Jupiter and the Girls

I found a bunch of pictures on Jessica's old tablet (she got a new one for Christmas) that she had taken back in August of herself and Elyse with Jupiter. Here are some of my favorites:

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

We traditionally spend Christmas Eve and Christmas morning (some years most of Christmas day) with my parents, the girls' Granny and Pa. Here are a few pictures from this year's Christmas Eve and Christmas morning:

Smoke Rise Christmas House

This afternoon we went to Stone Mountain to enjoy a little more of the Stone Mountain Christmas experience, this time mostly in the Plantation (which isn't called that anymore), but also in the Crossroads area. I didn't get any pictures of that, however.

What I did get some pictures of was our stop at the "Christmas house" (as we call it) off of Silver Hill Road in the Smoke Rise area of Dekalb County; this was, we think, or fifth annual visit:

What tied the two stops--Stone Mountain and the Christmas house--together were the friendly cats we met at both places. One of the barnyard cats wanted attention from the girls at Stone Mountain, and a friendly black and white cat named Oreo followed us around for a few minutes at Smoke Rise.

JC Magill Evening of the Arts

Tonight we went to the Evening of the Arts at the girls' school, J.C. Magill. The girls did various arts and crafts, and Elyse got a Christmas tree painted on her cheek:

Vines Gardens Haiku 11

Slumbering giant

wakes and slowly emerges

from the rain-soaked earth.

Christmas Concert

One of my favorite things about Christmas is the music, and I especially love going to Christmas concerts. For several years I went to the Gwinnett Choral Guild's Christmas concerts, but, sadly, the Gwinnett Choral Guild called it quits in 2015. However, last year I found a wonderful replacement: the Gwinnett Young Singers. I loved their Christmas concert last year, and tonight I went to their 2016 Christmas concert, and it, too, was wonderful.

In the past, when I was a reasonable person, it would have been enough to go to the concert and enjoy it, but now I have a smart phone, and therefore felt compelled to take pictures of the event. So here are some of them:

(To tell you the truth, I took pictures specifically to create this blog post. Years from now I know I will enjoy looking through the books I have printed of this blog and seeing the kinds of things I used to do, and I hope I will see entries in later years about bringing my daughters with me to these concerts.)