Axolotl Santa Hat

This morning Maddie woke up to find that her friend Ajax got himself a new hat!  Jingle Bell and Snowflake were there to present the nice gift this morning, and it was much appreciated.  In fact, just last night, Maddie was talking about how great it would be if Ajax had one of those Santa hats.  As you may recall, Ajax was made at the Build-a-Bear place, and there are accessories there for the stuffed creations.  Maddie had seen this one and was literally just last night saying how this would be a great addition.  Little did she know that Jingle Bell and Snowflake would have that for her the very next morning!

So today was a quiet Saturday in December.  Quiet compared to most!  We did have Team Edge for a bit, and it was extended practice, given that there's a big performance coming next Friday.  I wasn't there to see Maddie do that, as I was at grocery stores picking up various things.  We're ready to do a gingerbread house now, probably next week.  But I had prescriptions to get and some things to do at the church too, of course.  I got back and picked up Maddie, and together we headed home to see Mom.

We played some games, and I've been getting a few things done, including walking on the treadmill.  Maddie was doing what she's been doing all month:  playing games, watching videos, talking with friends, all at the same time.

But when it got close to dusk, we were off to Ashebrook tonight to see the lights there in that neighborhood.  It's not officially up and going yet, but the lights are mostly on and we had a nice time loading up all the Christmas music and driving through.  It's not far away, and it's just an amazing collection of lights and decorated houses.  

Maddie snapped some pictures too.  Mom had this hot chocolate ready for us, and the containers we have are so effective that the hot chocolate was super hot even a half-hour later when we were there touring the neighborhood.  But it was delicious, and it was nice going to see the lights together.

We got home tonight and watched "Home Alone 2" again, and after that we actually watched a parade online, the Christmas Parade in Gatlinburg.  I turned it on just out of curiosity.  And forty-five minutes later, we were all still watching it because they had done such a great job with it.  Mom wants to go see that some day.

We closed the day out with reading, of course.  Maddie still laughs at the part where the character of DEATH has replaced the Discworld's version of Santa Claus, seated in a large department store and interacting with children.  It's a really funny book.

Tonight we said our prayers, and got some sleep early.  We have church tomorrow morning, and we're ready to do this memory verse game.  I'm pretty close to having all three verses memorized completely!