P.S.

I stumbled across a few lost photos on Michael's phone this morning and realized I had intended to include them on past blog posts, but never downloaded them. Several of these are a few weeks old, but figured I'd still share them for fun.

A few more pics from our snow storm in early December.

Our Elf on the Shelf Charlie came to visit us and brought a hand-written poem and request from Santa. He asked Gray to help fill up a bag with toys he's outgrown to make room for new toys coming this Christmas. 

When I ask Gray to do something like this, he usually goes through his toys, gets emotional and maybe picks out one or two to give away. This time around, he filled the bag in the photo plus half of another one in about three minutes. No tears. It was a Christmas miracle. 

Here's the poem that came with Charlie. I must say my rhyming skills were challenged on this one. I should have asked my Grandmother Dodson for help. She's much better than I am at this kind of thing.

Gray began questioning Santa and Charlie this year, which I wasn't quite prepared for emotionally. By the time Christmas rolled around, he seemed to once again believe in the magic of the season, but it took some convincing. Here are a few of Charlie's hiding spots. It was a challenge keeping him out of our dusty rooms during the floor installation. When Gray saw him perched on the new light fixture above, he insisted we not turn the light on the entire day so that Charlie wouldn't get shocked. 

Gray and I have been enjoying weekly visits to our local library. He usually picks out a couple of early reader books and a few DVDs. Most of the time he wants the Bill Nye the Science Guy videos, but this time around we also brought home a couple of kid yoga DVDs. He was really into it and had pretty good balance for most of the poses. 

We also enjoyed several trips to look at Christmas lights this year. Here's a small part of the Chesapeake lights in Oklahoma City. They are always one of our favorites. 

After the snow storm came an ice storm that hung around for four days leading up to Christmas. Thankfully, we never lost power and had just had our big oak trees trimmed and only lost a small branch in the backyard. 

This is the Japanese Maple in our front courtyard with a red light shining up from the ground. It looked amazing at night with the rest of the Christmas lights on the house.