Christmas

December has come and gone - and it was jam packed full of fun!  Per her usual Zoe would not let me decorate anything without her so we had a great time putting out all the Christmas decor together!  (I am SO glad I have a girl).  Amazingly, BOTH Zoe and Chase helped me decorate the tree until there were no more ornaments left!  They pretty much did the whole bottom half of the tree by themselves.  And we only broke one! They enjoyed it so much I went out and got some more ornaments for their little tree so they could add to it.  We did our usual activities - The Children’s Christmas parade, Gift of Christmas at Prestonwood which was totally amazing, Gift of Lights at Texas motor speedway (which Zoe had to pee so bad, we had to jump out and pee under the bleachers!), and our neighborhood did a sweet little thing called the jingle ride where Santa’s helpers drove their sleigh around picking up toys for less fortunate kiddos.  We hung out with friends and enjoyed just being home in the neighborhood. It was SO nice having my girl home from school for two whole weeks.  Although, the first day of break, Zoe wrote her teacher a note saying “I missed you today Ms. Y”  She is really progressing with her reading and writing.  The other day she made j a card that said “dery daddy  I miss you evreday at school. and I no thit you miss me to.  I love you. Zoe”  They are learning to spell phonetically and its so neat to see what she writes.  She is also into writing and illustrating little short stories. Pretty precious stuff about butterflies getting lost, etc.    Anyways, back to break -the kids really enjoyed just playing around the house and being together and having pajama days.  Tete and Charlie and Beth came for the first “round” of Christmas.  Zoe loved that Beth came because she colored and did art projects with her constantly!  Santa brought Zoe a Palace Pet and a Barbie and unicorn for Christmas.  She was so excited about that barbie!   Santa brought Chase a Hot Wheels Parking garage that just might go down as the best gift.. ever..  I can’t even pretend to count the number of hours that Chase (and Zoe and the cousins for that matter) have played with that garage and his bulk of hot wheels.  He can just play forever pushing those cars up and down the hall, back up the elevator and into their parking spots.  Zoe’s  favorite gift, she says, is the set of princess barbies and palace pets.  She always likes things that come in sets! Something else to “line up” in her parade I guess!  She also did quite a bit of drawing with new colors.  She is my little artist.  Chase, as he says, likes to scribble scrabble.  Chase loves cars, Zoe loves coloring,princesses and rainbows (still).  My favorite recent quote is from Zoe.  She is always wanting to play teacher with Chase (who is not the best student because he gets bored).  So, one day I sat down to draw with her but she said she wanted to play school.  Then she said, “Mommy, Chase never wants to play school with me, but I was just born to be a teacher!”  Oh my sweet girl.  Our second crowd came through New Years weekend and of course the kids loved being together and played so hard they both were totally exhausted by the time everyone left.  Zoe is so happy to finally have a girl cousin to play girl things with!  But it was a great Christmas and I feel immensely blessed.