Yee-haw!

Chick-Fil-A apparently sponsored this morning's herd - you can see Jingle Bell's round-up in front of the new Chick-Fil-A calendar here for a morning surprise.  Each morning, Madison has been looking under the tree this month, and finding a little something in addition to the elf surprise.  This morning's booklet was a huge hit, a collection of those fortune-telling origami things that Madison loves so much.

It was a good day today, real productive for Mommy and Daddy, who are 85% with wrapping for the year.  That's a big deal.  We sat, wrapping and wrapping in our own little assembly line - we'll have to wait and see what Santa brings, but Mommy and Daddy's presents are nearly all done.  We watched a couple of Christmas movies, "Christmas in Connecticut" and "White Christmas," while plugging away at the big pile, wrapping and taking inventory.  We even saw a short movie we hadn't seen before, one we didn't notice on the "Christmas in Connecticut" DVD before.  The movie was called, "A Star in the Night," and it was really good if you're into Christmas movies.  We both enjoyed it a lot, an old movie from 1945.

This morning before school, Daddy drove Madison in so that he could help carry her Paul Revere project in.  Other parents in 3rd grade were doing the same, and Madison's teacher commented that it was like Christmas.  It warmed Daddy's heart to hear the other children in the classroom flocking to her project, telling her how great it looked, that it was "the best in the classroom."  The jury's still out on that, of course.  But the point not to be missed is the encouraging atmosphere in the classroom.  Can't beat that.

Tonight's homework involved some more fluency readings, where Madison sees how much she can read from a particular page in exactly one minute's time.  These are great, because she's really improving with her reading skills, and boy, you should see some of the words she has to cover.  No joke:  one word for this third grader was entrepreneurship.  Imagine having difficulty with speech and trying to get that one out.  Imagine not having difficulty with speech and trying to get that one out!  Seriously, that's a mouthful.  And yet, she's gotten good at saying it, due to the repetition.

We had ballet tonight, and grocery shopping on top of that, so our time was limited after the homework and piano got done.  They did get done, so together we sat down for a Christmas short, "Shrek the Halls," and then it was off to bed to start our newest book, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."  Madison is already pretty into it.  We'll keep reading that one a bit - Daddy does all the voices, and we just have a great time each night before bed.

And so it was late again.  Mommy and Daddy didn't have that much energy for anything, so we were in bed not long after Madison.  But it was a pretty productive day, so no complaints here!