The Stockings Are Hung

This evening, Peeper and I put up the rest of the Christmas decorations.

We'll flip those number over each day, to spell out a Christmas message.

This year, I let Peeper fill up the advent calendar tree with candy. I will add notes about Christmas activities.

Why yes, "12" is written on the drawer upside down. You got a problem with that?

Oh Christmas Tree

Lowes wasn't too bad for Black Friday, and we were able to find a tree we liked after only looking at, oh, eight or ten of them.

Peeper helped Shrike to get it out to the car.

This is the first time that we've transported the tree in the car with Peeper. Evidently, we've been taking two cars all this time for no reason.

While Shrike was at work, Peeper and I got the tree up and decorated. I wasn't moving fast enough for her with the boring parts, so I thought I'd occupy her by asking her to put the drawers on the advent calendar in the right places. Turns out she needed more help than I thought with that. So much for that plan.

She was very helpful with the lights, though.

The finished product.

These are Cornels

Thank you, Peeper, for that addition to the English language.

Butter Heads

For the Thanksgiving feast at Peeper's school yesterday, each of the "Children's House" (preschool/kindergarten) classes contributed to the meal.

One class made applesauce, one peeled the potatoes and Peeper's class made butter. When I asked her about it later, she said that she'd not actually participated in making it. For some reason she seemed to think it would be "messy." Which is sort of bizarre, coming from this child who is never happier than when she's in the mud.

We've actually been talking about making butter ever since reading about it in the Little House books, so I figured, what the hell? We'll make some and take it to Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow.

Shrike was going to the store, so I asked her to pick us up a pint of cream. She said, "I couldn't reach the pints, so I got two half-pints." Appropriate, I suppose, in a very Little House sort of way.

And just as well, given that this jelly jar was the best thing I could come up with to make it in, and it wouldn't have held the whole pint.

So, we put it in the jar, and shook. . .

. . . and shook . . .

. . . and shook . . .

. . . and shook . . .

. . . and made whipped cream!

Then we shook a little more, and voila! After about thirty minutes of shaking, we had butter!

I poured off the buttermilk and labelled it, and thought I should google some recipes, so it didn't go to waste. This turned out not to be an issue, as Peeper drank it all, and said it was yummier than the cream.

I decided to go a slightly different route for the second half-pint.

Whipped cream.

Butter! It took five minutes.

We added a bit of sea salt and mixed it all up and now it's ready to go to Thanksgiving dinner.

This really did happen today. I have no idea why I thought today was 11/23/13 when I was labelling the jar.

And, of course, the helper gets to lick the bowl.

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Thanksgiving Feast

This morning was the Thanksgiving Feast at Peeper's school. Shrike and I volunteered to help with preparations (which mostly involved slicing a lot of pumpkin bread).

Here's Peeper enjoying her lunch. She started with the pumpkin bread, and I overheard her telling the girl next to her, "Try the brownie!" She also ate about half a dinner roll. That's it.

Back to Real Life

Peeper went back to school today, after a week off for our trip to Texas, and she was not happy about it at all. I thought I'd never get her out of bed, or out of the house. Evidently, I am a meanie, and she doesn't like school anymore.

That's a shame.

P!nk!

Several months ago, I got crazy and decided to surprise Shrike with tickets to see P!nk in concert in DC, and tonight was the night!

As you can see, I went all out on the seats. Ahem. Yeah, I think there were about ten rows farther back than us.

Here's Peeper right before we left, dressed up as Santa. Our friend and little J babysat. She tucked Peeper in in our bed, and they slept in hers, and she seems to have done well.

Warning: The sound here is awful; you might want to turn down your volume.

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(Yeah, this post is post-dated. We didn't get in until about 2 am.)

Parade Night

This evening was our local holiday parade, and of course, everyone in the town was there. The temperatures were in the low 30s and we actually had some snow!

I put Peeper in her snow pants and big coat and multiple hats, so she was toasty warm. I, on the other hand, really need to buy some longjohns.

Waiting for the parade to start, with her light-up wand that I bought from a wandering vendor.

The crowd, almost an hour before starting time. You may notice the chairs along the sidewalk. People start putting those out to reserve their spots at least a day in advance, probably sooner than that. It's crazy.

The big finish of the parade is Santa, who lights the big tree on the square as he goes by. Cold as we were, Peeper insisted that we go over so she could get a good, up-close look at it.

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Heading Home

Today started out a little iffy - Peeper threw up twice before time to leave for the airport!

I was trying to tell myself that she was just gagging from her asthma cough, but that didn't explain why she was lying on the couch, and coming to sit in my lap was just too much effort for her.

She perked up after an hour or so, and said that she really wanted to go home, and thought she could make it, so we went for it. I was pretty nervous about both our tummies, but we made it!

Right after we got off the plane in Dallas, she started coughing and threw up a bit, right there on the floor of the airport, and got pretty droopy again for a while, but she was feeling better before the flight, and we both ended up sleeping most of the way.

Shrike was working this evening, so we had to drive ourselves to and from the airport, so that wasn't big fun, but we are now home, safe and sound, with a minimum of vomit along the way. Whew!

Coffee Date

Today was Anonymama's beauty shop day, so Peeper and I did our usual routine: Drop Grandma at the beauty shop, breakfast at Starbucks, go back to get Grandma and visit with her beauty shop ladies.

After that, we all went to lunch, and then let Peeper play for a way at the mall play area.