It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Decorating the house for Christmas was on Claire's "to do" list for the day after Thanksgiving because, as she put it, "I'm tired of all these pumpkins, mommy." But we didn't get a chance to put up the tree until last weekend. We bought our tree on Saturday morning and decorated it Sunday afternoon. I LOVE doing this with kids. They were both so excited, Claire to see all the old decorations she remembered, and Ben because, well, good grief, there was a tree in our house AND there's lights on it. What's not to be excited about, I mean, really? So what if our tree is lopsided, 1/3 of the ornaments are hung in a 1 ft. square area, 1/2 of those on one branch? The kids loved it, and we were happy with our tree in the end.

Claire is also getting ready for Christmas at her school; she actually only has 1 day left next week before she's off for the holiday break. But on Friday she sang in the preschool's Christmas program. Earlier, in the fall, the school had a short program, and Claire broke down crying half way through, so we weren't sure what to expect this time around. But she did great. Her eyes stayed fixed on her music teacher up the balcony. Seriously, she did not look to the right or left one single time during the whole program. We were waving like idiots, and she never looked at us. Come to find out, her teacher told the class to remember to look up at Ms. Susan, and Claire, ever the rule follower (hmmm... where did she get this trait?), followed the instructions to the letter.

I know this picture looks like a bunch of zombie kids, but you can see Claire, just right of center in the red dress with white collar. She is already staring up at the balcony.

Here's the one smile we got from her during the whole program. She was walking out of the church and saw us in the pew.