Holiday Spirit?

What a busy six weeks it has been. I feel like I always say that, but Halloween feels like a lifetime ago at this point. Just two days after that holiday, Emily came home from school with a fever. Sure enough, it was Covid and Abbie and I caught it, too. Emily had a booster more recently than either Abbie or me, so her symptoms were negligible and she enjoyed the time off from school.

Fortunately, we were all better well before Thanksgiving rolled around. We had Grandma P. here to help us celebrate, which is the first time that we have had company for a holiday since the BC times (before Covid).

Recent art

Emily doesn't care much about the Thanksgiving meal, but she does like dressing up and watching the National Dog Show. The art above is one of her recent creations, with the dress being inspired by the outfit that she wore for Thanksgiving this year. One of the things that she likes about drawing on her iPad is that it makes it easy to do the shading in her pictures. However, she has been drawing on paper more and more recently and she just got some new paint pens that make shading just as easy as on the iPad, so she is happy about that.

As for Christmas, life is a little different this year. For one thing, Emily now knows the scoop on Santa. We still have the elf visiting us right now, but Emily has started being the one to move her around the house. After all these years, I think she was happy to finally touch Frisbee without fear of killing her.

Gingerbread houses

Perhaps the weather is also making it hard to get into the holiday spirit. As you can see, Emily went to a gingerbread house decorating party after school last week. It was a beautiful 70 degree day. Perfect for keeping the mess outside, but definitely not Christmas weather. 

It is also hard to get too excited about the holidays when there is so much going on at school. This is the last week before break and there has been lots of homework and tests to get ready for. She finishes at noon this Friday, so hopefully we can enjoy a week of shopping, baking, and watching holiday shows before Christmas actually arrives.