Good Bye 2015! Hello 2016!

The perfect way to end a year is to bring your granddaughter home with you and that is what we did.  After our big Christmas with family, we packed up and headed home with Amelia in the back seat.  Our first stop was a Cracker Barrel where we all enjoyed a big breakfast.  Amelia is a picky eater, but you can always count on her to clean her plate when she has pancakes and bacon.  Amelia is a great traveler.  She entertains herself with the iPad and doesn't complain about the length of the trip.

When we got home she immediately went back to the bedroom and created a work of art.  Isn't that funny that she walked in and she chose to do an art project first thing?

Appropriately named "Winter Break Buttons"

Every morning Amelia was with us, we had chocolate chip pancakes and bacon except for the day we went to lunch and a movie and that day we had them for supper.  Each day started with a cup of hot chocolate prepared perfectly by Paw-Paw.  Poor Paw-Paw!  He was kept busy bringing me coffee and making hot chocolate for Amelia.

Amelia was anxious to visit our neighbor, Mrs. Patterson, and she prepared her specialty (corn muffins) to take her.  Mrs. Patterson was happy to see Amelia and she admitted that corn muffins were her favorite and proceeded to eat one.  We helped her move from one chair to another and Amelia was so sweet helping her move her walker and her cup of water to another location.

Making muffins

Tuesday we contacted Amelia's Aunt Ashley and made arrangements for cousins, Avery and Madison to come over to play and have a tea party that afternoon.  Amelia and I went to the local dollar store where we found plenty of good tea party food and some pink lemonade for the teapot.  We also located some decorations and tiaras for each girl to wear.

Sweet cousins!

The girls played a little bit and then devoured the dainty party food.  Avery and Madison especially enjoyed the little round peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that I made with a cookie cutter.  Amelia stuck with the little chocolate chip cookies and little squares of cheese.  A lot of pink lemonade was poured from that teapot.  Everyone had a turn serving the "tea".

After the tea party, Amelia wanted her cousins to meet Mrs. Patterson so I called to make sure it was okay and we fixed her a plate of tea party refreshments and walked down for a quick visit.  When we started down the road the girls got excited about taking her flowers.  First they picked from the neighbor directly across from us and as we neared Mrs. Patterson's house they began to pick flowers in her yard.  Of course, I knew that she wouldn't mind.  We had a quick visit and returned home where the girls enjoyed playing together until Ashley arrived to pick them up.

Amelia used Bubba's walking stick to protect us from "snakes"
as we walked down the road.

It should be noted that while Amelia was very excited that we were having a tea party, she was even more excited about the number of lizards living in our porch area.  She chased them down and delighted in holding them.  She wanted to keep them to take home with her.  (I bet Billy would have liked that.)

"Hey, little buddy."

The hunt is on.

Wednesday we skipped our pancakes because we were going to eat an early lunch before going to the movie, The Good Dinosaur.  Amelia chose that one over the chipmunk movie.  She seemed to enjoy the movie, laughing out loud several times as she ate every kernel of her popcorn.  "You have to get through your fear to see the beauty on the other side" was my favorite line from the movie.  As animated films go, it wasn't too bad.  Back home, I fixed Amelia chocolate chip pancakes for supper since we missed them that morning.

Several times Amelia has told me that she wanted to "needle" or "knit".  She uses both terms to indicate sewing.  I had given it some thought and decided that she might be ready to make something simple.  I cut a rectangle out of a piece of flannel and we proceeded to sew.  We were making a "heating pad" similar to one that I have.  It took a couple of hours to complete the project and it held Amelia's interest the whole time.  She was quite proud of herself.  She sewed the different sections using the machine.  (The first time she pressed the foot pedal, she was surprised by how fast it was going.)  She soon caught on to stitching slower.  She proved to be an excellent needle threader and caught on quickly to stitching the openings on each section closed by hand.

Putting rice into the pad.  Then it can be heated in
the microwave and placed on aching muscles.

Nice straight stitches

Pinning the pieces together

Master of the machine!

The next day she wanted to sew again.  This time she made a bookmark.  It had three buttons on it that she sewed on herself.  She took the bookmark home with her, but she wanted Paw-Paw to have the heating pad.  

Sewing on buttons

Nana supervises.

Rise of the Guardians was our movie for New Year's Eve.  We had popcorn, chocolate chip cookie cake, chocolate milk and fudge.  Two years ago Amelia fell asleep before the new year arrived.  This time she made it and was very pleased with herself.  She called her mom at 11:00 to wish her happy new year on Georgia time.

Happy New Year!!

Posing with Paw-Paw

(I was hoping she would choose the cupcakes.)

We were all tired the next day.  Bubba and I were certainly not used to staying up so late and neither was Amelia.  It was a lazy kind of day for us all.  We paid one last visit to Mrs. Patterson.  Amelia hugged and kissed her and rubbed her cheek and told her that she would miss her.  (So sweet!)

The next day we met Amy in Eufaula to return her daughter to her.  Amelia was so excited to see her mom.  We're going to miss her that's for sure.  She is growing so fast.  As usual it was a wonderful visit and we look forward to next time.

Note:  We received an e-mail confirmation this week for our plane tickets for our anniversary trip.  I think it is really going to happen!