M O N E Y

Santa knows how much Emily loves money. It is one of the things she plays with the most. He thought it would be a good idea to leave money, he had collected form his travels, for Emily. He enlisted help from elves far and near and now Emily has over 150 pieces of foreign money. Besides the Mary Poppins outfit, this was her favorite present...she played with it most of the day!

Spit Spot

In keeping with her tradition, Emily only asked for one thing for Christmas this year and it happened to be a Mary Poppins outfit. Her BIG Mary Poppins phase was 2 years ago so I am not sure where this idea came from but with the help from a lot of elves she received a great costume. She wore it all of Christmas Day, even to the movies!

Presents and Pizza

After we finished ice skating we brought all the kids back to our house for presents and pizza. 

It was a great day!

 Emily and the girls

 Junior

 Betty

 Princess inspecting her gift

group shot!

Christmas Eve

For the fourth year in a row we had many of "Doug's Kids" over on Christmas Eve. We went ice skating first and I have to say, they were all a bit better than last year. Emily was in heaven because we brought Gabby with us too!

Emily pushed with only the left foot and glides on the right, never vice versa.

 Betty

 Peace, Betty ( my favorite), and Julie

Gabby and Emily

In Emily's Exact Words

"On Thursday I was so excited about gingerbread day! Because I love to decorate and frost the candy. We didn't get any work done at school that day. I also handed out candy canes to my friends at school. We also made cookies. We ate one cookie that was already decorated and we decorated a cookie and ate it!"

Art Class

For 9 weeks Emily took an art class at The Currier. Below are a few things she made, most projects they worked on for more than one week.  They learn about different artists, an artists perspective, different techniques...she loves it all!

 Clay

 an owl made from model magic

 still life

 learning about Picasso

sculpture

One Minute Challenge

How could I have missed this one! Johnny watched Emily do the one minute challenge with Grammy last weekend and he decided to do one of his own. Emily was impressed that he wrote ELF 36 times!

Johnny

Our Elf returned on Thanksgiving weekend as he does every year. Emily really LOVES Johnny and could not be more thrilled about it. She says goodnight to him, says goodbye when she leaves for school and goes to see him as soon as she gets home. This year Johnny has been doing more interesting things, and not just hiding in different places. He built a house out of a box and asked Emily to decorate it, he played Go Fish with the girl elf, and he even did a little real fishing of his own.

And of course, he loves to sneak an Oreo now and then....but who doesn't?

Charmingfare Farm at Christmas

Last night we went to The Lighted Winter Wonderland at Charmingfare Farm. We went on a horse drawn carriage ride through the woods. There we many Christmas lights along the way and at the end of the ride we saw Santa (in his farm outfit), his reindeer and several other friends. Grammy also came with us which made Emily very happy!

 feeding the reindeer

Faneuil Hall

After our Tea we went to Faneuil Hall for a little shopping and a snack!

What a great day!

The Fancy Tea

We had a wonderful day at The Ritz with Mrs. Clause and characters from The Nutcracker. We ate a delicious brunch, did art projects, decorated (and ate) Christmas cookies, played games, listened to stories, and the most important part...wore a fancy dress!

 This Clara was so sweet. She is in 14 shows in Boston.

The Limo

Today we went to Boston with some of our favorite gal pals. We went to a "fancy tea" at The Ritz, more on that in another post. The girls knew we were going but what they did not know was how we were getting to Boston. We rented a limo, as a surprise, and the girls LOVED every minute in it!

 It has been my experience that some of the best photos I have from weddings I was in, were taken in the limo, The photo above is the best of every girl, at the same time!

Drinking sparkly cider from a "fancy glass" and Emily is eating a HUGE cookie!

A New Style

While decorating the tree yesterday Emily found the tree skirt and LOVED wearing it! It was very, very twirly!

Day 1

On Saturday we had our first ski day of the season. The snow guns were blasting all day and the skiing was actually great! Emily used poles for the first time.....the jury is still out if she is ready for them....we will see...

Now, we just need some real snow!