Jolly Holidays

These past few weeks have been BUSY! I know everyone else is feeling likewise so suffice it to say we have been very into trying to keep everything balanced here in our world. Kidwells and Christmas are like peanut butter and jelly. Seriously, our family is obsessed with this season. It brings out the best in our family. Our tree is up, lit and decorated. There are stockings hung, lights strung, cookies baking, carols sung. Whenever people tell me they hate Christmas I feel a physical urge to bop them on the head. There is so much magic this time of year that it is actually visible if you look for it. People hold the doors for their neighbors when they otherwise would rush to go first and not even do the "shove-the-door-open-wide-enough-for-yourself-and-if-they-hurry-they-won't-get-clipped" move. Snow covers lights outside so that they give off that warm glow beneath the fluffy cover. I mean have you ever seriously looked at freshly fallen snow? It literally glitters in the winter sun. Alright, now that you all have diabetes from how sickeningly sweet I am being... I just wanted to say how blessed we feel this season.


I was making dinner last night. Spaghetti and meatballs were on the menu. Lily LOVES spaghetti. I mean loves it like a true Italian girl should. The kid has shreds of Italian in her but you'd think she was first generation the way she horks this stuff down. So we are eating said meal and Lily is nomming my spaghetti after she already finished a bowl of her own. I slice her off a piece of meatball and she eats it while making a weird face. We continue our steady inhalation of noodles then I try to offer her another bite of meatball. She backs away and says,
"They don't taste good very. But they look lovely!"
I burst out laughing as did Mark. Just now as I was typing that it made me laugh because I picture her face and the inflection in her voice as she said it. I just love the 3 year old lingustics of saying "good very" instead of "very good". Add to it the fact that she tried to sugar coat the insult with a 60+ year old's version of a compliment about "looking lovely" so as to spare my feelings.

Lily is super excited about Christmas this year. She has so far talked to Santa on the cell phone... oh yeah. Placed, replaced and reorganized the placement of her ornaments on the tree. They are all at around three feet high around the base of the tree. And she is vigilant at moving her friend mouse in his little calendar to the correct day so that she knows how far away Christmas is.

I am trying to keep making sure to document these memories. So forgive the lapse in blogging. But to make up for it I have some pictures of the Christmas decorations.