Saturday the Princess had her first real Girl Scout related event. The girls had their annual caroling program at a local retirement home. Our troop convened at the elementary school to coordinate girls and drivers around 9:30am. Eight girls showed up at the school and five parents (including myself) were there ready to drive. I realized standing there that since the Princess is new to the troop, she might have a better time without me. That she'd be able to be her giggly self when I wasn't around.
Me: Do you think it'll be okay if I bow out? I think I want the Princess to ride in a car with some of the other girls so she can get to know them better.
Leader: You know what? That's a good idea. She really is on the quiet side so this'll be a good time to be with just the girls.
Me: I know that she doesn't open up as much when she's with a new group if I'm there to fall back on.
Leader: She'll go in my car with my daughter. You know how chatty my daughter is!
So the Princess ended up having a BLAST! I actually picked her up at the mall where they went after the caroling to grab lunch. I spotted the group after I'd only walked a few feet through the food court doors. I actually stopped and watched as they were all giggling and talking around a couple tables. It was great to see the Princess fit into the group so nicely!
What's funny is that when I finally came over to the group and tapped on the Princess shoulder, I spotted one of her friends from school ordering lunch at one of the fast-food places. It was a gal who was one of her best friends last year. This year the two are friendly but not best friends. This girl's parents are currently going through a divorce and the girl switches between good and bad behavior.[sigh] Anyway, the girl was there with her brother (who is in the Bear's class) and her Dad. We stopped for a couple minutes to chat with them. They were grabbing some lunch and shopping for Christmas outfits -- they're visiting some family they haven't seen in a while next weekend.
After we got home, I went out and started decorating the front yard. Got our little lighted tree string out and pounded those into the ground. I then inspected our outside strings of lights to make sure they worked. THREE of my strings had a bunch of lightbulbs out, so those got set to the side. I was only able to decorate our one tree. Because of all the cuts I received last year, I made sure to put on gloves so I wouldn't get nicked by the nasty little thorns that are on some of the branches. Unfortunately, I didn't finish decorating because I didn't have enough time to troubleshoot the strings that had the lights out. We had a party to go to!
Our neighbor that's moving to Taiwan was having a gathering with all their friends. It was so sad to know that they'd be gone in a few weeks. But it was nice to know that they are going to keep their house. They were able to talk an uncle into moving into their house to take care of it. Didn't take much convincing since he'll be able to live there rent-free!
We ended up going out to Chili's for dinner. The kids and I were at the party until about 4:45pm and the Hubs hadn't started anything. So out to dinner we went. What was funny is that the Mom of the girl we saw at lunch was working. The Princess said hi to her and let her know that we'd seen her daughter at lunch at the Mall. Turns out the Mom had also visited the same mall around lunchtime. HA! What a coincidence!
Today I finished decorating outside. All I had to do up front is get lights strung on our 2nd tree. Then I finished up the backyard. The Hubs put up our blow-up penguin in the backyard yesterday. But I put up our twinkling icicle lights on the fence. What sucked was that it was cold -- like 58 degrees. And then it sprinkled a little bit while I was attaching the strings onto the fence. Oy! But the outside of our house is nicely festive. Yeah!
We decided to scale down the inside of the house a little bit. The Hubs didn't put any garland on our tree. We're not putting greenery and lights on our stairs and loft banister. Even so, the kids had a blast putting up the ornaments. We had them put up ALL the ornaments -- even the glass ones! Of course, we took a few minutes to reposition some of the ornaments to get coverage on the top of our tree. The kids were SO proud of themselves that they were able to decorate the tree pretty much on their own.
Now how about you? Have you got everything decorated the way you want it?
And for your viewing pleasure here are the kidlings with the UTC Santa over Thanksgiving weekend.
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