The Thornfield Manor: More Jingle Bells? --- Ok!

My daughter had an absolutely lovely Christmas. She was beset on all sides by adoring relatives who wanted to do nothing except play with her and sing Christmas carols, and such. I am going to chronicle Christmas in several different blogs, since there is too much to tell for just one posting.

The week before Christmas: Ama, Ganpa, Aunt B, Aunt M arrive. Momma is on call every other night. Julianna immediately puts everyone to work pushing her strollers in and out of the living room to take the babies see the tree, as well as singing Christmas carols, the favorite being Jingle Bells which is accompanied by the shaking of bells (which were originally napkin rings, but who am I to say).

Ganpa and Ama and Daddy got to work on the basement, which I am happy to report is almost done!! Hurray!! The trim and wood is all in, the doors are in, the plumbing and electrical have passed inspection (hurray...only the fourth attempt at the plumbing. It looks good now!!) I have the curtains pinned, and will hopefully get them sewn and up in time for the inauguration of the basement for the Superbowl. After a few false starts, the TV is now hanging (ironically they didn't give us the right screws), the subwoofer is in the closet (after having to add an outlet in the closet for obvious reasons), and all the lights work (we (I) blew out one of the lights while working on the outlet, and had to replace one of the canister recessed lights from below...NOT ideal, but I was able to get it done.) We are hopefully going to order carpet this week, which should go in over the next couple weeks and be all set for the party and look real nice and be warmer.

But, back to JC. They have a tradition in our neighborhood where everyone gathers on Christmas eve outside the woods, sings Christmas carols (the selections were a little religious for me) and then Santa comes out of the woods and brings all the kids toys. It was a beautiful night, the whole thing only took about 20 minutes (ideal when it is 10 degrees), and JC was a alight with wonder. One of the best parts for me was when she was doing the "Santa watch" and looking out the window like Oliva does in "Oliva saves Christmas" and she saw Santa headed into the woods about 30 minutes before everything started...her eyes were like saucers!! Needless to say, we had some sleeping issues after all that. She got a box of food that you can cut apart with a wooden knife (the pieces are velcroed together), and was VERY excited about that.

Other activities leading up to Christmas included baking bread with Ama, and generally causing trouble. Here are some pictures of our extremely busy little person.