The Weekend

This weekend was quiet and productive all at the same time. Jim came home early on Friday to take a late confrence call. When he got home, he said how messy the coat closet had gotten. Evie and Annalise took this as their cue to clean it up. It was great! They took out all the shoes and organized the coats all themselves. Here are the cleaning elves I asked Santa to send me for Christmas.
Since Jim's phone call lasted longer than expected, Evie decided to organize the cans in the pantry. I think she has a future in grocery store shelf stocking. As I type this, she is organizing the shelf with the cereal and pasta.

Saturday was kind of a lazy day. The girls let us sleep in. They came down stairs and read books until we felt guilty enough to get out of bed and make them breakfast at 8:30. It was wonderful and yet another Christmas miracle.

Annalise spent most of the day in her jammies tending to her herd of pretend goats. This is the barn that she and dad made for the goats to sleep in.

Later in the day, we spread Christmas cheer all throughout the subdivision by going caroling.

The weather was a balmy 40 degrees, but we still needed cookies and hot cider to warm up when the caroling was done.

On Saturday evening, we went to a Hanukkah celebration at one of our neighbors' house. We ate latkes and jelly donuts. Then we heard the story of Hanukkah, listened to prayers, lit candles, and played dreidel. The girls had a great time and we enjoyed the adult company. This morning, Annalise tried to hide all her gelt (gold candy coins) in her room. We had to store them in the pantry, but she is currently using her dreidel for storage of goat food (what else?).

And today we finally saw the big guy. Evie asked for a candy jewelry maker (to make jewelry out of candy a la easy bake oven style) and Annalise asked for a real live baby goat. Santa asked if we had a farm. We said no, that he could bring us one of those too.