My Baby's a Singer!!

OK, OK, actually Georgia likes to sing non-stop these days, especially now that's it's Christmas time and there are SOOOO many Christmas songs. But on this night, my little girl sat on a stage for the very first time and sang in front of a room full of people.

It's her first recital... I'm so proud!!!!!

And just like any true kid, she went from singing to looking around to being a ham.



I wish we would have arrived earlier so I would have been closer to take pictures (lesson learned for next year), but thank God for my Nikkor 70-200mm! It got me close enough.

And then in true Georgia-style, when her class was done, she couldn't let it end there. She proceeded to dance in the aisle to the other songs by the other classes. Always the center of attention, this one!

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Here Comes Santa Claus... There Goes Georgia...

A couple weekends ago, we did what's becoming our annual trip to "Breakfast with Santa." OK, it's only our second year of doing it, but hey, it's only our second year living here. It's at our local convention center and it benefits our local hospital's foundation, and it's an all in all good time.

This year was no exception. After eating breakfast, in which Santa comes around to each table to say hi to the kids, it was then time to visit the big man himself up on the stage. This year, as opposed to last, Georgia was ready with her list of desires to relay to Santa when he asked.

But just like last year, when we walked Georgia up onto the stage where Santa sat, as soon as she saw Santa, she took off running to him.

She then proceeded to go through that well-rehearsed list.



After our visit with that jolly man, we made an ornament, beaded a bracelet, decorated a cookie and wrote a list to Santa so that he wouldn't forget what Georgia had told him just minutes before.



After breakfast, we went for a walk around downtown.



And Georgia found a poster in a store window with her name on it! She and I were leading a "Mistletoe March" through downtown a couple of weeks after this morning.



A great, Christmas-filled morning for all!

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Forget Halloween - Christmas means CANDY!

Eastern North Carolina has to be the Christmas Parade capital of the world. No, I'm serious - I have never lived in a place with sooooo many Christmas Parades. Every little town here has its own line-up of beauty queens, high school bands, boats (there's always a boat in parades here), car dealerships and Santa to meander down main street on almost every Saturday between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The town might only have a population of 500, but residents will throw a parade for thousands.

And most of these parade entries throw out candy... lots and lots of candy. That makes my daughter one happy and hyper little girl.

At the end of November, Georgia, my hubby and I were actually in one of the larger parades around here. We got to ride in a car on behalf of the TV station I work for, and man, did Georgia like that. I thought she find it cool waving to the crowd for the first 15 minutes or so, and then get bored and require some entertainment by the hubs and me. But no, that little girl waved out the window for the entire parade route, about an hour's worth, and she never stopped smiling. It was awesome!

But this past weekend was the time for us to sit back and watch another parade go by and catch and chase and pick up the candy. Georgia was ready, patiently waiting for the start and wearing what would become candy-blocking sunglasses.



And here it comes!!



And my little girl just soaked it all up as she kept her eye on the candy!

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My Litte Reindeer... or is it Rein-dear?

Now that my friends and family members should be receiving their Christmas cards in the mail, here's a look at some of the fun Georgia and I had shooting some pictures to use for them.

Love this girl...

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I Know You're Here.

