Thought that I’d better wrap it up over here before Christmas got too far away from me. Does it feel like Christmas was weeks ago to anyone else but me? I’ve been meaning to revisit old resolutions and make some new ones since I’m very excited for 2013, but I need to get Christmas 2012 documented and packed away (just like our decorations that are finally all put up!).

Let’s see, when we last left off we were crafting up a storm to try to get all of our Boutique orders fulfilled. We did and I think Birdie #2 and I learned some very valuable lessons. 1. Stock up on supplies when they are on sale (and available!) and 2. start in about July for Christmas items. It is just a little bit too much to be trying to get orders done and our own Christmas stuff done. Lessons learned. And thankfully we are smart Birdies and we learn our lessons well…might be the hard way, but we do learn them.

And I fully realize that I’ve skipped about a dozen Crafty Tuesdays, but I will have many CTs in the upcoming weeks, so it is back on. Next week.

(Christmas card photo reject.)

Amidst all of the boutique stuff, we had the normal end of term chaos, teacher gifts, appreciation lunches, holiday parties at school and with ballet classes and friends, Christmas cards, and a ride through our town with Santa on an old fire engine. It pays to know the fire chief. (He is one of my Girl Scout’s dad and he’s fantastic!)

Then it was time for the grand-daddy of all Christmas pageants! Em had a little solo bit as one of the three kings. She was “really nervous” but did a fantastic job. I was really proud of her. We have the whole pageant on video…but it is far too long to put up here on the web. I’ll just post the highlights….and a few other pics, of course.

The cutest barncat in the stable.

Our “Kings” getting into their kingly groove.

And Em’s song.

COS Christmas Pageant 2012 from carrie voris on Vimeo.

I need to get a few other clips of some of the songs they did as a group. I love to watch Addie sing…she just belts it out and I can always hear her over all the other kids in the pack.

After the pageant, we raced home to get ready for Santa! We were frosting cookies pretty much an hour before it was time to put them out for him, but the big man did get some tasty cookies!

And then we woke up and magically…Santa came in the middle of the night and transformed our living room from a serene scene like this…

and this…

To this…

Yikes. But the best part was that it stayed that way and we stayed in our jammies almost the entire day! It was pure heaven.