In order to feel caught up on all our fun this will be an entry that is all over the place!!!
We started the month with....
Wing Christmas Party for the kids - Russ loves this party on base. They open up a hanger and the various spouses clubs on base fill it with blow up slides, bouncy houses and have snacks and activities for the kids. The big event is Santa arrives on an F-15 and then comes to his throne at the party and stays put until every child has had a chance to visit with him as many times as they want. Rachel has fun too - but this is one activity that Russ always asks to go to and he loves that Santa comes in on the jet. He doesn't want to see Santa at the mall or anywhere else.
Gulf Breeze Zoo & Zoo Lights - This little zoo is about 2 hours away. It is bigger than our local zoo, so we thought it would be fun to go in the late afternoon and hang around long enough to see their lights display and then go out for dinner afterwards. It was kind of a sad little zoo. You could tell it has seen better days, but recent hurricanes and tropical storms in the last 5 years have taken its toll on the zoo financially. We did go to a great restaurant - McGuire's Irish Pub on the way home. We haven't been in years and it didn't disappoint! It is fun place with great character, food and beer (they brew their own, but sadly don't sell it outside of the pub).
Volunteer at school - that last week before Christmas was a blur of activities at school for both kids. I did get to help do some fun things in Russell's class. I took cookies and we decorated them for a fun Friday snack. His teacher asked me to help with their ornament making activity. And then I was able to help at the pancake breakfast party too! On the ornament day, his class did the whole "Thank you Mrs. Bright for helping" in unison kind of thing and Russell says afterwards to the class "Yea, my mom is nice like that. She likes to help". What a sweetie.
Rachel's class had a party with a mini recital of carols sung by her class. Only like 3 kids would stand up in front of all the parents and sing for us. Rachel not being one of them. She was just starting to get a cold and not feeling too great. But it was cute to see the others sing. She had been singing the songs at home beforehand and hasn't stopped singing the songs since.
Christmas - It was just the 4 of us and it was quiet but very enjoyable. Christmas Eve we went out and looked at lights and oohed and aaahed. Russ was very specific about what type of snack to leave out for Santa. He was very cute and excited!
The kids got up about 7:30am on Christmas and we weren't too sure how they would go about the whole present thing - would they tear into all of them and then play? Russ was so cute all month reading tags on presents. The funniest comment was on a gift that said "To: Aimee From: Mom" Russ asked why I had given myself a present???
Santa brought Rachel a Dora bike and Russ an electric crash car set. Boy, that Santa is really good. It took about 3 hours to open all the presents. The kids would open something and then have to play with it, read it, etc. So as family would call to see how the kids liked their gifts, we'd have to call back later - we hadn't got to their gifts yet! It was fun to watch them open things and get so excited about each gift and want to play with it right then. Needless to say, the kids got tons of new toys and have been playing nonstop with all of them.
Later Christmas Day, Adam looked at me and said "And tomorrow we start really getting ready for Rowan". Which leads us to the next entry...... but first a couple of Christmas morning pics:
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