Loving Lily

Last weekend Jim and I went down to see our daughter, Jess, son-in-law Dave, and granddaughter, Lily. There were Christmas festivities in town.   Santa was in town, so we had to see him. I couldn't believe there wasn't a line to see him, but it was almost time for him to go. He was appearing in the real estate building. We had to coax Lily to go see Santa. She would only go if her Mommy went with her. Then she told her Mommy to sit on Santa's lap. While I'm sure that would have made Santa's day, my daughter was like, "Uh, no thanks!"

Lily loved this sled and didn't want to get out for the next group of people to sit in it.

With Mommy and Daddy

Their church had a Christkindlmarket where Lily made a gingerbread house.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I hate when I get full before my plate is empty! Happens every Thanksgiving! Wait! There's turkey left! And potatoes! Stuffing! You can do it! No, no I can't. Obviously I need to put smaller portions on my plate. What a concept. But then, within an hour, it's time for dessert. Of course there's room for dessert! I didn't go overboard on the desserts. Sure there were pumpkin, banana cream, chocolate, and apple pies to choose from, and chocolate chip, crescent and our famous Italian "SOS" cookies. But I hardly had room for much dessert. That didn't stop me from taking some home, though! *wink*

It was fun to see the little cousins get together, from age 12 down to 2. There were 9 total, 8 of which were my sister's grandchildren.  My granddaughter, Lily, who will be 4 in January, was the other one. Of the cousins there, three of them -  Taliah is almost 3, Brooklyn is 4 1/2, and Gracie is 3 1/2 - are all bigger than Lily.When you see Lily by herself, she doesn't seem small. But comparatively - she is just a little sprite who doesn't stop talking.

Jess, Dave and Lily spent the night at our house. Lily was very excited to spend the night at Grandma and Papa's house. At one point I brought Jess into my bedroom to show her some of the Christmas presents I bought. Lily told the guys that "Mama and Grandma needed alone time." Then when we let her come into the bedroom she played on my bed. I asked her what she wanted to do. I suggested different toys. She said, "I want to play with a Dora puzzle." I just so happened to pick one of those up for a Christmas present. I looked at my daughter who shook her head "no". I just shrugged and said, "What the heck! It's a special night!" I rummaged under the bed and grabbed the puzzle. Standing up, I held the puzzle behind my back and then said, "It's magic! Here it is!"

What fun!

The three of us sat on the floor and put the puzzle together. Believe me - it TOOK all three of us, even though it said ages 4-6 on the box! It's one of those lenticular puzzles. Yeah. Like you know what THAT means. Even spell check questioned it! (Of course, JIM knew! damn it!)

According to dictionary.com there are three definitions:

1. Of or pertaining to a lens;
2. Biconvex; convexo-convex (huh?)
3. Resembling the seed of a lentil in form - lentil-shaped.

In laymen's terms, the picture moves when you move. Capice? Here. I took a picture:

Then I moved a little to the left and the picture changed. I took another photo.

Believe me, it's not easy to put the puzzle together when Dora has 4 feet! When we finished the puzzle, I told Lily to move a little to see the puzzle change pictures. So she wiggled her butt.

Lily told us that it was "girls only" in the bedroom. She said, "I know that Papa is a good man, but he can't come in here!"

On Friday Lily made a gingerbread house with Papa. We decided to do this again because her dogs got a hold of the last one and ate it. Although the dogs aren't wholly to blame. We think the cats were in cahoots and jumped up on the counter, knocking the house down onto the floor for the dogs to eat.

Papa is instructing Lily how to make the perfect house.

Of course, after each piece of candy was attached,

there was a lot of this:

You may have noticed that she changed clothes in between the last few photos. That's because they started making the houses in the morning. Then the house collapsed because they didn't wait long enough for the frosting to harden. That's when Lily said, "I think this is a bad idea." After waiting about an hour, they continued.

All in all, it was a wonderful couple of days with my family, especially our funny, wonderful, loving granddaughter!