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Her Style

We’re all prepared for Christmas, with the exception of ONE very, very difficult person to shop for. We’re simply stuck and have ZERO ideas. Other than that, I think we’re pretty excited for the coming events. Linda sent Maggie some Reindeer Dust and we’re planning on sprinkling some on Christmas Eve. Maggie won’t really care or have an idea of what we’re doing, but I have no doubt that she’ll like throwing the stuff outside.

I’ve been feeling myself cranking the Christmas tunes (side note: have you heard the Lower Lights Christmas album? Cjane has heavily promoted it, and we got it. LOVE it. Find it here.) a bit louder and staring at our tree with a bit more feeling of excitement than in years past. I think it must be having a child in the house that is interested in the presents and Santa, or at least pictures of him. We wrapped a present for my dad that Maggie really, really liked and she keeps going and finding it under the tree, shaking it and saying ”Ampa, ________” (I had to put the blank there in case he reads it and then it won’t be a surprise, but I’m pretty sure that he’ll have to open that present FIRST this year.

We’ve been asking Maggie to get her vest on when we’re ready to leave and she totally does it, but it is almost always upside down. The first time she did it we zipped it up (or is it down) and went happily on our way. That night we ended up going out to sushi and Barry had to conceal our laughter when she crammed a bunch of sushi in without hesitating around the big collar of the upside down vest. Since then, I’ve just decided to go with it and every so often we’ll get some weird looks, but I’m secretly really proud that she’s getting her clothes on.  Because the alternative is this:

I’m thinking that it might not be socially acceptable for her to ride along in the ‘Beep Beep Car’ at the grocery store or pick out books at the library without any clothes on. You know? So we’re encouraging her in her fashion endeavors. She NEVER wants help and is very determined.

It isn’t clear who she gets her fashion sense from? Barry? Me? Clearly we had a little help, right? There is no way that I could have buckled my shoes with my chubby feet. And Barry getting his collar to perfectly fan out?

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Behind the Card

With the exception of maybe one or two people, there probably isn’t really anyone interested in seeing how we made Maggie’s Christmas card this year. It was a fun project to do, but I’m thankful that we don’t have to do it on a regular basis. I’d had an idea in my head and what we ended up getting was pretty close to what I’d imagined.

I picked up some extra tall wrapping paper and we taped it to the wall. We originally were going to try and do a whole family shot, but with the amount of space that we were workig with along with my camera that isn’t remote friendly, we decided to stick to a Maggie only photo.

Barry wasn’t opposed to being a test subject, however. Isn’t he cute? And now you know where Maggie gets the cheese-ball smile.

While we were setting up the wrapping paper, Maggie was entertaining herself in the other room trying to ride her bike in boots. The girl loves boots, I can not say that enough. We tried to convince her that she’d have better luck riding the bike without shoes, but she wasn’t into that. We brought her into the photo shoot room and she was ALL about being a test subject with Papa, cue the cheese-ball smile.

After changing her outfit and fluffing her locks, Mag-Pie was ready to work her magic.

But she kept wanting to touch the wrapping paper or the lights, which is totally understandable because it isn’t every day that we’ve got our wall covered in Ho, Ho, Ho paper and insist that she stand directly next to plugged in lights.

But I think she did pretty good.  I only wish that I would have thought to take pictures of Barry behind me and beside me. My Man was a clown and Mags ate it up. Again, cue the cheese-ball smile.

We tried to get her to hold the chalk board, but it was slippery and she was too busy laughing at her Papa to concentrate on holding it.

After a few more cheese-ball smiles, Maggie decided that she was done and proceeded to cross her arms in protest and announced that it was nap time.

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Holiday Cheer With a Dirty Snowman

This past weekend Kara (a.k.a. Elfie) and Ryan hosted a holiday party for our group of friends and it was nothing short of delightful from start to finish. I appreciate my hometown girlfriends and when I think about Maggie making friends and maintaing friendships of her own, I hope she gets a taste of what it truly means to have friends that span all the seasons of life.

Some friends are ‘old’ friends in this group and some are ‘new.’  Kara, for example, I met when I was only months old and she was just new to the world. We don’t even remember meeting. Krista, on the on the other hand, I didn’t meet until 7th grade and she’s  a ‘new’ friend. Everyone else falls in between that and their own ‘meeting’ stories are interwoven and have the overwhelming ‘we’re supposed to be friends’ tone.

We’ve since brought dudes into the mix and they mix and mingle just fine when we all gather. As the night wound down, the girls were in one room and the guys in another. They guys talked tools, the world problems and their jobs. The girls? We talked childbirth. No wonder the men stayed in the kitchen.

Kara and Ryan’s  house was beautifully decorated and full of yummy food and tasty drinks. In fact, Kara even invented a drink called The Dirty Snowman. It was rather intense, but people kept going back for more, so it had to have been good! Kara and I got it in our heads that we wanted to create a make-shift photo booth and snap photos of everybody.

It felt like we were 10 again with some hair-brained idea that we were uber excited about. Like the time that we thought we were going mountain climbing and attached a rope to the a tree on a very, very dangerous rock wall. When an adult finally got wind of what we were doing/had done, we were told not to play in that area again. Or the time that we went to Hawaii in 6th grade and decided to bring our roller blades….that was before they charged you for luggage. Or the time that we decided to go hiking and camping, but ended up spending the night at my grandparent’s house (we were almost in college for that one).

Anyhow, everybody else went along with the idea and even subjected themselves to very hot Christmas lights, which I’m kind of surprised didn’t either catch on fire of burn somebody…now that I think about it. As our excitement grew and we contemplated all the areas in their house to use that would accommodate my lens capabilities – the bathroom shower curtain would have been AWESOME – and have good lighting, we landed on a corner in the living room. Ryan offered, and I accepted, to bring in industrial lighting….and come to think of it, those lights got really, really hot too. It’s a wonder that we all didn’t get burned in some way.

Once we got rolling, it was really fun, or at least I think the girls thought it was fun. Some of the guys had tortured looks on their faces, but since the girls had all reverted back to giggling, loud chatter-boxes, there wasn’t much room to argue. I’m quite pleased with what we got.

By the time we wrapped up the lights and took the last picture, it was time to move onto the gift exchange. Barry and I made out like bandits because we scored a cute dish towel/ hot pad and coasters that Marc and Lara made…SCORE!!  Erin won the award for being the nicest of us all because she “stole” Kara’s gift of toilet paper. Erin also won the award for luckiest because wrapped in the toilet paper were scratch tickets.  I am totally stealing that idea someday.

Great, great night with very sparkly people.

Thanks again Kara & Ryan!