Way to go HOKIES !!!!!

CONGRATULATIONS on beating Tennessee in the Chick-Fil-A Bowl tonight !!!

The Merry Month of December...

has been packed full of fun and has flown by for our family.  Here are some of the activites that kept us busy this month...

On December 5th, we went to our mailbox to find a box addressed to the O'Donnell Kids with a return address of S.C. at the North Pole.  When we opened it we found that Santa had sent one of his elves to live with us.  We named the little guy Dash and legend says that our little elf would return home to the North Pole each evening to report to Santa on Emory and Ellie's behavior for that day.  As long as no one touched him during the day, he would return to our house before the next morning and pick a new hiding spot to spend the day and watch the children.  We had lots of fun looking for Dash each morning.  He's a very creative little guy and found some fun places to hide in our house!

 

On Christmas Eve, Dash left with Santa on his sleigh after our presents were delivered. We will miss Dash and hope that he will return next December to stay with us again for a while.

Owen and Piper got into the Christmas spirit too with t-shirts of their own.  Piper's red shirt said "Santa's Little Helper" on the back and Owen's said "HO, HO, HO."  They were just too cute!

Each year we alternate which child gets to put the star on the top of the tree since that is such an honor.  This was Emory's year and he was so excited.  He giggled a lot while trying to stand on Dan's shoulder to get it up to the tippy top of the tree.

The night of the annual tree lighting in our neighborhood turned out to be one of our first colder nights.  It was perfect for horse drawn carriage rides through the neighborhood, warm hot chocolate and cookies and of course the lighting of the Palencia Christmas tree.  Here are Emory and Ellie in front of the big tree with their friend Sydney Solms.

 

Each year in December, Ellie's teacher, Mrs. Ledford, takes her group of first graders to a local nursing home to sing carols for the residents.  The class had fun making cute reindeer tshirts using thier foot and hand prints to wear for their performance.  They practiced six songs for a couple of weeks and put on quite the show.  It was so cute and enjoyed by all -- students and residents alike.

The weekend of December 12th and 13th , Emory played in his first 3v3 soccer tournament.  It had been  beautiful all week , but by the time that Saturday morning arrived a cold front came through with lots of wind and rain.  Emory's team, named the Kickers (wonder where they came up with that name!), was able to get in three games before the tournament had to be ended early due to weather.  It was a cold, wet day but Emory said that he loved it none the less.  We all really enjoyed how fast this type of game goes and all of the scoring opportunities compared to a regular game of soccer with a goalie.

As the last week of school for the year finally arrived, it was time for all sorts of fun in Ellie's class.  First it was a cookie swap (yummy!), followed by an afternoon making gingerbread houses and finally the last day of school was all about Reindeer Games.  I was so glad that I was able to rearrange my schedule and be at school with Ellie to share each of these fun events with her.

Isn't this just too cute... a house, a tree, a marshmallow snowman and even coconut snow.

 

On December 15th, Ellie had her Induction Ceremony into Girl Scouts.  Based on her being in 1st grade, she is a Brownie at this time.  Here she is with her Brownie Leader, Mrs. Theresa, repeating her Girl Scout oath. 

Ellie has a great Brownie troop with about five friends that she already knew.  Through Brownies she has also met six great new girls her age and participated in lots of fun and educational activities already this school year.

With Christmas fast approaching, we had to hurry on out to visit Santa and pass along the Wish Lists before it was too late to get them to him.  The kids were both so excited to share what they wanted with Santa and listened intently as the other took their turn.

 

It was especially interesting to Dan and I that after listening intently to both Emory and Ellie, Santa asked them it they had been really good this year.  They both smiled and said yes with great enthusiasm but Santa suggested that maybe there was still a little room for improvement.  Could Dash have been talking to Santa each night after all ???

Emory's Christmas Party brought lots of fun games this year.  There was a package wrapping relay (who knew so many 4th graders had no clue how to wrap a present?!),  a package passing game, a snowball spoon race which can be seen above and a few rounds of the freeze dance which Emory and his friend Alex are doing in the picture below.  The kids really enjoyed the games and they were fun to watch for the parents!

The last day of school before Christmas break is always a school wide pajama and movie day.  For Ellie, it was also her Reindeer Games day too.  Her class participated in 5 different reindeer craft centers that the class rotated through.

Dan helped with the stuffing of some of the cutest reindeer that I have ever seen.  Here's the whole group of them together at the end of the party.

Fun activities like these make me wish that I could be back in first grade again!

Merry Christmas, Mill Creek Elementary.  We'll see you again next year!

It's time for the fun of Christmas break at home!

On December 22nd, Ga arrived at our house after a very, very long 11 hour drive from Richmond.  She was tired but we still convinced her to take part in our sugar cookie decorating.

