Pre-school Christmas Show

  This year was Liv's first Christmas sing-a-long at her preschool.

Day Fourteen: Playdate with Friends

We spent time with friends during this holiday season and enjoyed being around such great company.

Day Thirteen: Caroling

                           For the past four years I've organized a caroling event for my friends.

Day Twelve: Local Shopping

 Liv was at her dads so my friend Alys and I headed out for some Local Christmas shopping. I did get some great local presents for my family at Bazaar Bizarre. Taking this day to check out Cleveland, reminded me of how much I love it here! I've often debated moving when my schooling was done and living somewhere else.

 I moved around a lot growing up. I was born in Houston Texas, but lived in Boston, Liverpool, Long Island, Ithaca, Syracuse, Chlimsferd, Reading Pa, and finally Cleveland. I also moved away for a period of time to Akron Ohio, and San Fransico for a summer. I enjoy traveling and trying out other people's lifestyle, but ultimately finding my place in the world is important.

Day Eleven: Frog Prince Movie!

 Liv and I got all gussied up and went to lunch at Yours Truly and went to see the Princess and the Frog. We had a great time being together. The movie was a little long, but we really had a great time. I was excitied especially because Disney movies use to come out at Christmas time around my birthday and we would go see them.. I was very happy to share this with Liv.

Day Seven, Eight, Nine

 Nothing was really done this week.. I had finals at school and didn't want to plan anything that would be hard to do. We got our Christmas cards together and sent them out, again it did feel good to have them all sent out when we wanted them.

Day Seven: Write Christmas Letter

 I've never thought my life was important or interesting enough for me to write out a Christmas letter. This year however I had a lot to be thankful for and many people I've been pleased to have relationships with and wanted to share my joys with. We sent our letters along with our Christmas photo! It was a great Christmas tradition, and I look forward to it again next year!

Day Six: Holiday Circle Fest

  Day six was a great evening at Holiday Circle fest! While it wasn't as elaborate as parade the circle, it was a great winter evening outing. We started off at the Natural History Museum and then headed over to the parade. We all thought the NHM was great, but the parade was ok.. We ended our evening with a yummy dinner at Tommy's!

Day Five: Cookies!

 Day five gave a good patch of vegan sugar cookies! Liv was an awesome helper and we managed to crank out a little over a dozen. I'm sure we'll make more through out the month, but at least we were able to get started and have some cookies to share!

Day Four: Santa Day!

Day Four was family photo day..Hooray! Then downtown with everyone to meet Santa. We had a great time seeing the downtown lights and going through the inventionasium tour..Liv was definitely overwhelmed by all the costumes and activities flurring around her.. I was reminded of how little she is and how things may scare her. Anyone who knows my child, knows that for the most part she is pretty fearless and doesn't get scared easily..She often judges her level of fear by what others around her are scared of..

 The tour was a lot of fun! Come time to meet Santa, everything was fine, Liv let Santa hold her and she told him what she wanted. Santa was extremely friendly and also very accommodating to my "shy three-year old." When it came time for the picture, Liv panicked and said she didn't want to take the photo.. I didn't have enough time to see if she was just being a gomungine because she could, or because she was genuinely scared. Regardless of not getting the photo-op, we had a great time window shopping and being together!

Christmas Countdown Day Three

Day three was relatively uneventful. My initial plan was to print out our family photo, but realized it probably needed to be taken on Friday.. So I ran over to Target and printed out a princess photo of Liv and Cinderella from Halloween and put in a Disney Princess photo frame a friend of ours gave us. Liv loved it and it's sitting in her room on her shelf. I didn't get chance to take a picture of it-but right now I'm just trying to stay on top pf things and I will post one soon!

Christmas Countdown Day 2

Well this morning got off to a late start.. Liv crawled into my bed at some point last night and the two of us stayed in bed until 9! Which has been a rarity in this house. After Liv watched a couple episodes of Spiderman o n Hulu we headed down stairs to begin our next project.

 I got a recipe (from another blogger ;)  about making borax snowflakes. The process was fairly easy and didn't take too much time. We are now letting our snowflakes sit in their mixture..I'm hoping that they will turn out okay!
http://chemistry.about.com/cs/howtos/ht/boraxsnowflake.htm

Christmas Countdown Day 1

To kick off our advent/Christmas countdown, we started by decorating our tree. Liv didn't really get the idea of opening the letter each day, but does enjoy doing the activities... Liv really got into decorating the tree, and looking at all her ornaments. I already have three years worth of memories with that little person..I can't believe it! I do find it really exciting that each Christmas I see her getting more and more excited about everything that is going on. She loved seeing all the pretty ornaments that were hers and being in charge of the candy cane placements. After we decorated our tree, I was feeling a little corky for breakfast and made the two of us pancakes and dino chicken nuggets..yum! I didn't have time to bust out the waffle maker and do chicken and waffles, but the substitute did the trick!

 I will say that I am having a bit of a hard time getting into it all.. I think part of it is the Christmas season happened so fast! I feel like I'm somewhere in September still. The other factor could be I'm still in school. Finals, meetings, and papers are still heavy on my mind and it's hard to stop and appreciate the moments.  Next week I can just enjoy being with Liv and Jack and really get into everything!

Thanksgiving!

  This Thanksgiving was the most relaxed we've had in  awhile.My brother was able to fly in from Albany! The visit was short, but I know we'll see each other soon! Mom and I cooked and hung out. In actuality there isn't much to report about this particular holiday, other than it was truly about family and enjoying each others company!

  The Saturday following Daley, Mama, Liv and I all bundled up and headed out to get a tree. I know this kind of early, but we're starting our advent which is Tuesday! So we wanted to have everything in ready so we could begin on time.