Merry Christmas!

 The lack of posts is not due to a lack of goings on....  Of course the most significant goings on was yesterday! 

We spent Christmas Eve at my parent's house (with so many people it meant Patrick and I slept on the floor in my Mom's office... Kita kept trying to boot me from my bed, thinking that a soft place of the floor must be for her, not me) and then woke up Christmas morning to the bounty of Santa and family. Santa brought Izzy a house full of kitties, Evie a fairy doll and house, and Anna a large, doe-eyed unicorn. 

The other big gift (from Patrick and I) was a hamster that the girls have named Onchau after a unicorn in a show they are enjoying right now.

In the week's prior we have had winter performances for both girls. Unfortunately said performances were at the exact same time so we had to divide and conquer.  Patrick and Anna went to Izzy's dance concert (but I did the hair...getting pretty good at this stuff) and my Mom, Dad and I went to Evie's choir concert.  I heard a rumor that although Izzy was perhaps not the most skilled ballerina on stage she was as proud as punch of her performance!  (Which really is all that matters)  Evie's choir concert was amazing.  Just like last spring, it was so fun to watch her on stage, singing with so much emotion on her face.

 But the concert-going fun did not end there!  The next week was the last week of school and the holiday concert for IST.  The week before Evie came home as excited as can be for her staring role in "Percy the Puny Pointsetta" (She got to be Percy).  She played sad, lonely, poinsettia well...

There were also other songs like Tucson Wonderland (where instead of Sleigh bells ring, are you listenen' it is Palm trees sway and the pool is glistening) and a number of recorder tunes. (I'll spare you the recording of that one :)

After the big performance there was a delightful little Christmas market, where each class sold goodies they made to raise money for something they wanted, e.g., junior school Chinese kids were raising money for a class hamster.  Evie insisted we buy half a dozen star shaped soaps that she made in her science class (they were actually quite cool).  She also decided that she would help her English teach and manned the booth for her English class the whole time we were there (they were selling painted rocks and hand-made cards... painted rocks, I am afraid, were not as popular as soap)

I think perhaps all of the going ons is why all of us (well except Anna) have terrible colds we are fighting off.  These colds have us so sick we even missed our chance to go to Winterhaven this year...  That's ok though because a big adventure is about to begin and I now hear little girls excitedly waking up their Daddy in our room....