A Very Three Lockett Christmas

On Friday morning Josh and I started sorting out our finals/travel/holiday schedule and realized just how crazy our lives are. Josh is finished with two finals (woohoo!) but has two more this week (boo). Ava and I will be heading to Texas on Wednesday to spend a few days with my family, then head down to Huntsville for Aunt Jaryn's graduation. Josh will fly into Houston on Friday evening, after his last final. We will be in Texas until after Christmas, so there weren't many open mornings left for us to do our little family's Christmas. It didn't take long for us to decide that Saturday morning would be the best time for us to exchange our gifts.

We sent a special message to Santa about our new Christmas date with our Elf on the Shelf, James Lockett. Ava was so excited about Santa's arrival. She insisted on writing a special thank you to leave with his cookies and milk.

Working out the perfect word spacing

Checking it twice

Drawing a picture of Rudolph for Santa

As Ava finished up her letter to Santa, Daddy's phone rang. IT WAS SANTA!

{In reality, after we announced our Christmas date on Facebook, our kind, honey-voiced preacher at OWC volunteered to call Ava as Santa. He did a fantastic job! I think you could charge for these services next year Mitch. With just the families at church you could make enough money to cover Missy's extensive Christmas list.}

Santa remembered the last time he saw Ava

Asking if she's been a good girl this year

I think Daddy was having just as much fun as Ava.

He mentioned James Lockett (a gift from Santa's real-life wife) by name.

Santa wanted to know what kind of cookies Ava would be leaving.

In the middle of her cookie list Santa interrupted Ava to remind his elf, Buddy, to make sure to put the bike on the sleigh.

Her face was stuck like this for a while after the word 'bike'. Santa encouraged Ava to head to bed soon and wished her a merry Christmas.

Ava left Santa's cookies on the little plate I painted for her a few years ago.

All the goodies for Santa

All through our faux Christmas Eve night Ava talked through her restless sleep. Early Saturday morning she woke us up claiming that she heard Santa's sleigh bells in the night. She was thrilled and thankful for her beautiful, purple bike.

Sorting through her stocking with James nearby

You did good James, even with our spontaneous Christmas needs. We decided to open our gifts unencumbered by cameras. It was a magical morning of surprises and fun. The happiest study break we could have given HLS.

On Sunday morning at church we learned about the angel who visited Joseph in a dream to comfort him about Jesus' arrival. We painted paper angel wings with glue and glitter.

Our class is almost always all girls. This will definitely be the most popular youth group in town someday:)

Have you ever seen such sassy angels?

Future heartbreakers of OWC. Lookout.

I just like to smile! Smiling's my favorite!

(Please pardon the excessive exclamations in this post title. It is one of my many favorite lines from Elf.)

Ava and I created this ensemble together. All day people kept asking if we had just finished taking Christmas pictures. Overdressed for a random post-Thanksgiving Monday? Who cares. We grabbed lunch with Daddy after gymnastics, and in this grungy time of law school finals he needed a little cheer. What brings the happy more than a Daddy-praising shirt and sequin skirt? I think she'd make Buddy the Elf proud.

Another way we love on our poor finals-laden HLS: fancytastic hot chocolate with homemade whipped cream.

We are so thankful he has this amazing study.

Things we love about sweet potato 'fries':

1. sweet potatoes are $.38 a pound
2. if you bake them with a little olive oil and sea salt they taste like heaven
3. they are Ava's favorite color

One of our favorite WOP, Missy, gave us an Elf on the Shelf and book.

We gleefully read the book and welcomed James Lockett into our family on November 28.

Each night, while Ava sleeps, James flies to the North Pole to have a powwow with Santa. Every morning we go on a hunt to find him. He ends up in the silliest places.

Ava named James after herself. They do share the same big blue eyes...

And now I'd like to invite you into our (for the year) house for Christmas.
Decorating brought to you in part, okay okay in most, by Judy.
(Also brought to you by 3M removable, no mess hooks.)

View from the front door

Dining room table

Main hallway, left of living room

Love this movie. Josh and I saw it on our first date, so it's especially dear to our hearts. (We actually saw a double feature of Elf and It's a Wonderful Life. At the drive in. But that's a story for another blog...) The lower poster is an ad from an old LIFE magazine when the movie was released. I found it at an antique store in Brenham, and gave it to Josh our first Christmas together.

Mantle
The wreath is a Judy original, not available in stores

Our downstairs tree

The mini-star bouquet beneath the topper is new this year, thanks again Judy.

Banister on formal staircase

Close up top of banister

End of banister decorations

The famous Willow Tree nativity scene, given to us by Beene Beene the night Josh proposed. Happy to say it's still in my possession, a little inside joke there.

On Saturday afternoon a mysterious helicopter was seen flying over Campus Corner.

The two smart Locketts, who thought to grab their heavy coats, ran out to see what all the hullabaloo was about.

Mommy, who was of course the dumber, coatless Lockett, frantically snapped pictures from indoors. Santa stepped out of the helicopter to greet the happy children. When Ava returned from the landing site she was ecstatic. "The real Santa looked right at me and waved!" she exclaimed. She is VERY into Santa this year. Perhaps this little video has something to do with it...

I hope these days leading up to Christmas are as warm for you as they have been for me. We have snow chances late Tuesday, just flurries, but still SNOW CHANCES! I can't think of a better way to celebrate the end of Josh's first final than the first sprinkling of snow. I'll close this post with another Elf quote:

"First we'll make snow angels for two hours, then we'll go ice skating, then we'll eat a whole roll of Tollhouse Cookiedough as fast as we can, and then we'll snuggle,"

Sounds like the perfect day to me.

