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Leah sang with her choir again in December.

Grams’s cancer treatment included chemo for a couple of months, followed by giant surgery on December 21. This meant she was in the hospital for Christmas. So, we made alternate Christmas plans. Instead of flying up for Christmas, Grammy came early and we had some early Christmas festivities.

Part of this included some delicious treats. The girls headed over to Grams’s house to bake cookies (per tradition). Aunt EA and Charlie were supposed to be there too, but they’ve had a tough time with illness which kept them away.

Yes, the traditional Christmas cookies were a bit less traditional this year, including dinosaurs and narwhals.

There was also, of course, food (not pictured) and presents.

Leah was excited about this Harry Potter wand that works with an iPad, which she can program to do different spells.

Molly’s been so jealous of Leah’s Squishmallow, she was excited to get one of her own.

Merry belated early Christmas!

Molly has her brown belt in karate, and is working toward her black belt. Part of that is passing tests to get three stripes removed from it. She had the first stripe removed back in June, and tested to have the second stripe removed in December.

Part of this test involves breaking boards. Molly’s been breaking boards for years in karate. However, after earning her brown belt, she moved up to trying to break 2 boards stacked on top of each other instead of just 1 board. Her first attempt to do this was back when she got her first stripe removed from her brown belt, but she wasn't able to do it. So, she’s worked hard between then and now to get ready for her second attempt. As you can see here, she does it perfectly. We’re so proud of you, Molly!

And she passed her test, removing another stripe from her brown belt and paving the way for her black belt test in June.

Christmas trees were hard to find this year at cut-your-own farms. We headed out to get one on December 9, thinking we had plenty of time. Sadly, our beloved Greenway Farms was almost sold out when we went. We managed to find this very broad Douglas Fir, but I’m not sure where we’re going to go next year.

Here’s our fully decorated giant Christmas tree (we had to scoot the couch over a good bit to fit it.

For Thanksgiving, we gathered at Grams’s house along with Aunt Caroline and Uncle Charles. We decided to forego the traditional turkey in favor of salmon. And we got a picture together with all humans and canines present.

We also had pies from Molly’s pie sale. Her school music program had the kids sell pies as a fundraiser. To get the top prize, you had to sell 40 pies. This sounded like an unattainable goal, but Molly did it! She sold 40 pies, making a lot of money for her music program and earning her lots of prizes. They included a pass to Launch Trampoline Park, 1 hour in a video game truck during school, and 30 seconds in a money machine where money blows around and you get to keep whatever you can catch (she caught $27). While I might have preferred Jen’s homemade pumpkin pie, I was very proud of Molly for raising so much for her orchestra.

Fall was super busy, but we managed to fit a very quick family photoshoot in. I found this nice spot in our neighborhood. And I may as well start by showing you the winning shot.

And here are some of the runner-ups.

There were a lot more pictures taken, mostly to try to find a way to get a reasonable smile out of Molly. Too many looked like this.

Yikes!

Leah sang with her choir again in November.

Back in November, Molly had her first middle school orchestra concert. It’s a whole new level of professionalism, complete with uniforms. They were great!

Now that Molly is in middle school, she’s moved up to the youth choir at church.

In 5th grade, Molly went on a field trip to Philadelphia to the Franklin Institute. She liked it so much, she wanted to go back with us (mainly with Leah). So, we took advantage of a day off of school and drove up.

We enjoyed lots of the exhibits. Sir Isaac’s Loft was my favorite spot (lots of fun physics games), but I didn’t get any pictures of it. I did get a couple pictures in the SportsZone, though. Molly and Leah raced their bikes with some arm pedaling.

The girls raced one another (yes, Leah’s faster).

The Franklin Air Show is also lots of fun. The girls climbed aboard this old Air Force plane there.

Molly was excited about the virtual reality experience (she’s currently swimming by a whale). It was her favorite part of her trip with her school, and she really wanted to do it again.

We also saw a planetarium show (probably Leah’s favorite part) and saw lots of other exhibits.

It’s a fun science museum. I’d recommend it if your in Philadelphia or not to far away like us.