Some pre-Christmas fun

We've packed so much fun in the past few days that if I wait long enough to post about it, it will all get mixed in with the fun I know we'll keep having through and after Christmas, and some even forgotten.

Friday was the last day of school and the classroom party, which was really just a little meal as half of the children were sent home in the morning as they were running a fever, ouch!

The children enjoyed eating together in the classroom and getting some pretty gifts from their lovely Mrs. Hodson.

With Ana-Lucia, a dear friend and lunch buddy:

Silly picture:

Ellated to have a completely free Saturday (no more practice this or that), we packed up for a little one-day trip to Galveston's Moody Gardens. It was a lovely get-away. Ella got to go ice tubing and enjoyed it like she was snow tubing in Utah, haha! The gardens are beautiful and the perfect 70's temperatures and sunny skies made it all great. As always, we (well, I) took a lot of pictures. How can you not??
Ella got a little taste of winter sports, like ice tubing!! :) The Arctic Slide sign looks pretty cool with the bright blue sunny skies and palm trees in the background. Quite a contradiction of sorts.

The tropical dome is always a favorite. Ella even tried to train some maccaws. They were tilting their heads as she was tilting hers, ha!

Lovely see creatures. This time around we enjoyed watching tiny baby seahorses and obviously were so absorbed that we didn't take any pictures of those.

I mostly enjoyed this:

The musical instrument museum was another fun attraction. Ella got to play her piano recital piece on every single piano, keyboard, or organ there was

Then we all decided to get musical:

Then there were the drums that I could not help but... try.  We made some music and I'm sure some covered their ears.

So pretty:

(That little InstaFrame app has brought me a lot of joy lately, allowing my creativity to soar :.))

... from Galveston.

Then on Sunday evening we went to check out Discovery Green in downtown. We took a horse carriage ride, looked at the pretty lights, and found this cool mediterranean specialty store.

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She got to ride in the front and do some serious chatting on... of course, equestrian topics. :)

A pretty magical ride:

Beautiful pots Pheonicia's. They sure reminded me of Romanian pottery.

We picked up some goodies, smoked herring being one of them and jetted right back home to make a delicious salad:

(Complete with olives, onion, and armenian flat bread. YUM!)