New Belt

It's been a bit of a tough month for Allison with the excitement of Thanksgiving, followed by a birthday party, a snow day, a birthday, and then more parties plus the countdown until Christmas. But today was a pretty good day for her. She sat through the holiday concert at school, and told me she enjoyed watching her 6th grade buddy sing. Then she got a new belt in karate tonight. They earn a new one at the end of each session by collecting stripes on their old belts. At the end of class, though, her teacher commented on how much better she's gotten since she started and asked if she was coming for the next session (in a way that suggesed they wanted her back, not the "please say no" kindof way). I think, too, now her periodic (and much less frequent) antics amuse her instructors more than annoy them.

Birthdays and Holiday Parties

Here are some back notes....

Allison turned 6 last Thursday. Her birthday party was the Sunday before. I believe the kids had fun, but Brian and I were pretty exhausted. First we cut out cookies and while the cookies were baking, the kids played a pin-the-bow-on-the-cat game (just like at my 6th birthday party) and then hit a pinata in the basement. Allison really wanted a pinata. Then we had cake, opened presents, and finally decorated the cookies. We then sent 8 kids hoped up on sugar home to their parents for dinner.





Also that weekend, Brian had his company holiday party, which was followed by a terrible morning of standing in line for Wicked tickets at the PAC. After 3 hours, including one with Jacob after Brian and Allison had to go to their holiday party, I ended up getting tickets by calling Dad and having him order them when they went online at ticketmaster at 10am.

Then Jacob had his daycare holiday party. Here is a picture of him singing with his friends on stage. It was equally cute to see the kids on stage singing as it was to look out to a sea of cameras and camcorders in the audience.

Snow Day!

We've shoveled three times today. No school all around.




(Note - the shovel is for scale - it's upright. The kids are sitting on top of the snowbank along the driveway.)


New rule in the Douglas household - "No snowangels in the street"

Thanksgiving

I'm belated in posting the Thanksgiving pictures. Apologies - they're from the crappy camera.