December Activities

For the past year, Reese has been asking to play basketball, and we finally made it happen.  There is a great league that plays its games a short drive from our house, and the kids practice their skills for the first half of the "game" and then play for about 25 minutes.  It is the perfect balance of instruction and organized chaos.  Reese loved it, and she was pretty good for her first time out there.  We'll see if she sticks with it - we hope she does.

For Callie, fourth grade brought the opportunity to play in the orchestra, and she was excited about playing the violin.  Not so excited that she wanted to practice every day, but excited enough.  Before her school's Christmas break she was part of the holiday band and orchestra concert, and she did a fine job.  The entire concert lasted only 30 minutes, which is a perfect length for an elementary school band and orchestra concert.  We'll leave it at that.

Even though Callie did not participate in the Girls on the Run program this fall, she still got to run the 5K at Keeneland.  That happened primarily because her friends Murphy and Vivie Ann asked her if she wanted to do it with them.  Callie was more than happy to wake up early on a cold December morning to run with her friends.  It's hard not to support that type of friendship.

Our new kitchen provided the perfect space for another annual December activity - chocolate dipping!  Sarah and Kelly had at least twenty-five pounds of chocolate and a host of goodies, both savory and sweet, to be dipped.  This has been a wonderful way to take a day off of work, hang out with a good friend, and mentally prepare for the month of craziness.

In the end, a lot of chocolate was dipped, and those dipped items will go into making numerous teacher thank you boxes and party dessert trays.  The girls definitely enjoyed coming home to this and quickly asked to eat one of each dipped item.  Even with all that is given away, we end up having quite a few tins of treats that last us well into the new year.

This December Sarah and John had the opportunity to go to a UK men's basketball game - the annual tradition here is getting to know the new crop of players wearing the white and blue uniforms.  Regardless of who is on the court, however, it's always a fun evening out.  Here you can see Scratch the Wildcat in his Santa suit, supported by the perennial national champion UK cheerleading team.