Mmm, sprinkles!

Thanks for helping, Ga.

Ready for the oven!

We hope that Santa will like them!

(See the "gator" cookie?  It's Emory's favorite one that he  made.)

On December 23rd, we all went to visit Winter Wonderland at the St. Augustine Ampitheatre.  Believe it or not, even in Florida we can have outdoor ice skating with real ice, an ice sliding hill, an elf village and a large fire pit where you could make your own yummy smores.  Mmmm.

Fun at the Elf Village where it snowed (miniature bubbles, that is) when we arrived.

Slipping down the Ice Slide.  Probably not as fun as sledding in the snow, but a fun experience for Florida!

We saved the best for last that evening.  Nothing is better than warm smores on a cold winter evening.

It's finally....CHRISTMAS EVE!!!!!!!!!

The kids woke up excited and it only increased as the day went along.  Our friends the Stalvey family (Brian, Maiko, Brianna and Ashton) came over to have dinner with us.  We met the Stalvey's about ten years ago when we were all four taking our childbirth class at St. Luke's Hospital before Emory and Brianna were born.  It's been fun watching Emory and Brianna grow up as friends, even though we don't see them anymore as much as we would like to.

Before dinner all the kids went straight to the hot tub.  It was chilly but the water was sooo warm.

After opening our new Christmas pjs from Ga as we do each Christmas Eve, we had to drive down the street to our neighbor George's house for one final check on his Christmas coundown clock.  It's kind of hard to tell with the flash on the camera, but it says only 2 hours, 42 minutes and 56 seconds left to go.  Better hurry off to bed before Santa show up!

Just before bed, we got out our Santa plate that I painted for Emory before his first Christmas. Emory and Ellie each chose one of their favorite sugar cookies, a cup of milk and baby carrots for the reindeer. 

Next we headed outside to sprinkle the magic reindeer food that Mrs. Ledford had prepared.  Ellie also added 9 baby carrots this year - one for each of Santa's reindeer and Rudolph.

Finally, all of our preparations for Santa were ready.  We snuggled on the couch for a reading of the Night Before Christmas and then the kids were off to bed. 

Was that a Ho, Ho, Ho that I just heard???

Thanksgiving Trip to Richmond

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, we kept the kids home from school and settled into the car for our drive to Richmond to share Thanksgiving with our family.  The kids were so excited to see everyone again and to get to play in the piles of Fall leaves on the ground that we just don't get here in Florida.  As beautiful as the leaves are, it's still really hard to leave our sunny weather with temperature in the low 80s!  Emory and Ellie just didn't understand why they couldn't wear shorts as we headed north since it was so warm here when we left.

Our last few trips have gone really smoothly  but this was our first trip with both Piper and Owen.  The puppies haven't spent much time in the car but finally settled in for the ride and went to sleep after taking their medicine from the vet.  Ellie decided to take a nap too after we were stuck in a long back up due to road work and ending up spending over 10 hours in the car.

Our late arrival made us miss the dinner that we had planned with Kenny, Leigh-Emma and Jack but Kenny took the next day off so that we could spend some time with Jack.  It was so much fun now that he can talk a little and really play.  The kids had fun reading books with him and playing outside with balls and toys.  Owen and Piper enjoyed checking out someone a little more their size too!

We had beautiful weather on Thanksgiving day  as we headed over to Tammy and Dante's to spend time with everyone.  We took Piper and Owen this year and they had the best time playing outside with the other dogs. 

Gee and Pa brought Thanksgiving presents for the kids and Ellie especially enjoyed reading books to Gee.

Emory and Ellie couldn't wait to get onto Uncle Dante's tractor again and had so much fun driving around and around the house.

Thanksgiving dinner was incredible as usual thanks to Chef Dante.  The dining room was beautiful too.  Here's Ellie posing with the Ledford Lion that she brought home in the Travel Backpack from school.  Ellie wrote journal entries about all of her adventures with the Ledford Lion during her trip to Richmond.

We had one last visit with Kenny, Leigh-Emma and Jack before heading back to Richmond.  Look at all of those cute kids!

After our fun visit to Richmond, it was once again time to load back into the car and head south.

Thanksgiving at School...

November was a fun month with lots of activities at school.  Ellie's class had a Thanksgiving Feast for all of the children and their parents.  It was extra special for the kids because they set up a restaurant on the stage of the multipurpose room and had the feast catered from Cracker Barrell.  The children all made the cutest tshirts and displayed some of their Thanksgiving writings.  We all enjoyed the Feast!

Emory's class acted out a few short skits in the classroom to celebrate Thanksgiving and then enjoyed turkey subs.  Mmmm!  Sorry that I forgot to bring the camera that morning!