Tidbits

This blog post is random snapshots from the month of December.  I looked through and selected the pictures that I thought were interesting, cute, funny, etc.  :-)

Kaelyn was watching a movie from Netflix called "The Twelve Dogs of Christmas". She went and got every stuffed dog that she has that she could find.  I'm not sure if she actually had twelve but she had quite a few (I think maybe she had 10).

One afternoon, Kaelyn asked me to help her find "something for her pals to stand up on".  It took me a bit to figure out that she was wanting a stage so that her pals could put on a Christmas show.  We got a box for a stage and we even draped a blanket from the couch down over the box so that they could have a "curtain" over them until it was time for the show to start.  She went and got her pretend microphone and then several of her pals got to take turns singing different Christmas songs.

This picture is especially for Kaelyn's Nana.  She got this elephant for Kaelyn more than a year ago because Kay loves elephants.  I walked in and found her like this one evening and thought it was cute.

Pictures from SeaWorld from their special Christmas celebration.  Every 30 to 45 minutes, the lights on the trees that you see on the water behind us were synchronized to Christmas music for an awesome light show.

I was on the third day of having the flu here.  I had actually felt much better during the day but by evening time I was starting to chill and my fever was back by the time we left.  That's why my face looks flushed even though it was a bit chilly out and I was freezing from the chills.  :-)

SeaWorld has so many neat extra things around the park on the nights when they have their Christmas celebration.  These elves were just standing around talking to people and getting pictures with people.  Kaelyn had on the elf hat so they made a pretty big deal about her being an elf too.  They sat and talked with her for a long time and she went on and on talking about her pals.  They didn't seem to mind and took as much time as she wanted to sit and talk.

Kaelyn thought this was hilarious.  I thought this was hilarious.  Buster was not even slightly amused.  The best part is that you can TOTALLY see all over his face how unimpressed he is here!  :-)

At least we didn't stick him up under the tree like this for a picture (though I thought about it).  :-)

This is just too cute - even though he did hate us at the moment.

And this was Kaelyn's day to be home with the flu though she bounced back much faster.  I know that you can see in her eyes that she wasn't feeling well but I still think the pictures of her are so cute.

This was at a Wal-mart stop on our LONG journey over Christmas - Salisbury, North Carolina to be specific.  This picture makes me smile.  :-)

These pictures are from the park in downtown Johnstown, New York.  We like to walk around and look at the decorations at some point while we are there if it's not too miserably cold.

Although Kaelyn is not a big fan of Santa Claus, she LOVES Rudolph.  So we walked through snow up around our ankles so that she could go sit in the sleigh and pretend she was driving the reindeer - and we could get pictures of her.  (Now that I think of it, I don't think you can actually drive reindeer as I stated above but you get what I'm saying)  :-D   :-D  :-D

Kaelyn took this for us though she wasn't thrilled about having to take her gloves off in order to snap the picture on the phone.  

Christmasy Stuff

On Christmas eve, we stopped in Lynchburg at Rachel and John's so that we wouldn't have to be on the road or in a motel over Christmas day.  We left there in an unplanned rush Christmas night when we found out a terrible snow storm was coming through much of our travel  route to New York.  It was supposed to hit Pennsylvania by early afternoon and we really needed to be ahead of it.  So we left around 10:00 at night Christmas night and drove through the night till almost 4:00 the next morning.  We stopped at a motel in Pennsylvania for a few hours of sleep before getting the rest of the way to Johnstown, New York.  It started snowing there that night and snowed and snowed.  Kaelyn was so excited.  We were at Wal-mart 

grabbing a few necessities when it started to snow and as we walked out to the car, she had her head turned all the way up to the sky and she said, "WooHoo!  It's real snow!"  (In Florida around Christmas time, "snow" is usually soap bubble snow made for poor deprived kids who have no real snow.  Thus the excitement over actual snow falling from the sky.)  Kevin had just bought a snow brush for the car when we were in Wal-mart and he got to try it out right away.  So as Kay stood there catching snow flakes and dancing around, Kevin brushed snow off the car. He was not nearly as enthusiastic about the snow as Kaelyn was.  :-) 

Kaelyn and Wyatt looking for special ornaments on the Christmas tree.

