joie de vivre: Last Days of School

The last week of school was super busy! Charlotte had her special day at Rainbow School making gingerbread houses and I tried to make the most of my last kid-free hours and finish up Christmas shopping. We also helped out up at Harrison school quite a bit that week. His teacher is just amazing and they had such a fun last week before Christmas -- Grinch Day, Polar Express Day, Holiday Sing-A-Long and tons of crafts. I got to help with several of the crafts which I absolutely loved! It was so fun!

On Thursday, Harrison brought home a gift bag of goodies for Matt & me. He was so excited to give it to us and I knew it contained lots of sweet gifts made by him. Here are a few:

Christmas Tree Ornament

Handprint Calendar -- each month has a theme done from his handprints. Love this!

Fingerprint Ornament

Snowman Magnet

Reindeer Ornament

Thumbprint card -- inside Harrison had written us the sweetest note!

The gift bag made from his fingerprints. :)

All that excitement that week caused Charlotte to take her first nap in months. We were home one afternoon and she ate lunch in the playroom while I finished up some things for Harrison's party. I noticed it was quite in there and found her curled up asleep on the floor -- such sweetness. I had to take a pic since it might just be her last nap ever!

Thursday was Madeleine's last day of school -- she had Friday off as an incentive day. :) So we'd planned to go to eat on the square and then walk around and see the lights that night.

It was a great plan until Harrison got a tiny taste of his first peanut in 4 years! He took a sip of Charlotte's M&M shake that she'd gotten after tumbling that afternoon from Sonic. He came to me immediately and told me that he thought he'd gotten a bit of a peanut, and it tasted wrong and he spit it right out. But already his lips were swelling up and he mouth & tongue were itching. I'll admit my heart started racing and I was trying to hold it together. I have been super-diligent about not giving him any kind of nut and we've been successful for 4 years. And I looked at the nut that happened to be mixed in with the M&Ms and it was tiny tiny tiny. So now we know -- no more sonic milkshakes or any kind of "mixed foods" not from home. He was a little freaked out too -- I gave him an immediate dose of benadryl and within 5 minutes his lips were normal and he mouth felt better. I'll admit that after all of this I went in our room and had myself a mini-meltdown. Although I'm proud of myself for keeping it together during the panic of it all.

So after all that drama, Matt got home and we decided to try and keep our fun plans. We went to dinner at Tim's Pizza on the square and it was so yummy!

Poor Harrison was so tired after that benadryl that he didn't enjoy the evening as much as everyone else.

Friday was Harrison's last day of school. They had their party from 10-10:30 and then parents were free to check out their kids and start Christmas Vacation! I planned most of the party and since it was in the morning I had the idea to serve breakfast. I found this cute rudolph pancake on Pinterest and it turned out so cute. And the kids loved it and pretty much everyone gobbled it up. I mean, what 8 year old doesn't love pancakes and bacon?!

With his party ending at 10:30 we were packed up and home by 11 -- it was awesome to have a half day to start our break! Matt took the day off too and kept Charlotte at home and Madeleine went and helped me at the party. By 1:00 that afternoon we were all curled up on the couch watching a Christmas movie which was such a nice treat!

Madeleine's core teachers offered to chaperon any kids that wanted to go see Annie later that afteroon -- I took her and stayed because I wanted to see it too! It was so cute, even if I had to sit in the row behind her because it's no longer cool to have your mom sit with you & your friends at the movies, I guess. But, I loved seeing Madeleine with her girls from school having fun.