Choo-choo!

Today, I was supposed to have Baby Jade, but her mother called and said her mom was going to take her for the day. Whee! I'm glad. Did I tell you that another mom called and wanted me to start watching her one-year-old daughter? So I'd have two of them. But I've been debating whether to even keep Jade, because it's rough on our schedule. After the relief I felt today, not having her, I think I'm going to tell her mother that when her spot opens up at the other sitter, to go ahead and take it.

Anyway, so we didn't do much today other than hang out, play, admire the Christmas tree, and I worked on building my Ravelry account. Are any of you on Ravelry yet? (It's a huge community site for people who knit and crochet.) It's certainly going to help me get all my patterns and yarns and needles and hooks and projects organized. Or at least that's the plan. When I have 50 hours to sit around and sort it all out. Heh.

Rob came home early from work (hurrah), and the kids came home from school, and we got ready to go to Norfolk Botanical Garden with the Brownie troop.

Gah! It's not letting me insert any pictures! Fricken fracken Ferris wheel!

So. First, when everyone got there, we went into a room in the main building and had cookies and hot chocolate. Hot chocolate for a 2yo, 4yo, and 6yo. Heh. Fun. Then everyone made a craft: a little mouse peeking out of a teeny clay pot, to hang on the Christmas tree. I helped (heh) Sophia make hers, Rob helped Jack with his, and then I had to help Chloë make hers, too. They turned out so cute. I'd show you a picture, but, you know. 'Sides, I don't know where Sophie put hers.

Then the woman in charge read us all The Polar Express. I'll have to rent the movie; none of us have seen it nor had read the book before. All the girls were sitting, mostly quietly and patiently, listening to the story being read, but Sophie kept exclaiming, "What are you doing?!!" "You have earrings!" "She has earrings!" and so on. The lady was pretty stern, so this was very amusing to me.

After that, we all lined up to go outside and ride on the Polar Express! Okay, it was actually just a tram ride, but we pretended. We rode through the beautiful displays of lights (I keep hearing Sophia announcing "I love Christmas lights!" in my head) that IMO were better than the lights on the beach, and we all sang "Jingle Bells" at the tops of our lungs. It was freezing out, but we had a really fun time.

We zipped home as fast as we could, to beat Stephanie to our house. We made it, but just. She was there to watch the kids, while we went out to do a bar and dinner mystery shop at Rudee's, on the waterfront. We'd never been there before and had a really nice time, although I wouldn't order what I did again: it turned out to be a bunch of lump crabmeat in a bowl. I mean, it was good, but it was just a bowl of crabmeat! Weird.

Off to bed with me. Nighty-night!

Fin.