I love... winter?

Before I get into all the hoopla for Christmas, I have to pass on the info that Madi had her staples removed this morning and it was quite the traumatic experience {almost more so than getting them IN!!}.  The nurse came rushing in to make sure we weren't killing her, that's about how loud her terrified screams were.  Of course, if you were being pinned to a table by your mom while a doctor came at your head with scissor-looking things, you'd probably be pretty freaked out too!  SO sad!  Trent, our family doctor and friend, did it as fast as he could - one staple actually flew across the room and the other fell and got caught in her curls in the rush.  Blah!! 

You MAY be able to tell in the pic, but rest assured that it's healing well and as a memo to all for future reference - he said that if you or your child ever have a head trauma like Madi's and you're out where you can't get to a doctor quickly, you can grab 2 pieces of hair from either side of the wound and tie them together.  He said that that works really nicely to close the wound back up until you can get medical attention!  Who knew?!

Last week was CRAZY 'round this place!  Aside from Madison's head-splitting adventure, she also had her performances for her FIRST play!!  They did "It's a Small World" and it was adorable!  She was a London Bridge - basically a cute kid in a school uniform who came out and sang the song.  Too cute!  I went to every show {except Friday night, I helped out back stage} and enjoyed all the little moments that the kids brought to the stage that weren't supposed to be there!!  LOL  Madi did great and I'm so proud of her!!!

I also did the HS Wrestling pics and Clint helped out at our local HS's Invitational.  Needless to say that by Sunday we were pretty exhausted and the girls both took a 3 hour nap... at the SAME time!!  LOVED it!

NOW FOR CHRISTMAS!!

The weather has been so screwy around here lately, we had a freezing cold front move in around Thanksgiving and stay for a while, but thankfully it has since passed on.  This week it's been back to flip-flops and short-sleeves!  Crazy.  And yet the mountain is starting to collect drifts of snow!  Gotta love the dessert!  :O)

We finally got our tree up and it's so pretty!  Madi did a great job helping me decorate it this year.  I told her the cardinal rule of tree decorating: You never, ever put 2 things that are alike next to each other.  You need to spread them around so it looks nice and even.  This was her plan of action: Place her princess ornaments all around the bottom of the tree {good}, then place a fairy ornament right next to each princess so that they all would have a friend.  "They're not the same, Mom!  Princesses and fairies are different!"  Well... sigh... yes, that is correct.  Can't fight that logic!  LOL  It's adorable and I love it.

Since our tree was up, Madi insisted that it meant our presents needed to be wrapped, so I made a trip to the devil's store {yes, I mean Wal-Mart.  We SO need a Target!} and knocked out a big chunk of my shopping, then spent a few hours wrapping... the large amount of time was mainly due to the fact that I was half wrapping, half watching a movie.  :O)

We got our house lights up right after Turkey-Day, and our other house decor up before that.  It's been so fun to see it slowly come together, and now we're all decked out, narrowing down those last few purchases and almost ready for the big day.  Of course, Madi keeps insisting that we open the presents right now cuz Santa will bring us more and we need room under the tree for when he does... Oh, she is SO my child when she thinks like that!  Ha ha ha!