I was not raised in what I would call a religious family. It was more like we flirted with religion. My parents were married in a church, the kids were all baptized in that same church, we had a nativity under the Christmas tree and we talked about it being Jesus' birthday - but that's about where it ended. We knew about God and Jesus and they were never denied, but we didn't say grace before each meal, we didn't read the Bible and we didn't go to church. But starting in kindergarten and lasting through the eighth grade, I was sent to a variety of religious-based schools. Kindergarten was a Lutheran school, first and second grades were in a Catholic school and third through eighth grades were in what was simply called a Christian school - very similar teachings to a Methodist church. It is these years when I can say I developed a better understanding of religion, God and church and where I began to have a relationship with God and faith. But a little more than three years ago, what I had always thought was a pretty strong faith in God was shattered - if God is all knowing and doing then the jerk killed my mother - and let's just say we haven't been on the best of terms since. And it doesn't help that no matter how much I want to go back to that faith of bygone years and believe my mother truly did go to Heaven or something beyond here, the fact remains I simply don't feel her anymore. I haven't (much) since she died. But then came Thursday of this past week. My mom, it had to have been my mom, was watching over me and more so, Georgia. I know it was her. I want to believe it was her. The night before, Wednesday, I had been moving some stuff around in my car and unbuckled Georgia's car seat in the process. To get it out of my way, I moved it up to the front seat. When I finished what I was working on, it was late, so I put her car seat back in its normal position in the back seat and told myself I would buckle it down in the morning before Georgia and I went anywhere. You might see where this is going... The next day, Thursday, I was running late to work because Georgia had napped later than normal. We hurried out to my car, I buckled her into her car seat and back out of the garage. I reached up to the visor above the passenger seat to the place where my garage door opener typically rests so I could close the garage door - no garage door opener. Crap - what the hell happened to it? I jump out and run over to the passenger side to look on the floor, thinking perhaps it had fallen off. No garage door opener. Then I remember putting Georgia's car seat in this same front seat the night before then moving it to the back seat - maybe that knocked the garage door opener to the back seat. I rush back there to look on the seat, but instead of finding a garage door opener, I find my child strapped into a car seat that is not strapped to my car's seat. Holy S***! I almost drove all the way to her daycare without her buckled down. I proceed to buckle the car seat to the car's seat and the EXACT moment I finished, I saw the garage door opener sitting on the floor of the back seat. And then I felt her. It was a little overwhelming. Call me crazy, but my mom was right there. She was. And she made sure that grandbaby of hers was safe. This past Thursday, a little bit of my faith came back to me. I found it on the floor of my car's back seat.

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Happy Birthday, My Love!

OK, I'll admit, I missed writing a birthday post for my daughter and the namesake of this blog on October 13th. So I am making sure I don't miss the other big birthday of the year - my hubby. Happy Birthday, sweetheart!!!

Since it has only been his birthday officially now for a little more than an hour and he is fast asleep, I don't have any pictures yet to go along with his birthday celebration. But I never shared Georgia's fun party - and first "real" kids' party - so you're about to get bombarded now!

We actually started her celebrations on Friday, the day before her birthday, with a little party at school - her first!

Then on Saturday, the 13th, came the BIG DAY! From the start, Georgia wanted a Spiderman birthday cake - so I built the party around that. We did more superheroes, since finding everything Spiderman left me a little more limited. And did we ever have fun. Six little girls came over - add Georgia to make seven - and by the time the party was over, I would have sworn we had 30 kids in our home. But they had so much fun, and so did we.



But once the party was over, we still had lots of birthday left - so thank goodness the county fair was going on! Georgia's first Ferris Wheel ride to start things off, then it was a train, the tea cups, the pony ride and some fair food...



And how do you top all that? Well, I don't know if you do with two exhausted parents at this point, but Georgia did get to pick where we had her birthday dinner - Chick-fil-a.



All in all - a fabulous day. Now let's hope my hubby has just as great a birthday - although I can't promise any superhero-themed party. That one did me in for a year.

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It Has Been a Long, Long Time...

So I see my last post on this page was more than a month ago, and yes, that's a horrible job on my part in keeping up with this page. I would try to explain how busy I am and why I fall short of posting here, but it seems no matter how much I explain my being overwhelmed to others, it falls on deaf ears or is just not understood. So I'll bypass the whining and just put a post up here.

While I should probably start with Georgia's birthday party at school or her big birthday party on her actual birthday or the fact that Georgia went from her crib to her "big girl" toddler bed about the time of my last post in September, I'm stuck at work on my day off (thanks Hurricane Sandy) and don't have those pictures available to me. But I do have pictures from our walk in the Halloween Preschool Parade this past Friday, so get a load of some skeleton cuteness!

Georiga has wanted to be a skeleton for Halloween this year since we first started talking about it, and her choice has not wavered. She really likes x-rays right now and the letter "x" is her favorite letter, so I can only assume that's where the skeleton thing came from. Maybe I have a future radiologist on my hands?

So there's a preschool parade held the Friday before Halloween every year for the little ones in town. It gives them a chance to show off their costumes and have a daytime "costume practice." And although we missed the start by about 15 minutes (bad mama!), we caught the last part of the walk and all of the festival after it.

Halloween is almost here!

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