Baked Goods and Bags

November went out with Christmas caroling and hot chocolate with good friends.  Can't think of a better way to end a month of thankfulness.  The people we caroled to were very receptive and friendly in spite of being interrupted during dinner on Friday night.  And, an interesting side note.  The last house we sang to was the house of the one of the guys who was in that Starland Vocal Band from the 70s- the Skyrockets in flight people.  He and his wife sang along with the girls and it was pretty awesome.  Good times.

Caroling Practice

December came in with a basket of bags.  Daphne was excited to see them.

Bag One - Go pick out a new ornament, and start decorating the tree.

So that's what we did.  But first, there were popovers.  

Popping the popovers.

Popovers, oh yeah.

After our popover lunch, we went to the local holiday craft fair to pick out our new ornaments.  I got a sheep, Daphne got an owl, and Kev got a trumpet.  Then, we walked to the high school for a free showing of Charlotte's Web.  It was a pretty sad little turn-out, but those of us who went enjoyed it.  Daphne's school read the whole novel together, and then they made arrangements to show the movie as a treat at the end, but it got rescheduled because of high school football or something, and I think it just sort of fell off the radar.  I felt kind of bad for the organizers.   Anyway, Daphne was surprisingly OK when Charlotte died, which kind of surprised me because she wept for about 20 minutes earlier in the day when we found a dead bug in the TV room that resembled Ocornio.  I'm not kidding.  She was inconsolable.  I guess she had no tears left for Charlotte.
 

After the movie, we had dinner and got back to the business of decorating the tree.  Daphne did her annual job of placing the angel on top, which is getting easier for her because she can reach, but harder for Kev because she is heavy.   The tree is very pretty.  But for some reason, the lights on the top half of the tree are about twice as bright as the ones on the bottom half, so it looks a little weird.  I guess it's not quite as weird as last year, though, when the ones in the middle burned out and we had a stripe of darkness.

Sunday morning, we made brunch.  Sausage and eggs from the farmers market, and ebelskivers:

We filled some with strawberry jam, some with chocolate chips, some with PB chips and mini marshmallows, and left some plain.  They were all great.  Kev is getting to be really good at flipping them, which isn't easy.

Then, Daphne wanted to open Bag #2, which contained a box of holiday Junior Mints and a note that said it was Elf night!  Woohoo!  I love Elf night!

In the afternoon, the Daisies all met at Target to shop for our adopted family.  It was absolute chaos, but a big success.  I think the girls enjoyed it.  I came home with a giant pile of toys and a splitting Target headache, so I was glad for a relaxing evening with my family and Buddy the Elf.

After dinner, bath, and homework, Daphne put on her elf hat and Christmas robe, gathered up Quincy and Chris-Moose and her bowl of popcorn and Junior Mints, and settled in for the movie.  She gets the jokes now, and it was so much fun to watch it with her because she laughed through the whole thing.   We put her to bed and sat by the tree.  I did some knitting, and Kev played his guitar, and it was pretty much my ideal evening.  If only there had been eggnog.  Oh well, there are 22 more bags...plenty of time for eggnog.