Gearing up for Christmas Break

I am so ready for a couple of weeks at home with my family to celebrate the birth of our Savior!   We've been very busy getting ready.  The anticipation is so much fun, but I'm ready to slow down and soak it up!

SWAG was last Saturday.  This was the calm before the storm!  I am so grateful for my co-planner and friend, Alissa.

It was bigger and better than ever.  We had 426 Pope kids and 165 Brumby kids.  The band and cheerleaders helped welcome them.  We served them brunch and later dinner.  They wrote letters to Santa, sat on Santa's lap, had a really cool dance party, chose free books from our book fair, jumped in the jumpy house, AND went on a shopping spree at Target!  Nothing warms my heart more than seeing our high schoolers love on these kids and pore so much time and energy into them.  It's the hardest and most rewarding experience I have as a teacher.

We play with our neighbors almost every afternoon.  Since it's been cold, we've been playing inside more.  They love to play dress up, and when we're at the boys' house that means they get to be super heroes!  Right after I took this picture, Luke looked at Elizabeth and said, "Come on Spidergirl, we have some evil to defeat!"  

Last Sunday we took the kids to see Disney Junior Live: Pirates and Princesses.  The girls loved it.  Sophia the First and Jake and the Neverland Pirates are two of their favorite shows so it was a big hit!  It's what I expected the Disney Junior live at Disney World to be like, but was sadly disappointed.  I'm glad we got to see it the way it was meant to be!
The girls were not very excited about taking a picture with me.  They were excited about the show though!

Elizabeth brought home her journal from school.  I was flipping through it and almost cried when I saw these two pages... her sweet little heart!

Last week Caroline climbed out of her crib for the very first time so we finally converted it to a toddler bed.  She is really missing the bumpers so I think we will put those back in.  I realize we baby her too much, but I'm okay with that:)
The very first night she woke up around 2:00 am.  Instead of coming to get us, she went and got her sister.  While I hated that Elizabeth's sleep was disturbed, it made my heart so happy that she wanted her sister and her sister woke up to help her.  

We've been watching a lot of Christmas movies by the fire lately.  The anticipation of Christmas is so very exciting!