Pre Christmas

 This has been a busy week.  Have I been saying that a lot lately?  Most of the business of the week stems from the fact that we are leaving in two days.  We have had a lot to do to get ready for that, including pre-Christmas, which I will get to in a minute.

First though, this week was my dad's 70th birthday.  We celebrated with an adults' evening out with all my siblings and my parents.  We went to a nice dinner and just had an enjoyable evening chatting with each other.  It was nice to have a calm night out to counterbalance all the crazy.

So now for the crazy, I have been working on sorting clothes my girls have outgrown to take to my nieces in Arizona.  I was looking through the old 3T box (Elsie is a 5T now) and Elsie found a sweater that my grandmother had knit for my sisters and I when we were little.  Obviously, she has long outgrown it, but neither one of us were ready to part ways with it and Elsie declared it her favorite and how she had been looking and looking for it.  I caved and told her she could wear it and she has worn it almost everyday since.  Here she is rocking it at the park, working on her pumping skills on the swings.

This week my sisters and I had out annual sister Christmas exchange.  This year, I had Becca and got her some booties.  Emily had me and she got me some clothes for our family pictures in Arizona.  Unfortunately, they didn't fit quite right, but that meant we got to have a bonus sister day and go shopping together.

Also this week, we went to our friends, the Shaws, holiday party.  The kids had a great time decorating cookies, playing ping pong and hide and seek, and eating treats until they were sick.

On top of all that, we also squeezed in a basketball tournament this weekend.  It was a tough one for us.  We lost in the championship game and came in second for the tournament.

All of this happened before tonight when we finally got to have our pre-Christmas.  The whole point of pre-Christmas was so we didn't have to take all of our present to Arizona with us. Truth be told most of the gifts were filler this year and legitimately came from the dollar store, aside from some new Christmas PJs.  That is because the main attraction was a big one...we are going to Disneyland!  The kids knew that we are leaving Tuesday, and we are, but the change is we aren't going straight to Arizona.  We are spending 3 days a Disneyland first.  Once the kids figured it out, C.C. said, "Oh! That's why all the not so good gifts".  Nothing like a kid to tell it like it really is.  Everyone is very excited.  The next two days are going to be long while we wait!