Melanie's Sweet Story

Sweaters my parapro's mother in law knitted for the girls...no they are not too happy right then



check out all of my donations for the pj drive!

One of Melanie's favorite shows is Jon & Kate + 8. Recently they had an episode where the kids got to go to KMart and each pick 3 toys to throw in the cart to take up to St. Jude to give to kids that did not have any toys for Christmas. Melanie really watched the show and was paying attention. She also has kind of understood donations of food and clothes to the Lilburn Co-Op and the PJ drive that I held. (Which, by the way I collect 49 pairs of pjs and 18 books- THANK YOU EVERYONE!!!) Well, we were donating some toys for Toys for Tots at Publix last week so she understood that they had a donation box. After we put our items in the box we went to shop for groceries. Publix has this giant toy display you have to walk past before you can get to the groceries. Melanie gets excited and says "Look, mom!" I knew exactly what she was looking at and I say, what is it? And she says, "Look, mom, a Sleeping Beauty Barbie." I tell her, "Yes, it's beautiful." Then she says, "I know.." And, I think I know what she is talking about, and say, "What do you know?" She says, "We should buy the Sleeping Beauty Barbie and give it to kids that don't have Sleeping Beauty Barbies for Christmas like on Jon + 8 (that is what she calls it)." Of course I had to agree to that plan. She never once asked for it for herself, it was always for other kids. Then she said, the Barbie can be for a girl but we need to get a boy something and she picked out a bean bag Tigger. Too sweet.

Last week was a whirlwind of activity. Both girls getting sick then better. Melanie did have to miss her last mommy and me gymnastics class :( I can't believe she is too old for them anymore. She will start classes without me in January and Natalie will start mommy and me... I can't believe she is big enough! Then Melanie had she Christmas performance at school. I had to miss it but my mom, Clint, his parents, and brother all made it so she had a great audience. She sang 3 Christmas songs and was a sheep :) I got to watch the video Clint took and it was so cute. Santa came to my work and the kids had a great time (look closely at the pics to figure out the resemblance to anyone!). We had our gift exchange/dinner with Chris, Aileen, Nate, TJ, and Becca. The girls have so many gifts already between that exchange and all of the gifts people have been so kind to mail us. Melanie also got a package from Santa on the front porch on Saturday and was so excited. He sent her a humidifier to make sure she is getting good sleep this time before Christmas (we were having problems with her waking up coughing and were having to decide which sick baby got the humidifier so Santa was kind enough to bring anther one...a Pooh one). I also finsihed my last class for this semester so I am 1/3 of the way through my Specialist's Program. Wahoo! It wasn't too bad- I am the queen of procrastination in it. I started and finished a paper on Friday that was due on Saturday morning. Not too bad. I've learned to think and type fast so I can move on to laundry, dinner, work, whatever. It was nice b/c Clint was off so I was able to have him watch the girls while I wrote the paper. Oh, since I am updating on everyone, Clint is now the master plumber. We've had 2 toilets leak constantly all of a sudden and Clint figured out how to completely take them apart and replace all of the inner "workings" and now we have no problem. Maybe this can be his side job :)