A 'Swankified' Thanksgiving

After watching about eleventybillion Martha Stewart Thanksgiving episodes this month, Ava and I simply had to make personalized place cards for our family Thanksgiving. We used fancy gold leaf, seed pearls, and calligraphy pens from Tiffanys brown, washable fingerpaint, stickers, and construction paper. The only extravagant thing about our place cards was the expensive resume paper we 'borrowed' to stamp our hand trees, don't tell HLS.

I painted Ava's hand brown, and she stamped it onto the resume paper.

Ava painted trunks onto the hand tree branches.

While the hand trees dried, we worked on a Thankful card.

It's a little hard to read, but here was her list: Bunny Pasta, house, kitchen (These were the first three things she listed, in order. Do you think it would be really classless if we asked people to skip toys for her birthday gifts and just send boxes of Annie's Pasta?) , BB (Beene Beene), Mimi, Coach, Jaryn, Dusty, Nate, Hannah, Mom, Dad, Baba, Pops, Sarah, Brandon, Nolan

She had many more things to write, but we ran out of space.

Once the trees were dry, Ava sorted our leaf stickers and placed them on each hand tree.

I cut out the trees, we used double-sided tape to stick them on construction paper, and Ava wrote names on each card.

Our complete forest

Mimi, Coach, and Jaryn arrived late Tuesday night. They are always eager to help out with projects around the house. Before I poured my first cup of coffee this is where I found Ava and Coach:

While Mimi plotted Christmas decorating strategies, Jaryn and I began cooking for Thanksgiving. My favorite Susan Branch cranberry sauce, yum.

Our crazy worker bees did stop long enough to watch the parade. We all stopped to watch Santa ride in, and officially begin the holiday season.

Keeping an eye on the sauce

Remember those 'ginormous' marshmallows from my last post? I used them to top the sweet potato casserole, renamed When Marshmallows Attack.

Josh was on-call for random kitchen emergencies.

Golden delicious

Ms. Priss in her cute new apron

I call these next three shots Evolution of a Pretty Good Picture

First try

Second attempt

Third time's a charm
(Also known as, The One Where Coach Danced Around the Kitchen Like a Madman)

This group is just impossible to mess up

Love this one, thanks Judy.

(Mom - you have a picture of me and Papa that is spookily similar to this one. I think he's wearing a red toboggan, and I'm about Ava's age in a pink coat. Can you scan it and send it to me?)

Thanksgiving table

The 3 Locketts

The spread:
Brussels sprouts, green beans, carrots, stuffed turkey tenderloin, *rolls, dressing, When Marshmallows Attack, pumpkin pie, and homemade whipped cream

*not pictured

Group shot 1

Group shot 2

Quick story

The other day Ava informed me, between bites of Chick Fil A, that, "It should be a 'u' not an 'a'."

I looked at her, confused, "What?"

"At the end of my name, it says 'uh' like 'u' not 'a'. Is it okay if we spell my name A-V-U from now on?" she sweetly replied.

I thought for a minute and let her know that she can spell her name with a 'u', but I'm going to keep spelling it with an 'a'.

Of course, after telling grandparents about their Granddaughter Formerly Known as Ava, Pops has been referencing her as 'Avu' in his texts. Glad to be raising a girl who isn't afraid to question the world around her, but really? Avu is not nearly as cute as Ava. What's a mom to do?

Anyway...

While the boys watched A&M beat TU (Whoop!), the girls decorated for Christmas. Thank goodness for those nifty 3M removable, no-mess, hooks. More pictures to come when everything is finished, but here is one glimpse. Out with the ornaments, in with the 'Avu'.

A million years ago we bought tickets to take Ava to see Wicked in Tulsa. Finally, the long-awaited Saturday arrived. Originally we planned for Ava to wear her Elphaba costume, but it was way too chilly for tutus. She did wear her sparkly, silver shoes - just like the ones Elphie is after in the play.

Elphaba, the doll, came along too.

Our friend, TC, won the Wicked Lottery and sat in the second row for 1/3 of the price of our ticket.

Notfairnotfairnotfair! We were very happy for her.

Waiting for the show to begin with Mommy,

and Daddy.

Our 'Swankified' crew, Mary and Susie. Also there was TC, but our camera couldn't quite capture her all the way up in the second row.

A little Wicked Sparkle

Ava was amazing during the show. She only sang quietly, and was completely engrossed in the show. Josh and I both saw some of the biggest grins we've ever seen on her sweet face. Her favorite scene was 'Popular', and she kissed us about 37 times during the play. It was a late night, long trip, and an early Sunday morning followed, but it was definitely one of the most fun things we've ever done as a family.

After the show I changed Ava into her fuzzy, pink, footed pajamas, and we ordered a little Happy Donalds midnight snack. Have you ever seen a happier 3-year-old?

Excuse our Wicked puffy, sleepy faces. On Sunday morning we headed to church to celebrate the first Sunday of Advent.

Lighting the Advent Candle of Preparation

We kept Ava in the service with us until after the Children's Sermon. At one point Ava said, "So this is the Mommy and Daddy nursery?" She enjoyed singing some of the Christmas songs with us. Such a special morning.

I've heard many people comment on feeling the 'holiday blues' already. Money is tight, families are busy and far away, random ugly words sting, doubt creeps in, loneliness hovers. I feel it too. But, I've got a 100% surefire way to beat the gloom. Find a tiny somebody, someone who still sees Christmas as magical, someone who is doing the teetee dance of anticipation for Santa, someone who has carried the Toys R Us catalog around until its pages are falling out, someone who sings to the Baby Jesus in your manger scene, someone who ranks hot chocolate as the highlight of their day. Bury your nose in that tiny someone's hair and breathe it in. Hold them tight and squeeze until they squirm away. Catch their Christmas spirit. It's oh so contagious.

And if you don't have a tiny someone, you can definitely borrow mine. She's got Christmas to share.