Time for presents!!!  :-)

Talking Tom and Ben pals.  

These characters started out as apps for smart phones/tablets.  Kaelyn loves playing with the apps because Talking Tom and Talking Ben repeat what you say but in funny voices.  She was quite thrilled when she found out that they had made them into plush toys, or pals as she calls them.

The pictures directly above and below are from when I opened my main present from Kevin.  He COMPLETELY took me by surprise this year!  It was a good-sized box but when I opened it, lying on top of a bunch of random "filler" items, was an envelope.  Inside the envelope was tickets for the opening night of  a Broadway performance of Mary Poppins down in West Palm Beach.  I didn't even know the show was coming anywhere near us.  I was so shocked and excited.

On a side note, this Tuesday night is the big night.  We are going to have dinner and then go to the show.  I am so excited!!!

More expressive moments  :-)

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

:-)

As I already mentioned, Kaelyn was thrilled with the snow.  New York didn't have much snow the week that we were there last Christmas so she was really hoping that it wouldn't be like that again.  She didn't need to worry about that.  There was an abundance of white stuff while we were there.  Unfortunately, it was bitterly cold most of the time so it wasn't real pleasant to be out in and play in for the most part like it is sometimes.

She talked us into building a snowman when we first got to Kevin's parents' house the next morning.  We weren't really dressed warmly enough to be out in the cold for a long time or to actually get down in the snow too much so we just built a baby snowman.  She seemed plenty happy with a little one and we were happy we didn't have to get totally soaked and miserably cold being outside in the snow for hours.

Kevin's niece, Larissa, making one of the balls for the snowman.

He's starting to come together.  :-)

He gets a mouth first...

...then some eyes and a nose.

A happy little girl with her little, baby snowman.  :-)

Larissa and Kaelyn

Kay and I

The three --- uh, four of us.  :-)

Christmas at home

Our Christmas this past year was kind of in "spurts" at least as far as opening presents.  The Friday before Christmas was the last day of school and work for Kaelyn and Kevin.  We were originally going to try to be ready to leave by the next day but between Kevin and I battling the flu for so long, we were short on energy and behind on things.  So Friday night, we lazed around and opened 3 or 4 presents.  Saturday, we started working on some packing and cleaning and then we spent the evening watching Little House on the Prairie Christmas episodes.  We ended up leaving Sunday evening and getting just a few hours up the road before we stopped for the night.  

Kay opening an Annoying Orange dart game.

Kev and Kay goofing off about one of Kevin's presents.  I was frustrated that the picture turned out blurry (as so many pictures I take turn out because my hands are shaky so often when I go to take pictures) but I wanted to keep it and share it anyway because I thought it was funny/cute.

She's growing up so fast!

We got Kaelyn a dollhouse for Christmas.  Since we were taking most of our presents with us to open on Christmas day (and at stops along the way on our trip to help with the MANY hours on the trip), we had to open a couple bigger ones before we left.

These pictures aren't exactly in chronological order I guess.  These next few were from sometime a bit earlier in December.

Santa Mickey sugar cookies..and milk...on  festive seasonal paperware.  :-)

Angry birds - a new ornament for Kay's little tree this year.

A Christmas shopping trip to the mall.  Kaelyn had no interest in seeing the big, jolly guy there but she very much enjoyed riding the train set up next to him.

The big tree in the middle of the mall.

For years now, I have tried to get Kaelyn interested in wrapping presents.  It has apparently never "clicked" with her what we are doing and she loses interest after 2 or 3 minutes.  When she saw me wrapping presents this year, she was curious and she said, "How are you going to turn those things into presents?"  I guess it has never dawned on her how wrapping things worked.  She was very interested in the "process" and even wanted to help.  As I posted on Facebook back around that time, the best part of having a seven-year-old girl helping wrap presents, is that one of Kevin's presents was wrapped in pretty, pink princess wrapping paper with a big gold bow and a name tag (almost as big as the present itself) that said "NO PEEKING".  :-)