Shoes

 So I haven't had too much time to write anything for the last week because I have been spending a LOT of time wrapping gifts. We have nine people, so this is not a small task. Last year I upped my wrapping game and decided that instead of Christmas to and from tags I would utilize my huge stash of alphabet stickers, and it worked out beautifully. This year I upped it again and personalized each gift with different kinds of stickers, using no paper tags whatsoever. This is somewhat time consuming but the packages are absolutely gorgeous. Sticker art is kind of like paper art, and we all know from my past posts how paper art crazy I am.

Claire has been out sick with a short term flu, so I haven't seen much of the girls the last few days, but today she was feeling better, although still out of school, and so this evening I ran by and picked them up and we went shoe shopping for their Christmas photo shoot tomorrow. The Christmas photo shoot is another reason I haven't been writing much. I saw a photo back drop a few months ago on the internet and I knew I could reproduce it. So I have been hunting down all of the Christmas props and setting up a backdrop for the girls. We picked out and bought dresses long ago, and had originally planned to have their hair styled by the lady that does both mine and Katie's hair, however, Claire being sick put the kabosh on that. The lady has a two month old baby girl, and we are not coming within a hundred miles of her and that baby with illness on board. So we will do the best we can with the hair and I'm sure it will be lovely. I babysat for the girls' three cousins today and took some test shots and the pictures wildly exceeded my expectations. You might even say I was ecstatic. Ha. See what I did there? 

So we got to the shoe store, and it being so late in the season, and it being a small town, they didn't have much of a Christmas selection. We go to this store every time we go shoe shopping, and we have bought a lot of their selection, which I didn't realize until I picked out a nice pair of sparkly flats for Claire, and with a dead pan face, she looked at me and said Grammma, you already bought me those. Oh, right, I did, didn't I? So we looked at a few others, none in their size and then Claire spied a pair she really liked, but they were so...gold. So very gold. With two inch heels. Not spikes of course, square heels, but still. So I texted Katie and asked if it was ok if her six year old got heels, and she said as long as she is comfortable, which she seemed to be. So gold it was. And then Arya...the lady pulled out the same shoes as Claire only in silver. Arya said they were okayyy...but then she saw the gold ones and she just couldn't decide. So there we were, Arya sitting on the shoe bench, the shoe lady on the floor pulling out shoes, and me hovering over everything trying to hurry things along...but these things just can't be hurried, especially when you are eight, almost nine years old. So she decided go old school in her choosing method, and right there in the middle of the store, went full on into the Eenie Meenie Minee Moe mode, out loud, of course, with the whole finger pointing and everything, from shoe to shoe. I looked at the shoe lady on the floor and she was cracking up. I had the shoe box covering my face so Arya wouldn't think I was laughing at her, but I and the shoe lady were locking eyes and just dying. When she FINALLY got to the end, of course it was gold. Was there ever any doubt? 

The only place I can see them wearing those shoes is to church and for the Christmas photo, and maybe to a birthday party, so it was a total extravagance, but I really didn't care. They were happy. I was happy. The only thing that makes me a little sad is that they are grown up enough to wear little girl heels. And pantyhose. Tomorrow we may be trying out pantyhose for the first time. 

But then again, I guess maybe they aren't growing up too fast, if they still have time for Eenie Meenie Minee Moe. 

I am excited for tomorrow. I love it when a good plan comes together. 

Thank you, Lord for these grandkids, that bring me such joy.