It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

I feel like Christmas really just came and went at the Dyer household. I didn't get to take the day here and there like I wanted to just enjoy some Christmas activities. And when I did, plans didn't quite work out - our Santa visit was a flyby to the least busy Santa I could find on quite possibly the hottest day in December. But we still managed to ride the Christmas train at the local outside mall - which make no mistake the girls thought was GREAT fun. I know this because I could hear them howling with laughter

every time they went by. And we did go to the Christmas on the Square in downtown Garland, which was really just an excuse to eat funnel cake (always a win with the B girls). And Bella, my mom, and I saw the Nutcracker at the Windspeare - fancy - so I thought I'd better not take Becca, but in hindsight, she would have been better behaved than the grade school girls that

sat behind us. Bella was so well behaved that at intermission we went downstairs to get her an ornament. So now it's officially a tradition. The Nutcracker and an ornament every Christmas. And this Christmas Bella learned a little about giving to others. When I told her that we had adopted angels from the angel tree because some people don't have presents at Christmas, she suggested that we also get gifts for our Karen friends. Of course I'd already planned to do that, but she recognized on her own that they have less and it would be nice to get them something, too. She also recognized that her sister didn't have a piggy bank like she did, and she decided that a piggy bank was the perfect Christmas gift for Becca. The girls also gave generously from their stuff animal bins for the clothing closet at church. In fact it was me that saved some of the animals from the donate pile because of my own sentimental value I'd attached to them (sniff...like the little bear I put in Bella NICU crib).