Christmas Countdown

Just ask Lily if you're not sure how many days until Christmas. She's had a countdown of how many more sleeps are left since our tree went up. We've actually already had our larger family get togethers. The Bates Christmas was a couple of weeks ago, and the Norman Christmas was this past Saturday. Lily and Ella got to wear their brand new Christmas dresses from Grandma Norman, as seen in the picture. Ella's is still a little bit long, so she only wore hers for the picture. Lily is so excited about this dress! She'll be wearing it at her school's Holiday performance this Thursday. I'm going to try to video the show and will hopfully be able to download it here for you to see later this week.

This past Saturday, Lily was given "The Grinch that Stole Christmas" book and a stuffed Grinch from her Great Aunt and Uncle. Lily has never seen the Grinch, so was kind of startled by the green creature with yellow eyes. After reading the book to her realized that the Grinch turns out to be a nice guy in the end. She loves the story now, and even helps me to finish the rhymes.

Ella was given "The Sneeches" book and a stuffed Sneech from the same Great Aunt and Uncle. In the book I found another short story from Dr. Seuss that I had never heard before "Too Many Daves". I have grown up with three Uncle Daves, my Mom's older brother, and each of my Dad's sisters married Dave's. When I was little this was sometimes confusing.
I remember Uncle Dave Bates was Uncle Dave, Uncle Dave Pipe was Uncle David and when the third Dave was added to the family he was going to be called Uncle Davy... but I don't think that anyone really liked that and all three were just Uncle Dave. I read Lily the "Too Many Daves" story and we decided that the two Uncles that were there should be renamed with a name from the story. I think that they are still fighting over who gets to be "Uncle Stinky" and who gets to be "Uncle Zanzibar".

Only seven more sleeps, and Lily has been busy checking out the presents that keep appearing under the tree each morning. She's allowed to shake the presents and guess what they are, but isn't very good at that yet. I'm sure in a few years Brad and I will have to get a little smarter with our wrapping to disguise the actual gift. One of the presents she says is square and hard, which she thinks is a wand... when really its a book. Shhhh! Don't tell!!