Ear Piercing Day

As you can see here, our elf left us a little gift, another one, and this is becoming a yearly tradition.  It's a gingerbread house, and this year, the theme is "The Grinch," conveniently.  It's a "Who House," and it'll be fun to decorate when we get an opportunity!

Well, today was the big day.  Madison has been asking for about two weeks now to get her ears pierced, and Nana and Ye-Ye dropped by to pick her up to bring her over to the Dawsonville Outlet Mall area, where there was a place that could do such things.

It was about ten this morning when Madison got her ears pierced, both of them.  She picked out the exact spot, actually moving it some from the spot the employee recommended.

By all accounts, she was very friendly, and things went really smoothly.  Madison told us she said "ouch" twice, both times before the actual piercing was done.  It's all about the anticipation, and when it actually happened, it wasn't that big of a deal to her.

But it was a big deal, a big moment here.  Nana and Ye-Ye were very generous, getting her a really nice set of earrings, and after that doing a little more shopping in the outlets together.  Most of this will be for Christmas, but it was a nice day out together, while Mommy and Daddy were at home setting a few things up for tomorrow's service.

Here she is, the final product.  You can't see the ears as much, but she was quick to show off her new earrings when she got home.  Along the way, Nana and Ye-Ye were sending us photographs of not only that, but of some of the clothes shopping she was doing this afternoon.

She had a great day there, and came back home about the same time Daddy did from the office.  We're pretty much ready for tomorrow, although there is inclement weather out there looming.  There is a winter storm warning for Gainesville tomorrow, with a projection of about a half an inch of ice, but we'll just have to see what happens tomorrow, as right now it's just really cold rain.  And enormous winds too - a lot of strong gusts tonight.

Well Atlanta finally did something today, something it hasn't done since 1995.  We won a championship game, and it happened so fast that it was hard to sort of build up to it.  Within two years, Atlanta United won the Final Cup in soccer, and there are a lot of soccer fans in the area.  The stadium has been setting record attendance levels for any soccer game, and over the last two years, there's been a surge of popularity in the sport.  This will only increase things significantly.

We didn't watch this game tonight, but rather we were watching a few Christmas movies today, and playing a board game too.  It was that sort of day, after the work and the ear piercing.  We got a lot of work done, and Madison did some of her piano practice.  But we also saw "Home Alone," and then played the board game "A Christmas Story Card Scramble" again, this time Daddy winning at the last minute.  Daddy is allowed to win every so often!

Inspired by the game, we did the popcorn and a movie thing again tonight, watching "A Christmas Story," which is fun to watch Madison get the humor of a little more.  Furthermore, it's just nice to snuggle on the couch with the tree there all nice and lit up, watching a Christmas movie together.  We were up later tonight, keeping an eye on the weather, but it appears as if we'll be okay in the morning.

In the meantime, we were doing our reading and prayers tonight.  Despite the unpleasant weather, it was really a nice day!