Christmas in Decatur

Sue's pretty mantle.

Sidney and Madeline. They have such a good time together! Sweet cousins!

Present time! Matthew loved the Spiderman bag!

Granny and MaMaw

Matthew licked the pie top clean.

Nan and pie.

MaMaw, Hanna, Susan and Emily played a hilarious game of Truth Or Dare.

Testing out Granny's walker.

Hanna and Matthew.

Poor Jason got drug into a Truth Or Dare game....

Daycare Christmas Party

Today was Matthew's class Christmas party at daycare. They had a Little Golden Book exchange!

The table. He was excited to have a penguin on the napkins!

This was the ONLY bite of cupcake he ate! He was much more interested in the grapes and crackers. Jeff ended up eating the cupcake!

Choosing his Golden Book. Each child brought one tagged 'To My Friend' and they each chose one to open.

Christmas morning is going to be fun this year, he's finally understanding how to tear into a present!

His book was one of farm/barnyard animals! Too cute!

Goody bag in hand, time to head home!

Imogene Strikes Again

Each morning Madeline looks to see what Imogene has done next! This morning we found her riding on a donkey Dee painted alongside Mary and Joseph!

The Little Wrapper

Madeline has really enjoyed helping with wrapping the gifts this year. She has wrapped quite a lot of them, and we have gone through TONS of tape! I couldn't resist this picture. Madeline had just finished wrapping a gift and it was so funny how she cuts the section out right in the middle! She is proud of herself for her wrapping!

Oh NO Imogene!

Imogene wrote on Madeline's bathroom mirror with MY lipstick!!!

2nd Grade Christmas Party

On Thursday Madeline's class got to dress up as Elves and have their class party. It was a lot of fun. This is her with her teacher, Mrs. Sokol.

Doing Christmas crafts.

They played pint the red nose on Rudolph. Madeline started to head off in the wrong direction...

....but made a good recovery! She got her red nose on the antlers!!

The party food:

One of the activities was to make each other into snowmen with toilet paper, crepe paper scarves and black cut out buttons.

Courtney, Madeline and Taylor.

Rotary

So we only have 1 house phone, mainly just for a 911 land line. This phone is upstairs in the kitchen. Madeline has begun enjoying talking on the phone with her best friend from her old school but the kitchen is not very private (unless she closes herself up in the pantry). Tonight she asked me to put a phone downstairs so she can talk down there. The only spare phone I had was an old one from Dee's house in Lexington- you guessed it, a rotary phone. She's had this phone as long as I remember so it's creeping up on 35 years at least, she might have even moved it up from Leeds with her. I plugged it in and told her there was a phone ready. She ran down there, looked around and said 'Where is the phone?' I showed it to her and just stared at it and finally said 'How do you work this???' ha ha ha We had to have a lesson in dialing a rotary phone and I must admit it is a lot 'funner' than just pushing buttons. Kind of like people saying a manual shift car is more fun to drive than an automatic. She thought it was great and told her friend all about this great 'new' phone we have downstairs! ha ha
On a side note, I found a site online after seeing it in People magazine where people buy refurbished rotary phones in fun retro colors.......... some even $150!!!

Introducing Imogene!

The elf Madeline made this weekend has become a trouble maker around the house. Doesn't she just look like a floosy? Very tart-like. She sits on the mantle during the day and gets into trouble around the house at night.
We had an elf that came a few years ago when we left out crackers and water to lure him in. His name was Hermy, same one that wanted to be a dentist from the Christmas movie. We were GLAD to see him go back to the North Pole with Santa that year, he wreaked havoc all over our house for 2 weeks. I guess since Madeline made Imogene and didn't lure her here she won't be going back with Santa.......

Matthew's little elf is sweet and stays put. I think we will name him Clark in honor of Clark Griswold.

The first day we found that Imogene had built a ladder up to the top of the china cabinet to get to the Halloween candy....

She got caught on the edge of the bowl and we found her!

Madeline gave her a sucker when she put her back up on the mantle....

And when we woke up this morning we found that she had gotten ALL of the suckers she could find and tested them all out! They were stuck all over the bathroom counter! What a mess! Imogene has a sweet tooth.

Fun

Cheese! With a chocolate mouth!

This is for you Julie! She even eats dinner in your fancy dress up!

Sassafrass.

Madeline took this one!