71 Toes: December little things

Oh man, we just wrapped up Claire's birthday.

I always write things about these children of mine here on the blog on their big day. It's like my birthday card to them.

But today was a little different because I just had to snuggle that girl up from before dawn until late tonight with so much else swirling on around us.

So I'll post more on that tomorrow.

But for the tail end of this day (it's almost midnight), I'm posting my draft of December happenings (excluding the Christmas "Holiday Hoopla" which is back HERE).

I know I probably already mentioned this somewhere before but it was really the prettiest December I've ever seen in my twelve years of living here in the desert.

Maybe that's because all the stars aligned just right giving us a perfect Fall.

The way the sun filtered through those leaves...and the way the bark looked so black against the vibrant colors when it rained...I couldn't get enough of it.

I know everyone reading this who lives in "real" Fall areas is probably saying to themselves, "that's nothing" but man alive, it sure does something to my Fall-loving soul.

Dave's sister came for a visit. We got to steal her away for dinner one night.

Our new neighbor (if we every really move into our new home), had a skiing accident and shattered both of his feet.

Boy howdy have we ever felt horrible for him and his family and have spent a bunch of time over there trying to cheer them up (but probably mostly getting in the way). Crossing our fingers the healing will come along quickly.

I made Japanese curry again because my family (mostly Claire) begged for it.

This is the picture I sent to my brother to figure out what the heck I was doing.

(I put the real recipe for that mouth-watering stuff back in my "International Night" post HERE.

We are all working on our journals a little bit more.

Lucy is digging that.

Yes, that is a brush on the kitchen counter...

I took Elle in for her fifth-ever-in-her-whole-life professional hair cut. (I usually do the haircuts around these parts.)

I figured that was the only way we were going to take care of these ends:

We did a little ombre just because I love her so.

Can you tell how excited we were?

It sure turned out pretty. (Thanks Ashley!)

One night when we were driving home from one carpool or another we heard Lu in the backseat saying, "oh, it's just so beeaaaaauuuuuuutiful!" as she snapped away at pictures on my iPhone.

Not so sure she really saw anything so beautiful (see pic. below) or if she was just imitating her mother...

Max and Elle have started "training" for their sports coming up this next season. Gross picture, but Elle fell off a treadmill and bruised herself up pretty well during one of the trainings.

Ouch.

Love this dynamic duo.

More than I can say.

And this girl...

She sure adds even more spice to our family breaking out her cheerleading moves around the house all the time.

I got to go on the fourth grade field trip to the state capitol with these cuties:

How can you help but let your heart melt a little at sweet girls like these.

I was infatuated with the shadows that day.

The sun was at the perfect slant to cast beautiful shapes everywhere.

Love my girl and her giant coldsores.

We've been to a couple high school basketball games, mostly to spy on our teenagers.

They're not too hard to spot since they both tower over their friends.

Max played a whole bunch of volleyball tournaments in December.

This is the only picture I got:

Lucy wrapped up her soccer season back HERE, but I couldn't resist posting this one more picture of her running to play in the last game that was postponed until December because of the rain:

I can't remember why I made Max stop in mid-Sunday-dressing to take this picture, but oh man, he's cute, right?

We finally got four out of five school pictures back.

Grace is missing because we found her order form and check in the bottom of her backpack a few months later...

She's too busy with this to care, but Grace, we need those pictures!

(I love to have a picture from the beginning of each school year to formally document how each child looked at the beginning of that grade.)

We go through batches of this granola like it's going out of style:

Recipe for that back HERE.

Accidentally matching girls:

Lu looks real excited about that pose...

Claire had an assignment at school to make and "Elf on the Shelf" and talked about it forever. Finally when we sat down to make it we realized my sewing machine was still lent out.

Dang it!

So we resorted to hand-stitching that little guy:

Claire sure didn't complain about that.

Check out that little beamer:

After the fact we decided that hot-gluing on a Christmas bulb was a little creepy but she still won the award at school so we'll take it :)

We went on a date. This is when we got home and realized we forgot to take our traditional "date" picture.

Dave's sweetest ever aunt made Lucy the most darling little sock doll.

We love you Aunt Helen!

Max is the only homework helper Grace can go to for Math these days.

I adore that.

It was "twin" day at school:

Somehow they talked us into PJs at IHOP day:

A birthday lunch for a friend...excuse that blurry pic...

Holiday hairdo:

We finally hunkered down and took pics of Grace's volleyball certificate:

...and Cheerleading "You Made It!" form.

December ended with these guys staying with us:

Matching girl hair:

Cousins galore.

This game was SO funny to watch by the way (I wish I had a video). They play it with an iPhone and it's like Guestures sort of. I'm pretty sure it's called "Head's Up."

We need to get that thing.