Christmas 2010: My Longest Update Ever!

Well, here  it is. It has been only a couple of months but so much has gone on it feels like a year. Leah and the rest of us are doing great. As some of you know, I have been running child care centers for a LONG time. Fifteen years ago I started my own and 2 years later I had 4. Yep, too much, especially with a baby. So I sold 3 and decided to keep just 1. Well, some really nasty people decided that they wanted my daycare and would stoop to underhanded and somewhat illegal tactics to steal my students. Of course, you reap what you sew and their moves backfired, but not before costing me many hours and days of major problem-solving and days of non-stop explaining on the phone while trying to repair the damage. There were days I thought the day care would have to close, but with the help of some wonderful people we have prevailed and soon life will be back to normal. We were all consumed by this nightmare but tried to continue with life as usual for the sake of the children. So despite all this we had a great holiday season.

Leah had lots of cute activities at school. She had to dress like a farmer one day; I had prepared cute daisy dukes and red cowboy boots and Dad said no. He said he looked more like the farmer's promiscuous daughter so we did farmer instead!

Thanksgiving weekend we decided to venture out to Bass Pro Shop's Winter Wonderland and try to convince Leah to take a picture with Santa. She was all excited and on the way was showing us how she was going to smile and pose with Santa. When we arrived and she saw the Bug Guy himself, you could hear her screams clear through the mall. When we promised she didn't have to go anywhere near Santa she calmed down and waited patiently for the remote control cars. As soon as it was her turn she ran, grabbed the remote and said, "Mommy take a peeeeshur" and she turned and smiled and forgot all about Santa.

Then the killer cold fronts started. We are in Florida and the weather is not supposed to be in the 30's. Someone needs to remind Mother Nature. But it allows for some pretty cute outfits!

Then it was time to go get the Christmas tree. We had a warm day and ran to the tree lot. 

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She asked, "Daddy, why he hurt my tree?"

After the tree was up, but not decorated, we went to the Storage place to get our lawn stuff. This year Leah was really into the deocarations and loved helping.

We then decorated the tree the following weekend. Yes, it was up without an ornament for an entire week!

Winter program at day care. I will post the video later because as usual Leah stole the show. The entire school spoke about the little "animated" girl until the school closed for Christmas vacation. I will warn you that the video is very bad quality because Dad could not stop laughing long enough to keep the camera from moving!

OK, you have already seen this outfit you say? You are right. I bought it with the intention of Santa Picture! So we headed out again and tried going with a friend. Tis time, again, she showed me how she would smile and pose with Santa, and was excited she would take a picture with Santa and her friend David. The second we drove into the parking lot, there was total silence in the car. Those of you that know us, know Leah does not know "silence". Suddenly a little low and raspy voice said " I no like Santa Clauth"

But we got out of the car anyway and rode the small train at the food court.

Then we returned home and took more pictures b the tree.

The week before Christmas we headed to Disney World. This time the big kids decided to stay home and catch up on work related stuff and parties with friends. this is the smiley face when we told her we were off to Disney.

We went to the Marketplace first and rode the train and "Caballos"

We stopped for a picture and Leah wanted a picture of her hugging the snowman.

The highlight of evry trip to Disney for Leah is the Dumbo ride. She just loves it. She reminds us regularly how she rode Dumbo with Daddy this time.

This year we had a visit from Santa's Elf on the Shelf. We was quite a funny guy, we never knew where he was going to be when we woke up in the morning.

 Christmas morning was great. All three kids woke up and opened gifts at the same time. We only have pictures of the little because the big ones didn't want their pictures taken. Well, I took some anyway but didn't post them. Leah's favorite Santa gifts were her B*rbie Jeep and hand held Leap Frog.

Then we celebrated Mimi's 22nd birthday before she went out for ice cream with friends.