Story Time

I took it easy on myself, and made today's Christmas Countdown activity "Library Story Time," which of course, we do anyway on Thursday evenings.

I justified it by telling her that the stories and craft would be about Christmas and that we'd be giving Ms. Jessica her cookies.

Works for me.

I think the cookies were a hit. After we left, she posted on Facebook, "I just ate two ginormous gluten-free peanut butter cookies, and I have four more to take home with me! Thank you so much, Whozat!!! :)"

The craft was one that I've seen on Pinterest, these thumbprint Christmas lights.

Nailed it.

Baking Cookies

Today's Christmas Countdown activity was to bake cookies. There will be more of this in the upcoming weeks, I'm sure.

Tomorrow is the last library story time until January, so we wanted to take a little Christmas gift to Ms. J, the children's librarian. Not only does she do a great job with the story time, but she's also been incredibly helpful with finding books for Peeper, and twice she's held back brand-new books that she thought she'd be interested in!

We're leaning toward just doing cookies or something similar for Peeper's teachers at school and dance class (there are a lot of both), but Ms. J is gluten-free, so I wasn't sure what to do.

Then Shrike said, "Why don't you make the gluten-free peanut butter cookies?"

But, of course! The World's Easiest Peanut Butter Cookies, made with only peanut butter, sugar, and eggs!

I'm sure that Shrike's brainstorm had nothing to do with the fact that they are like her favorite cookies in the world. I'm sure she was just thinking of Ms. J.

I didn't take any photos of us making them, but suffice it to say that Peeper helped, Peeper ate sugar - both brown and white - with a spoon, we both threw caution to the wind and ate the raw dough, and the ones that I sneaked were as delicious as always.

I hope Ms. J likes them!

Baby Jesus

Peeper's class at school is rehearsing for their Christmas program, so she's going around singing "Happy birthday, Jeez-US! I'm so glad it's Chris-MUS!" and she's decided that this poor, pitiful doll is Baby Jesus.

First, she was walking around with him, singing "I've got Baby Jesus in my arms. He's so proud to be in my arms!" and later, she told me, "I'm Joseph!"

I asked, "Baby Jesus' Joseph?"

"No, I'm Joseph!"

Okay, let's try that one again.

"You mean as in Mary and Joseph?"

"Yes. Mary has a headache. That's why I'm up with Baby Jesus."

Trapped!

Uh oh.

Oh Shut Up.

Shopping for the Salvation Army

Peeper's Christmas Countdown activity for today was to help me shop for groceries for the family that the MOMS Club has "adopted" for the holidays.

Part of our assignment was to provide Christmas dinner, plus other food.

We bought a smidge over $75 of food, plus a $25 gift card for perishables, and nicely filled a couple of printer paper boxes.

Not too bad, I suppose.

Game Night

It looks like Christopher and the cast of The Nutcracker had some fun last night.

Santa!

Peeper's Christmas Countdown activity today was a trip to the mall to visit with Santa, and of course, take some photos.

As usual, she hopped right up into his lap, and had a good ol' time.

She didn't talk much, mostly just giggled, but she finally did tell him what she wants for Christmas: "Some surprises."

Okay, then.

Then we went out to dinner (after changing her clothes!) and made a not-so-quick trip to Target.

A few photos in front of the Christmas tree before we went.

The real deal.

Dancing with Mommy, while waiting for the photo to print.

At dinner, pretending to be snowmen, with baby carrots. This was Mommy's idea, of course.

Special Delivery

Wow! Look what Christopher brought back from the North Pole last night!

Chain-Chain-Chain

Today's advent calendar note told Peeper that we were going to make Christmas decorations. 

I had a few different things in mind, but all we actually ended up getting done was a paper chain. All three of us worked on it, and that was very nice. At first, I cut long strips and Peeper was supposed to cut them in half, but that didn't go so well, so instead, she colored on whole sheets of paper, and glued bits of other-colored paper to some, and then Shrike and I cut out the strips and glued the links together. 

Before her bath, she made me go get the chain and put it on the tree. (The glue was drying, so we didn't put it on earlier.)

When Little Miss Hide-From-the-Camera saw me taking a photo of it, she ran over and posed beside it!