Tuesday evening after the hubby got home from work, I embarked on a solo trip to the mall to pick up the final items on our gift list. When I headed out, the snow was just beginning to fall, but by the time I got home the streets were completely slippery and white. I flipped on the news to hear that we could have up to a foot of snow on the ground by Wednesday morning. So I was not surprised when I woke up to see this:

It really was a beautiful and peaceful sight, and the snow continued to fall into the early afternoon. Unlike our last snow day, I faced this one with a feeling of joy, with a feeling of glee... I would dare say I was feeling downright jolly!
When I went into Pookie's room, I was happy to find her equally cheerful. She popped out of bed and immediately went to look for Dolly, our Elf on the Shelf. A friend had sent me this link the night before, and I'd realized that I needed to step up my Elfing for the last few days until Christmas. The little elf simply sitting on top of the Nativity scene just wasn't going to cut it. Carter was quite happy when she discovered Dolly sitting in the gum-ball jar clinching a green one in her tiny elf paws.

Once she'd located the elf, it was time to see what surprise Dolly had left in the Advent calendar (yes, our elf does a lot more than simply sit!) How excited was Carter to see that Dolly had overheard our conversation the day before about Carter's new obsession with dinosaurs and placed a precious dino right in the 22 pocket!

Once Dolly was located and the dino had been discovered, we headed upstairs to get up Murphy Girl. How happy was I to find another happy Lewellen. As usual, she was in no hurry to get out of her crib, and I basically had to pry her from the mattress. To get our day started, I put on Michael Buble's phenomenal Christmas cd. It provided the perfect background music for the rest of our day, and by 9 AM all three of us girls were a dancin' and a prancin'! I even let the dogs in to join in the fun (if you know me/know my feelings for the dogs, you understand the great magnitude of this gesture. If you do not, let's just say this was the first time the pups had ventured out of their laundry room paradise in several weeks.)
Carter asked if she and Murphy could go play upstairs in Murphy's crib because they are 'best friends.' Of course, I happily agreed to her request and used the video monitor to make sure the giggles did not turn to tears. They had a ball playing together for nearly half an hour while I got the kitchen and Carter's room tidied up... smiling all the while! For the sake of full disclosure, waking up to see that Santa had stopped by my house a few days early and left this surprise for Mommy may  have contributed to the fixed smile...

It was soooo tempting to take a tiny peek!

The girls grew bored of the crib frolicking just in time to hear a knock at the door from the FedEx man. Since I knew we'd need lots of indoor entertainment on this snow day, I thought Aunt Mary and Uncle Dean wouldn't mind if the girls opened their Christmas presents a few days early. The girls loved their gifts and spent the next little while playing together with Murphy's new Little People set.

Carter decided to engage in a little solo-play and created a 'feast' for the Little People (notice that her new dino was invited to join in the festivities.) She only became slightly angry when Murphy, Godzilla-style, wreaked havoc on the feast. 

Since I knew we'd be home-bound for the duration of the day and Murphy has been veering from her typical nap routiner now and then, I thought this would be a good opportunity to let her dictate her own schedule. Turns out that she wasn't showing signs of being sleepy until around 10:30 (an hour later than I normally lay her down), but she fell asleep the second she got Mousey in her hands and thumby in her mouth. Carter opted to take a marathon-lengh 'swimming pool bath' (water filled to the brim), and I took a minute to scarf down a bowl of cereal and sip on a home-made mocha while watching the snow continue to fall. 

Since Aunt Kiki will be spending Christmas in Tulsa, we'd invited her over for dinner that night to celebrate Christmas a few days early. I thought I would take advantage of the girls' being preoccupied to get our meal prepped so that I could just pop it in the oven at dinner time. So, while singing  humming along to Mr. Buble and sipping my mocha, I got to cooking. I had a slight time crunch, since I knew I'd need to wake Murphy by noon to maintain a reasonable afternoon nap. At 11:56, sharp, the kitchen was all cleaned, and our Cheesy Penne Pasta with Italian Sausage was all prepped!

After I got Murphy up, Carter wanted to join in on the cooking fun and asked to make blueberry muffins. Still being in my holly-jolly mood, I gladly obliged. She is quite the little kitchen helper, and Murphy was happy to be a spectator as she kicked back in the Tripp Trapp and noshed on Veggie Straws.

Once the muffin cups were all filled and put in the oven, the girlies got down to the real fun. The batter licking continued until Murphy decided she no longer had an interest in sharing.

While the muffins were baking, Carter decided that she'd like to have some alone time in her room. I know 'alone time' is code for wanting to play with something that a) she doesn't want to share with Murph or b) she knows can be dangerous to Murph. When I went into her room about fifteen minutes later to let her know that our muffins were warm and ready, I found this:

I know a simple caption alone cannot adequately explain this photo. What you are viewing is a Little People ferris wheel and a little glass bowl filled with... wait for it... empty pistachio shells. The dinosaur is in the center of the bowl of shells, aka, his nest. Our Pookie has her, how shall I say, quirks. She spent two days a couple weeks ago playing with nothing but celery stalks; real celery, fresh out of the fridge. When I asked her about it, she said, 'Don't worry, Mommy, I'm not wasting it. I'm not eating it either.' The celery bathed with her and even slept under a blanket beside her bed. Well, last week's celery is this week's pistacio shells. I just feel fortunate that 1) she's so self entertaining, 2) she's so creative, 3) she cleaned up every single shell when she finished, and 4) she recognized the shells could be choking hazards to Murph. Regardless, I do realize that this sort of play is a bit odd.
We all returned to the kitchen to enjoy warm muffins. Sutton, having now returned to the laundry room, really wanted a taste.

