Christmas Eve!

Too excited to wait for the real "delivery" of Christmas gifts, the girls have taken to wrapping various items from around the house for each other.  Consequently, there is a pile of completely unnecessarily wrapped "gifts" underneath our tree at the moment.  And, let's face it, who DOESN'T want to open an item she ALREADY possesses when it's something incredible like, say, the plastic pear from our play-kitchen fruit basket, or a single Matchbox car, or an unidentifyable plastic piece to the Polly Pockets (even the girls admit to not knowing what this piece is supposed to be)?  It's TOTALLY worth wasting both wrapping paper and tape on these sorts of gifts.

Today, Julia proudly held up a wrapped gift which looks unequivocally like two pencils covered in wrapping paper.

JULIA: Mommy!  This is for MADELEINE!
ME: (unenthused) I know.
JULIA: And do you know what it IS?
ME: Pencils.
JULIA: Hey!  Now Madeleine knows what it is!
ME: What a problem.
JULIA: (holding the gift up to Madeleine) Madeleine, do you know what this is?
MADELEINE: (confidently) Hay!


Clearly, she picked up on the key word from the above conversation.


To pass the time as they anxiously await nightfall, the girls have been busy playing all sorts of games together.  They built a fort:

They played school, with Julia as teacher and Madeleine as pupil.  Madeleine was instructed to make her own gingerbread figure, and big surprise, she chose to make the Gingerbread Gimnist.  Big surprise #2: her figure looks like a maniacal gingerbread Franken-monster coming to eat us instead of the other way around:

The girls also wrote and illustrated Christmas books.  Julia's is called:

JULIA: Madeleine, don't try to copy my letters, because I wrote them in LOWER-CASE.
MADELEINE: Yeah, because I noticed that your "r" was lower-case!
JULIA: (pointing to the punctuation at the end of "hear") And do you know what THIS is?
MADELEINE: (brightly) Oh!  That's an EXPLANATION point.
JULIA: Yes.  It's an explanation point.  Do you know what an explanation point is for?

I think Julia needs an EXPLANATION on the pronunciation of EXCLAMATION point.  Hardy har har.


Madeleine made a book as well, complete with more freaky drawings:

Sharp-clawed creatures with war paint and floppy spear-head arrows coming out of their hair?  How very Christmassy! 


At any rate, at long last it was time to head off to church for the Christmas Eve service.  Julia played "Silent Night" as part of the Christmas pageant.  I managed to record it while also holding up her music, as there was no music stand, but what I forgot to do was turn the recording device off after she finished, so there is a lot of extra footage that wasn't meant to be recorded.  Julia's performance ends at around 41 seconds, unless you want to watch the camera held at off-kilter angles and footage of the altar floor and what not:




Madeleine made a beautiful, if tired, angel:

And now two tired girls are up in their beds, most likely to be up at the CRACK OF DAWN ready to open gifts!  Merry Christmas Eve!