When Harry Met Mabel

So Harry Connick Jr. has a really solid rendition of Frosty the Snowman, but after hearing Mae drop her version on me, Harry needs to move over, Mabel Jane is coming through.

More from Christmas Eve, 2011

Hung at Nana's for Christmas Eve, here are some great shots of me with my inner circle folk.

In this next one, I love how we're all enjoying our evening, ready to open some presents, while Mae looks like she's going to start a Christmas brawl.

Here's a picture of my picture that I drew, of a fish, with my new writing board.

And here is Mae with her new harmonica.

I don't know if I've told you about Mabel but she's been hanging out at Kingston Mines on the weekends, which is a blues bar on Halsted St. up on the north side. She got a midnight gig on Friday and Saturday nights with a group called "Mini-Me and the Fat Bastards," which, as some of you may know, is a reference to the Austin Powers movie and quite fitting because it's Mae on lead vocals and harmonica (Mini-Me) and four guys on backups that combined are pushing a metric ton (which is about 2,205 pounds).

This is Aaaron (yep, that's three A's to start it off) on drums and Juan "Johnny" Carlos on guitar.

Anyway, her next show is January 13, if you can make it.

And to All a Goodnight

Okay, so it's Christmas Eve and I'm about to go to bed because apparently Santa is going to be here in a couple hours, or so says the App that Dad bought today.

Anywho, left Santa a couple things under the tree because, well, he goes through all this trouble getting other people stuff so I made him a little something-something. It's an extra sleigh. This is in case his breaks down for any reason, he can hook Dasher and the boys up to this one and keep on humming along. Stacey, Finley and I thought of it a couple weeks ago.

Also, today we were eating a snack and talking about what we were going to leave Santa to eat because we had no sweets in the house - no cookies no cupcakes, nothing. So we decided we were going to leave him chips and salsa. I know, right? But I think he's gonna love it because it's Grandma Lammel's homemade salsa, so it's not like we're just leaving him some salsa, this is the real deal.

And if you look closer you'll also see I left him a bowl full of granola to bring up to the reindeer, we figured they'd love that. And I drew him a picture. It's a fish, a distinct type of fish that no one has actually ever seen before.

Okay, gotta get to bed. And to all a goodnight!

Tree Visits, Volume 3

I know they kinda live here so they didn't technically "stop by," but they did participate in a photo opp by the tree, so this, ladies and gentlemen, is Volume 3.

Dad and I made cheetah and jaguar faces.

And then Mae stopped by, more than once. First time she stopped by... not so good.

Hey! Where do you think you're going?

So I decided to give her the "Mae, you never know, these might just end up on Facebook" speech and she realized those last couple photos were not all that flattering; so she changed her tune and we got ourselves another successful tree visit.

Mabel even got dressed up in her Mr. Rogers outfit the next day and came back for more. I think at one point she turned away from me and I heard her say under her breath, "Yeah, Fin, Facebook that!"

First Snow 2011

Got our first snowfall on Friday night so yesterday morning after soccer practice we got after it right away.

First stop was snow angels. I rocked mine out and was pretty happy with the finished product.

Then we worked on Mae's snow angel which... needs a little work because she was so stuffed into her snowsuit that she couldn't move her arms well enough to get the angel's wings. The outcome was so bad we didn't even take a picture of the finished outcome.

After angels it was on to the main event - SNOWBALL FIGHT! First it was Mae and I vs. Dad...

Then Mae and Dad conspired and were making snowballs behind my back...

Til I displayed my ninja snowball fighting skills, snuck up from behind and...

BLAM! Got pops right on the noodle with one.

Mae could barely move but had the time of her life anyway.

Got inside and it was hot chocolate time.

Cookie Decorating 101

So last night Corinne was over and Mom made Christmas cookies for us to decorate.

We started out with frosting the cookies

Then we moved on to the decorating with the sprinkles and what not.

Mae was aggressive with the sprinkles, which is definitely acceptable. It actually got to the point where we almost changed the name of the sprinkles to the pours. Like, "Hey Mae, can you pass me the green pours?" because there wasn't much "sprinkling" going on.

Took a break from cookies for some "cheese."

In the end, the cookies looked great and, more importantly, tasted even better.

Tree Visits, Volume 2

Maybe not as much fun as when Eli stopped by for a Tree Visit, but Frosty and Santa stopped by the tree and we had a decent time.

Tree Visits, Volume 1

So I decided that throughout the Christmas Season anyone who visits the house is going to get a photo with me I'm going to publish it. It will be called Tree Visits, and this is Volume 1.

And since it was my best buddy Eli who came over to play and spend the night, and we made loads of awesome faces, this will be the longest volume in the history of Tree Visits: past, present or future.

Strike a reindeer pose.