligible amount of time drawing the template on the backs of the painted folders!
We did something strange last year - we grabbed two costumes from another teacher at Anny's school at a very good price. I think we paid $10 for both, but their children had outgrown them and we were a year (and a hope) away from Abby being able to fit into them. $10 is low risk, so we didn't really hesitate. I did an even stranger thing this summer and bought another one on Ebay when I found out that Anny's schools Homecoming would fall on Halloween. With that in mind, here are three stories from our Halloween...
Friday at School:
For those that do not know, Abby's daycare is contained within a school for children with special needs. The daycare is in the last two classrooms on the back side of the building, but the two programs work together for special events, like Halloween! All of Abby's classmates dressed up in their Halloween finery and went Trick-or-Treating to all of the classrooms in the school. Even better than that was that they invited us parents! I had a blast and it was quite possibly the cutest thing ever.
The high school football game was scheduled for Saturday, and I had a plan. We grabbed lunch at the grocery store and ate it in our seats, then we got Abby dressed up as the school mascot: A Gator! She hopped on my legs for a while, then ran around a bit. Once the Pom Squad sat down, Abby really got attention! (This photo was taken by their coach.) Abby was excited and happy, and most of all we tricked her into being warm on a chilly day! (Okay, so it was about being adorable, but two birds/one stone!)
Saturday Night:
Saturday evening we had some rain, so we started by playing in the yard under (and around) the umbrella. Once dinner was done, Abby knew that something great was supposed to be happening, so we could no longer keep her pent up in the house. We only T-o-T'ed on our street, but Abby's bag was plenty full. We started walking with a friend down the street, and the power of two-cute-toddlers can not be matched! Abby even got candy twice at one house because we brought a friend!
We had a great Halloween, and hope that you did too!
I guess I should start with Christmas and will blog later about other subjects...
This Christmas I took off almost a full two weeks from work between holidays, vacation and sick days I only had to work for about a half of a day in the middle. Turns out that putting in that half day was good for my coming back to the office yesterday because I could hit the ground running just a little bit.
We spent the first week visiting with Paul and Sarahlynn and their girls in St Louis. Aside from plane delays on the Baltimore side of both flights, it was a wonderful time away. The extra two hour delay on our way out was certainly not the best way to start a trip, but Abby was a great sport. I took her over to the B gate at BWI and we found some children headed out to Orlando to play with. They danced, jumped and chased each other for so long that Anny texted "everything okay?"
Since we only get the cousins together every six months or so, for now, it always makes me just a little bit nervous about how they will react to each other. Turns out, once again, that there is nothing to cause concern! We arrived so late Saturday that the cousins (two girls, one 23 months, one five years) were long asleep, so the first re-meeting would wait for the morning. Since we were on east coast time, and they are an hour behind us, we were up first. As everyone began to wake up, it was like a wonderful reunion for all three of them!
Abby had used the word "mine" two times the weekend before, but perfected it while we were there! Anny and I keep comparing the three of them to the seagulls in Finding Nemo:
It really was adorable when it comes right down to it.
It was great to spend time with Anny's family, even though our time was short.
The week of New Year's we were home. We were sure to figure out something out of the house during the day, and got to catch up with friends during the week too. We took Abby to the play areas at two malls (Columbia - A+ and Tysons Corner - B+) as well as the massive fish tank at our local Bass Pro Shop. She was amused and happy to have us around, I think.
Now we have all settled back into work and school and are getting the routine of life back down. I would say that Abby does really well at that, too. I know that she does better than I do, after all!
More blogging to come later this week - Abby had her 18 month check up last week, too!
Thanksgiving weekend was one of fun and adventure for Abby!
On Wednesday we went to the turkey farm to pick up a fresh turkey, or two, and also took some time to explore. We saw cows and cats of all ages and sizes. Abby was fascinated by all of it!
On Thursday Rob's dad and step-mom made the drive up from Florida, so we got to spend some time with them before dinner.
At dinner there was quite a houseful of people. I think we counted 12 around the table, and four dogs. Abby at lots of cranberries and stuffing, but was not interested in much else.
On Friday we did a little shopping, and finished decorating the house for Christmas! Since we'll be in Saint Louis for Christmas, we put up a fake tree. It is already decorated and Abby loves it. It has come at the right time as we are working on identifying colors and the lights are much more interesting than crayons!
On Saturday we raked the front and back yards - and Abby tried to help. It was adorable and I wish I had gotten pictures, but I did not. This year we are composting our leaves, so it was especially fun for her to throw handfuls of leaves over the fence!
