Christmas 2018

At the beginning of the Christmas break I took the girls to see The Nutcracker performed by Pennsylvania Ballet. It’s been our tradition since Sophie was 2 1/2 (I still can’t believe I took her when she was that young). As always, it was beautiful and fun to get dressed up and go out.

Here are the goofballs before the show started.
With one of the dancers during intermission

After the show we walked over to the Ritz Carlton for hot chocolate. I can say this was hands down the most amazing hot chocolate the girls have ever had – served with about 8 marshmallows and a side of two cookies. I think we might make this part of the tradition as well 🙂

Two days later was Christmas!

We had a quiet morning opening presents with the four of us, Dave, Kathy, and Lina.

Here’s the set up after Santa came
Sophie got a new pair of skis
Lauren with her new roller skates
Lauren is currently in a serious unicorn phase. Here she is was an enormous stuffed unicorn.

After the low key morning we got ourselves into major hosting gear. By 1pm there were 31 people in the house! As he’s done the last two years, Dave cooked the entire dinner, this year with some help from his mom, which was much appreciated. We were able to fit everyone by bringing in two extra folding tables in the living room. It was tight but we did it!

After dinner Dave, Kathy, Sophie, Laure and I gave a short concert of Jingle Bells. Dave played trombone, Kathy was on clarinet, Sophie piano, Lauren tambourine and I was on violin. It was a ton of fun. Back in the day Dave’s family used to have Sharp family concerts and I’m working to bring them back!

After the concert we took the tables down and everyone opened presents in the living room. By 8pm everyone was gone and the house was quiet again. All in all a very successful day!

Two days after Christmas Sophie broke in her new skis, and Lauren used her new hand-me-down skis, and we headed to Spring Mountain. Both girls did amazing. Dave is looking forward to a productive ski season this year 😉

The ski bums
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The PGC had their holiday concert in the middle of December at Temple’s Performing Arts Center. It was beautiful, as it always is. Sophie is in the Etude group, which is made up of the youngest girls.

Sophie was front and center in the Etude group
The last song the entire choir performed together was “Believe” by Josh Groban. It was pretty amazing.
Here’s the singer after the performance.
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We arrived home from Virginia Saturday night and went out to get our tree on Sunday. We waste no time getting Christmas into high gear here. We headed to the same tree farm that we went to last year, called Yaegers. It includes Santa and a hay ride.

The girls with Santa before we went to get the tree. Lauren is still wearing those dress up glasses.

Hayride selfie.

The girls agreed on a tree pretty quickly, and Dave chopped it down with a little help from Sophie.

The team with their kill.

When we got home we realized that we got a little aggressive with the height of the tree and Dave had to chop off a significant amount at the bottom and top. But after some finagling and maybe some cursing, it’s up!

That evening we decorated it.

The girls and Lina putting on ornaments.

The final product. You can see that the star has been less placed on top and more shoved in there, but it works.

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