Santa Claus and Christmas Festivities

We had a lot of Christmas fun this afternoon beginning at four and lasting until nearly 8! Santa visited Blacksburg, followed by the lighting of the town tree, and the Christmas parade along with other festivities. We are having to make a really conscious effort with the kids to remind them every day of the real Reason for the Season so we're doing a Bible verse with our daily advent calendar.

Here's the pic I've been waiting all year to make:

Grace was scared of Santa. There was no way she was going anywhere near his lap. Mrs. Claus, however, was a lot less threatening. She is, after all, wonderful with kids.

Archie liked Mrs. Claus, too, and proudly showed her the letter he had written to Santa.

The line to see Santa was a bit long, but we enjoyed meeting this nice Elf along the way.

Before the parade, we stopped at a craft bizarre for some free hot chocolate and face painting. Both kids love getting their face painting, which is a bit surprising to me because I always avoided it.

Archie's Santa List

Archie is so excited to be going to meet Santa tonight. Even though he met Santa as a one- and two-year-old, he has no memory of it. We read the Berenstein Bears Meet Santa Bear in preparation and made a list. As you can probably guess by the spelling, Archie wrote all the words in green by himself with minimal direction from me.

Dear Santa,

I have tried to be a good boy. Please bring me Angry Birds and a pirate "shep" and a superhero car.

Lovei,

Archie

Christmas Preview

Wordless Wednesday (Duckpond Fun!)

Basement Playland!

Ready for some nice, crazy lighting, flashy red-eye shots? Welcome to my basement. Correction: Welcome to the DeJ Family Basement Playland. I finally did what I knew I needed to do for some time and CLEANED OUT THE BASEMENT!!! (It was no small task, I assure you.) Looks so much better. My objective was forming an indoor bike/trike loop around the center divide and creating a ball pit by bringing our little outside slide inside and filling up the kiddie pool. The kids were pretty excited and I think we'll spend many happy hours downstairs over the winter. I even set up a little desk/chair for myself so I can work while I supervise :)

Only a mother of two preschoolers...

Carries around a fake cellphone all day. Only this afternoon did I realize the cell phone I had dutifully been carrying around all day was Grace's (real) pretend one. Wonder if I missed any calls?

The pic is unrelated but cute. Think I have a little tailback on my hands?

Trick or Sick?

Sometimes kids are indecisive. Sometimes even Archie. However, indecisive is definitely NOT the word to describe Archie for his Halloween costume. He's been planning out his policeman costume for months now. No other offer for a different Halloween costume deterred him for more than half a second or so. He is a pretty cute policeman, right? The only problem is it's now Halloween and he's been sick for three days. I took him to the doctor this morning, and he has some kind of respiratory issue requiring an inhaler, antibiotics, etc. I'm just praying it won't turn into whatever he had in Thailand that time that required a hospital stay because despite a few interesting diversions in the hospital, it wasn't fun for anyone. Thankfully, no one has mentioned anything quite that drastic yet.

This Monday we went on a Halloween parade at a local nursing home as a little service project. He enjoyed dressing up, and his teacher is going to let him wear his police uniform when he does come back to school. Hope everyone behaves that day :)