Tis the Season to be Thankful for So Much

There's so much to be thankful for today and everyday!!

We worked hard to learn 26 different verses in ABC order this year during our devotional time. Maggie took it a step further and wrote out one of the longest verses we had at her after school program a few weeks ago. I can't believe how quickly she can memorize. Hopefully, this will be some words of wisdom that will come back to them when they need it the most!

 Zippy the Elf is up to some more silly stuff and our December Fisher Family Calendar has had a lot of special activities and treats planned for this month like the Hot Cocoa Bar we enjoyed last week.

 Just about the only fireworks we ever see live are the ones at ChristmasVille every year because they shoot them off at 5:30 PM right after the Rock Hill Rockettes perform. We managed to snag some chairs later in the show, but isn't this a sweet sidewalk shot of these two siblings?

 Alice and Kevin were kind enough to invite all of to attend the Fezziwig Ball on Dec. 1st at Winthrop's McBride Hall. It was a beautiful location and dinner.

 The gingerbread houses and Lego display at the Center for the Arts were amazing as always again this year!! Maybe one day we'll get up enough courage to try and enter something ourselves.

Writing letters to Santa (because they forgot at Glencairn Gardens to tell him their Wish List) and signing the Naughty or Nice Book

 Check out this crazy clan and the Big Guy himself at Santa's Workshop!

                  Face painting, making reindeer food, eating at Jimmy John's, chomping on sugar cookies and sipping on hot chocolate...what a happy, fun day (even if it was rainy). 

 We checked out the Christmas parade Friday night with our friends, Terry, Parker, and Kenzi. We even made it until the end this year mostly because it was half as long as it usually is and it still about an hour and half.

 Check out Maggie's new favorite vest that she got from her buddy Eliza and pretty much wore straight for an entire week! It came in really handy though when I had to teach a children's church lesson on Jacob's coat of many colors! :) 

 Riley ran his first ever 5K at the Gobble Wobble on Nov. 17th this year. He started off strong with his friends, Blake and Callie and did his first mile in about 13 minutes. He lost a little steam and walked a lot more the 2nd mile (which took us about 17 minutes), but then finished strong with his 3rd mile being about 12 minutes.

 We even saw a hot air balloon along the way! Go Riley, go!

 I attended the Southern Women's Christmas show with Mom and Melissa this year (directly following running the 5K with Riley and dropping off our Operation Christmas Child boxes). To say my feet hurt at the end of the day would be an understatement, but it was worth it!!

 Mags went back to Ms. Carol to get her hair trimmed and blown out. She loves it straight and actually cried in the shower when it was time to go back to her curls after a week and a half of long locks. This sweet girl (like many other females) always wants the opposite of the hair that she has. One day I hope she embraces her curls as much as her straight hair style.

 Chris planned a fun family night for us on the day before Thanksgiving by taking us to a Charlotte Checkers hockey game. Riley really got into the scoring and was the most excited Chris thinks he's ever seen when they scored their first goal! Maggie,well...as you can see...she was just there for the snacks! :)

 On Thanksgiving, I made my two turkeys a special crescent roll breakfast and we watched the parade and played Bingo with the floats before heading over to Auntie M's house. Melissa and Rodger had us find our painted rocks in the yard to use as our place setting marker and then we dug into some yummy food. After stuffing our bellies, we worked off a few calories by having some friendly competition with a game tournament that Melissa created for us. We had to play a game of giant Jenga, shoot pool for 5 minutes, toss baskets in a mini basketball hoop for a minute, roll wooden dice for a full house, and throw darts. We had a great time! 

 The next day we headed to Penland to complete our family Christmas tree-getting tradition. We picked a good one (or so we thought) until we got home and realized it was too tall. Much sawing and branch removal later, we ended up with a tree in a stand that is probably our most pitiful tree ever. But we made the best of it and tried to hide the gaping holes as best we could!

 Zippy the Elf arrived that Saturday and brought some cute pjs and gifts.

 Melissa gave us a great pre-Christmas gift full of fun activities like this puzzle for us to do as a family. The kids worked hard and felt a great sense of accomplishment at completing this project. 

 Riley saw the signs at Penland Tree Farm about ducks helping pull Santa's sleigh when the reindeer were sick, so he made his own sign for this sleigh in our house when I gave the kids a chance to help decorate: Reindeers day off! Penguin on the job! 

 Riley's teacher is packing up her classroom to move to the new school (Cherry Park) in January and in the midst of it she lost her ring. Riley told us this story on the way home from school and immediately upon arriving home, Maggie went straight to work on this sweet note to help "comfort" Mrs. Mitchell. What an empathetic heart this little one has!!

Here are a few more sweet and not-so-sweet moments:

• Maggie one morning came into the room where I was helping Riley get ready and said in quite a loud voice: "For heaven's sake Mom, you haven't done the laundry and my green shirt is dirty. You need to wash it." Hmm...perhaps this six-year old child needs to get some lessons in how to run the washing machine on her own since my weekly washing isn't keeping up with her fashion schedule! :) 
• "Hallelujah" is Maggie's new favorite phrase. She says it in reference to just about everything good or bad that happens like "Hallelujah, Riley just won the game!" or "Hallelujah-I can't find my shoes." 
• Riley during his 5K race mentioned above said, "My legs feel like pencils." I think he's heard Chris say that his legs felt like lead, so he just made a jump with what he knew was made of lead. How cute!
• On Thanksgiving day, Maggie was super excited and even claimed that she had seen turkey tracks in the kitchen. 
• Riley's new phrase lately is "You are like an over-cheesed Cheeze-It!" 
• Maggie has had a long fascination with Chris's whiskers. Here's her most recent conversation about them: "Dad, you see these whiskers you have? They are going to turn into a beard then you're going to turn into an uncle because most uncles have beards. That's why I'm glad I'm not a man."