Jennifer Woodbury

This week we had our annual gingerbread house making day. I made the big house above, and the girls each worked on their own individual little houses:

The finished products:

This week I also got to go into Ella’s classroom and help out with the class holiday party. Somehow I have managed to be in charge of doing a holiday craft in Ella’s class every single year since kindergarten. In September, parents usually sign up to help out with celebrations throughout the year, and I always tell the teacher that I will fill in any open slots. It appears that holiday craft volunteers are hard to come by in our neck of the woods.

I actually love being in the classroom, but trying to come up with a holiday craft is usually a bit stressful for me. This year my process went something like this: 1) Spend hours searching for ideas on Pinterest, 2) Choose a really adorable but overly elaborate project for a classroom full of 23 second graders, 3) Go to Michael’s to buy supplies and become completely overwhelmed, and 4) Decide to take the easy way out and end up buying boxes of pre-made gingerbread men for the kids to decorate instead. When it was all said and done, the cookie decorating was a huge hit and I was amazed at how creative the kids were.

I love that Ella wore a Santa hat to school for the entire week leading up to the holiday break.

I got to observe Claire in ballet class performing various dances from the Nutcracker:

And we finally went to see Santa:

In a repeat performance from last year, Lucy wanted nothing to do with Santa, so in order to get a picture with all three girls Matt had to sit on Santa’s lap too:

Sharing their wish lists with Santa:

Claire told Santa that she didn’t know what she wanted for Christmas. Santa replied that he couldn’t fit “I don’t know” in his bag, but asked if it would be okay to surprise her with something special. She agreed that it was a good plan.