December Things

Last Friday the girls and I braved some nasty weather and made it to Weckerlys' for a Favorite Things party Tessa had invited me to. We had a fun time at that and then had to head out fairly early on Saturday as Clara had a birthday party to attend in the afternoon. 

On our way back, we stopped at Cows + Co. Creamery near Carrington for some lunch. I think the girls were skeptical at first as they have a limited menu. They both had the gouda mac and cheese and have not stopped talking about it since! It was so rich and delicious. 

 After I picked Clara up from the birthday party, we went straight downtown for some Blackbird ahead of the holiday lights parade. 

Reading some wall notes.

It was about 20 minutes after the scheduled start time before we began to see any floats coming down Broadway. We had brought our full winter gear plus mitten and boot warmers. I foolishly didn't put any warmers in my boots and regretted it. :-( I got so cold that we didn't make it to the end of the parade. Nevertheless, Clara filled up her bag with lots of candy...and some toothbrushes. Ha.

The weather was much nicer on Sunday and we were able to do lots of sledding across the road.

Brynn and Brooklyn enjoying some hot cocoa bombs one night this past week.

Clara's reindeer drawing was so cute and creative. She was explaining all the details she put into it to me.

Brynn made me this really cool bouquet of paper flowers.

Clara started piano lessons this past week. She was so excited and her teacher is so fantastic. Clara is picking up on it so quickly already...thanks to her music class at school and encouragement from cousin Elise. It really wasn't that cold in Ms. Danelle's apartment, so I'm not sure why they were both so bundled up. :-)

My early Christmas present! Dana and Brynn put together this standing desk for me to use for my work from home set up. I am working from home typically on Tuesdays and Thursdays each week which I love. You just push a button on this thing and it moves up or down. And you can program it to remember different height preferences.

Clara made some snow cones:

A quiet Friday night in for Clara...

Not so much for the rest of us after Clara went to bed. We started out with Nerts and snacks which was all good and well.

Then Brynn drank most of the energy drink I had..

Her eyes are all red because she had some type of caffeine-induced cry fest. She recovered well, but it was a rollercoaster there for a bit. haha. 

Brynn had a baby-sitting job last night and so Clara and I got started on Christmas cooking baking with one of our favs, peanut butter blossoms. They were out of chocolate stars at the store, so we had to opt for kisses instead. I told Clara that now we have to unwrap all these individual chocolates, but she was up to the task! 

We had 'The Grinch' on in the background. It's Clara' fav Christmas movie.

Post-church puzzling with Dad today.

Dana and Brynn took off to run some errands this afternoon and then Brynn texts this to me of them getting all hopped up on energy drinks again. No meltdowns yet though. Fingers crossed. :-D I love this pic though. Ha!

Next up on the list was sugar cookies so we did those this afternoon.

And we finished the afternoon with some outside time.