After the muffin lunch was complete, I suggested the girls play together in the playroom for a bit. I pulled out the 6 foot floor piano they'd also received as an early Christmas gift and told them to just go wild in the playroom. Here they are doing a little cooking together.

While Murphy pretty much just observed and tossed things around, Carter put an apple pie in the oven that she then zipped it up into her suitcase and headed off for an imaginary with visit Misha and Pops! She even carried a 'map' with her! Finding myself with yet another free few moments, I returned to the kitchen and began preparing the shrimp for a ceviche dip that I was making for that night. I got the shrimpies all cut and marinating, measured out the cilantro, and then went to pull a cucumber out of the fridge for dicing. That's when I saw something that looked quite a bit like this brightly dancing before my eyes.

For those of you fortunate enough to have no idea what this image is, it's called an aura and is often the first symptom of a Classic Migraine. It was at this very instant that my magical snow day, took a drastic turn for the worst. My particular aura was more like three of the images pictured above and was spinning around in all sorts of directions. I immediately went into hyper-focused migraine mode. I swallowed my pills as quickly as I could find them, put on a show for Carter and explained that Mommy had a 'sick headache' (poor thing gets it by now), and shut Murphy and I up in the playroom. I knew she'd be safe and contained there for the duration of the aura. Keeping my eyes shut during the aura is a must to avoid dizziness, nausea, and vomiting. So, for the next 25 minutes I laid on the floor with my forearm squeezed tightly over my eyes while Murph climbed all over me. (This was also the point when letting Murphy's body dictate her schedule came back to bite me in the booty, as she normally would have been laying down for her nap right about the time this started.)
It wasn't too long, though, after the pain set in that it was time for Murphy to lay down, so I let Carter snuggle up on the sofa for movie time. I quickly finished prepping the ceviche, so that it could chill for a few hours, and then I  laid down to rest for an hour or so. Luckily we still managed to have a nice dinner with Aunt Kiki (who is quite understanding of the fact that migraines aren't just 'bad headaches'), and I got to bed fairly early. (I wish I could say that today was a better day, but my migraine symptoms  actually worsened and were a little abnormal, so I ended up spending the afternoon in the ER.)
Here's the thing of it: yesterday was a GREAT DAY!  So what if some freakish light hallucination followed by excruciating pain crept in and stole a teeny bit of my jolly and a tad more of my patience? I still had a ball with my girls: wearing jammers all day, dancing, singing, cooking, tickling, snuggling, and just being silly!

Here's Murph, in her second set of jammers,

holding her karaoke mic!

I'm so excited about this weekend that I can barely contain myself... Skype present opening in the morning, more cooking, attending what will be an amazing Christmas Eve service at church with great friends, enjoying a light dinner with them after church, waiting anxiously for Santa's arrival, seeing the girls' eyes light up at Santa's offerings, celebrating Jesus' birthday with a kid-made cake, traveling to the mountains ... and, finding out what's in that Little Blue Bag!

It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

What's More Scary Than the Grinch?

I wrote my last post was on the day after Thanksgiving, and now I'm staring at the final week before Christmas. I love this time of year, especially now that I have little ones, but it leaves far too little me time.  I've actually spent a great deal of time during the past week thinking fantasizing about blogging (kind of a sad confession.) Truth is, I find writing completely relaxing, and I develop a bit of mental angst and become ever-so-grumpy when I don't have time for it... especially if I have a blog in mind.
As magical as this time of year can be, each Christmas chore can almost be a full-time job in itself... take the presents, for example,

1. Create recipient list verbally on I-Phone list (while an elf yells random things in the background adding 'names' to the list)
2. Think of a perfect (or at least quite acceptable) gift  
3. Drive to the appropriate store (while an elf or two play i-spy in the backseat; Little Elf's guess is always the same: 'That!')
4. Purchase the gift (while Big Elf hides in a rack of clothes, and Little Elf remains super-glued to my hip)
5. Wrap the gift (while Little Elf sleeps, and Big Elf swipes the wrapping supplies)
6. Prepare the package for shipping (while the bubble wrap mysteriously disappears) 
7. Drive to shipping location (while Big Elf tries to teach Little Elf to sing Dreidel)
8. Ship the gift (while the other customers give me and both of my elves the stink-eye)
9. Repeat times 25...

Keep in mind that gift giving is just one tiny part of this Elf Mommy's holiday duties that must be interwoven with card mailing, hall decking, shelf-elf moving, Santa shopping, and cookie making. It's easy to see why this season would not allot a great deal of time for blogging. So, consider this a mini-blog, a letter, actually...

Dear ABC Family Network,
If you are going to advertise your December programming as The 25 Days of Christmas and present it as being family-friendly viewing, I would greatly appreciate you showing your anit-METH ads during another time slot. Even when zooming through the commercials while watching The Grinch on our DVR list, this face still managed to terrify my child:

While my friends' children are a bit scared of the character of the Grinch, my impressionable little one is now frightened that she may find herself trapped in a random bathroom stall pulling out her own hair.
I get it: meth is no good. It's awful actually; ruins families; ruins lives; ruins teeth. But, could you please be a little more conscious in your audience choice? While many people may be faced with the peer pressure to try meth, I am pretty sure my three year old isn't needing to learn your 'Not Even Once' message before heading to her preschool holiday party.
Thank you.
(and Merry Christmas)