I've Got a Fang

Here's a photo of Madison eating just one of her Christmas candies - it's a lollipop with some plastic fangs on the other side.  It gives you the appearance of having fangs, as you're eating your sweets.  As for "sweets," they're nearly all gone.  There's a "Community Chest" from Christmas over on the counter, and we've been "borrowing" from it all week since the holiday.  In fact, Daddy just had to go and munch on a chocolate Santa now.

We got out of the house today to do a few chores.  We actually got about thirteen rolls of wrapping paper at Target for 70% off, all good stuff.  We also got bows and tags at that discount, so we're pretty much ready for the next few years, to be honest.  The last time we bought wrapping paper, it lasted us a few years.  We got all this at a pretty cheap price, so we still got to have a bit of that post-Christmas sale thrill.  We tried Wal-Mart first, but it looked like they've been victims of an air raid bombing run.

There were other chores we did on the road, but it was mostly just to get out of the house a bit.  It's clear and cold out there - not quite chilly enough for snow, but that hope is in the air for next month.  We're all sort of banking on it, actually.

Mommy went ahead and put up the new calendar today.  Daddy got her a calendar frame a few years ago, and the clever folks who make that calendar made it a specific size.  SO, only the calendars from this company will fit in it.  Fortunately, there are a few choices to choose from, and Mommy likes a lot of them.  Daddy usually picks the calendar for her at Christmas.  It looks good up on the wall, hanging beside all the Welsh spoons.

The company is called Lang.  And we always have this folk art up, with somewhat of a vintage look.  You could call this an old Lang sign.

As for the Welsh spoons, I don't think we've made reference to them here.  Mommy's mother is Welsh, and her family is all from Wales.  Therefore we have spoons.  These are wooden spoons, sometimes called "lovespoons."  Currently, we have about seven, six of them hanging up beside the wall calendar.  Each one represents a faith, luck, and of course love.  When Mommy and Daddy got married a few years ago, we received a spoon from Wales, but it was a comical one:  it was a standard wooden spoon with our anniversary date wood burned into it.

So what has Madison been doing all this time this week?  It's vacation, so give her that.  Daddy's power disc reward system is in effect though, and Daddy did promise her if she got all her piano homework done, she'd get a disc.  Mrs. Pam gave us all a coloring sheet with a Christmas tree on it.  Each ornament represented a task to be completed, and once that was done, you could color it in.  Today, she colored the last one, having done all her piano homework.  This was pretty challenging when you consider the onslaught of Christmas toys, movies and games to play with.  But Daddy's reward system has a lot of power:  you don't know which disc you're going to get, and just can't wait to get it to find out.  Plus, there's that completionist syndrome we all tend to have when you have a big book with empty slots to fill.  She wants to get them all.  So therefore, she'll probably have a great year with piano!

Other toys she's been playing a lot with this year are her dolls.  She has a few Barbie dolls, and a few other similar-sized ones such as Cinderella, Mulan, and Princess Amidala.  For Christmas, she got a lot of new costumes for these dolls, so there's been a lot of fun with the new wardrobe.  In fact, she's just recently put on a fashion show for Mommy and Daddy, lining them up on the couch.

Some are obviously not wearing their proper gear, but that's okay!