Pre-Christmas Fun

We managed to sneak some fun activities into the weeks leading up to Christmas:

1.  The first event was the Cathedral House holiday show.  Like past years, the teachers tell the kids to keep the "theme" a secret from their parents.  This year Olivia held on to that theme like it was the key to a treasure map!  This girl won't crack under any circumstances and became IRATE at Matt one night when he saw her practicing and asked her about it.

On the big day, we learned the theme - the Nutcracker.  And, when we saw our girl, she was ALL. BUSINESS.

She lead the class onto stage and made eye contact with me once.  Unlike the other girls who were smiling and waving to their parents, Olivia's look seemed to say "I see you.  You clearly see me.  Let's not belittle this whole process by waving to each other."  And that was it.  She never looked at me again and refused to smile throughout the whole performance.  It was an interesting side of her that we are not used to seeing.  But, I was pretty happy to see her take it so seriously.  And, we have now signed her up for ballet again so we will see how that goes.

 The cute scenery that her amazing teachers painted.

The director of her school, Ms. Teri, opens the show each year (holding back tears at how big everyone is getting!) :)

Waiting in the wings..

Dancing her little Nutcracker heart out.

2.  In keeping with the Nutcracker theme, I decided was coerced into taking Olivia and one of her friends from school to the Houston Ballet's performance of the Nutcracker.  I was hoping for a local dance school's performance but when those dates didn't work out, my friend convinced me that our 4 year olds would be fine at the real thing.  And, I am SO GLAD she did.  They did GREAT and LOVED it!  And, so did I!!  I have not been to the performance in years and was amazed and blown away by how beautiful it was.  This is definitely a tradition I want to start with Olivia going forward.  Both of us cannot wait for next year!

My girl and I before the show...

She and Sarah were so excited and immediately began practicing their own Nutcracker ballet moves in the lobby. (Note, at this point, I felt pretty concerned about our ability to remain for the entire show.  Printed in big bold letters on our ticket were explicit instructions about how children who are talkative or "fidgety" (what kid isn't fidgety??!) will be removed).

Luckily, we had great seats and these 2 sat down quietly enthralled for the entire first act.  (It probably didn't hurt that we pre-ordered brownies for intermission and threatened to throw them away if they weren't good!)

Checking out the giant gingerbread house during intermission.

I am so glad that Olivia is making sweet friends we can share these fun memories with!

3.  And we spent the day before Christmas Eve with our dear Williams girls for some gingerbread cookie decorating.