Elf Portrait

So as you can see, Jingle here has discovered the computer - and the photo booth feature on it.  He's seen above riding a virtual roller coaster, which is how Madison discovered him this morning.  But he also managed to spend a little time snapping photos of himself at exotic locations as well:

Yes, he gets around.  Other pictures of him are from Paris, a coral reef and outer space.  He even used the photo morphing features to make some rather odd pictures of himself.  Madison got a kick out of all of it this morning as she arose.  It was the big day today - another large service this morning with lots for Mommy to do.  Daddy got to stay in KidPak, although he was featured in a movie in the main sanctuary's service.  This is the one they filmed a few weeks ago - the one we had to get up so early for.  Supposedly, everything was a great success.

Meanwhile, KidPak was fun too.  Here's Madison, looking festive in front of our live Christmas tree.

She's been hot and cold this weekend.  We mentioned she was sick yesterday.  We only think this because of a few of her quirky behaviors of late:  she's been unusually tired at times, and yet really active at others.  She says she feels fine, and yet she wants to just be carried places or simply rest in our arms.  We're fine with that, of course, but it is unusual.  The most obvious problem came just before bed tonight:  she had hives on her face.  Both her eyes were a little swollen, and her cheeks were flush.  The biggest indicator of all is that she voluntarily went to bed early.  Now that's tired!

We'll keep an eye on her tomorrow, but we're obviously concerned about that.

So what did we do today after church?  Nothing but a Christmas movie marathon.  Mommy and Madison took to the couch and snuggled under the nice blankets - the weather outside was chilly and rainy.  In other words, the perfect day to sit on the couch and watch movies.  And that we did:  we watched several of our Christmas specials, including a new one we just picked up recently.  It was an episode of the Shirley Temple Show that featured a "Babes in Toyland" performance.  It was actually pretty good!

Daddy spent time working on picture albums for the grandparents - that's one of those annual Christmas gifts we do now.  We collect all the pictures of Madison over the year and put it into one book.  This year was quite an eventful one, wasn't it?

We're all going to bed early tonight, of course.  Everyone's pretty worn out and run down.  Tomorrow, we get another low-key day.  But after that, it's off to the races again, as Christmas is only a week away.  Tonight we'll get some sleep, but I'm not sure if that elf Jingle will be sleeping.  Something tells me he's up to something fun again...