Sugarplum Fairy Land

On Saturday, the Warner girls (including Big D!) took our annual trip to Atlanta to see the Nutcracker. The day did not disappoint. The girls were up extra early in anticipation, the new Christmas dresses from Nana fit perfectly, the weather was nice and chilly, and the Fox Theatre was unbelievable, as usual. How lucky I am that they enjoy this tradition as much as I do! Thanks, Chad!

Getting ready to leave

Lunch at Steak n' Shake

Outside of The Fox

Intermission...

10 months later...

...Jack rolls!!!

May I take a moment to brag...

Chad would never announce this, but I just have to let the 3 or so readers of this blog (all of whom love Chad too!) know that the national polls came out and the Shorter Hawks are ranked #12 in the country! We are also #1 in our (very competitive!) conference. I feel like I'm jinxing something by saying it, but we are excited and thankful tonight! Go Hawks! (and Go Daddy!)

The Wait is over...

...and I don't mean the wait until Christmas. I mean the wait to see Santa. It is definitely atop our Christmas "to-do" list, but the line involved always causes me a little stress. (as I've written about before!) Chad's mom was sweet enough to go with the kids and me this year, so I could hold the line while she took turns taking kids to see other parts of our not-so-huge mall. Two hours later I had 3 very happy and (2 very eager!) kids. He was a sweet Santa who took several minutes talking to each of the girls before posing for the picture. And this was the first year in recent times that I haven't joined the picture to appease a crying babe!

A picture of our picture with Santa
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When we returned home, the girls immediately got busy on separate activities while I fixed dinner. Aly was hard at work making her Christmas list on the special notecard Santa had given her:

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Meanwhile, Caroline had stripped down, put on her Santa dress, found a red chair, and was playing "Santa" to her dolls:

Although we are only one week into December, it has been so fun to see how "into" Christmas the girls are this year. They really 'get' Santa, loved the local Christmas parade a few nights ago, and have been waking up extra early this week in anticipation of hunting the house in search of our "elf" (named Coca-Cola!). We've been trying to stress the fact that Coca-Cola and Santa's job is just to help us to celebrate Jesus' birthday, but it's fun to see just how much of this whole season they are in complete awe, fascination, and wonder of.

So as I sit here tonight, I feel happy that I have kids in bed, dreaming of Santa. (and more importantly, that visiting Santa is behind us for another year!)

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(No significance to Santa...Just had to include a picture of my little bundled-boy!)

Thankful for Thanksgiving

I have sat down at my computer multiple times to try to sum up the awesome Thanksgiving we had. With family in town from New York, Texas, Alabama, and Rome (ha!), we packed our house with people and our tummies with food. The reason it's been so hard to post is two-fold, both boiling down to my dependence on my sister-in-law! First, I have not a single picture to show for the 3 1/2 day family-fest because she is a camera queen. Second, I can't even begin to verbalize what she was able to sum up in two posts on her blog (here and here.) So I'll piggy-back off of her for her words and her pictures. Thanks to all the family for making such an effort and making Thanksgiving 2010 so memorable.