The girls were entertained with the marshmallows puffing
up on the sweet potatoes as they baked.

Another month has flown by!  The temperature here has grown increasingly colder as we get further into the winter season, but the snow hasn’t been anything to brag about.  Happily, the roads were perfectly fine to drive to Blackfoot to spend Thanksgiving with Danny’s family, which Danny hasn’t been able to do since he worked in the oil fields!  While most people kicked off their Thanksgiving with the football game, we decided instead to go to the new Muppet movie.  It was very cute and we all enjoyed it, although for the rest of the day I got to hear “Mahna mahna!” from my girls, Gemma included!  Within the week following Thanksgiving, we celebrated Danny’s birthday.  We did crab legs on the grill with a delicious butter sauce (recipes located on internet – how did people ever survive before computers and internet??) followed by the birthday cake.  Veta and Hazel had a lot of fun putting all of those candles on the cake!  They also had a lot of fun putting all the decorations on our tree.  Gemma had a lot of fun pulling them back off!

Veta was so excited about her audition, she
managed to keep smiling through the two hour
wait before her audition, through her audition,
and now afterward in the parking lot!

Veta has been keeping pretty busy these last few weeks.  On top of her school work, she was practicing for an audition with Seattle Talent.  They were advertising in our area on the radio for auditions and Veta just happened to hear.  She insisted that I call them and set up an appointment for her!  There was a huge turnout for the auditions – I think I heard 400+ people were there – and the person in charge made sure to apologize in advance to anyone who auditioned, but didn’t get a callback.  The lady who interviewed Veta said that she thought Veta was beautiful, very photogenic, so animated, and definitely one of her favorites.  Of course, we received a callback that night, but I had since come to realize that Seattle Talent was not an agency, but more of a school.  Veta was very thrilled that they were offering her a private invitation to attend their workshops, but at the price of $2000 for maybe ten hours of coaching spread over five weekends with no guarantee of placement, I decided that we would pursue theater classes locally instead and apply at an agency that works off commission only. 

Hugs are required to pass!

Hazel didn’t want to audition with Veta for Seattle Talent, but she is excited to start theater classes, too.  Hazel loves to pose and do her “model walk” and I think she will have a lot of fun on stage.  She memorized Veta’s audition script with Veta and performed her own versions of it for me.  Hazel is doing so well in school; I’m very proud of her!  She has made such progress with her alphabet letters and sounds, numbers, and shapes.  Her teachers keep telling me how she is the best behaved child they have in their classroom, and yesterday one of her teachers told me how impressed she was with Hazel’s creative mind and artistic abilities.  Also, yesterday was Hazel’s very first Kindergarten program.  All of the Kindergarten classes had grouped together to sing Christmas songs for us parents.  Hazel did a wonderful job with all the hand motions and finger snapping while jingling her bell and singing and she was very beautiful in her sparkly, light pink dress, selected by her, of course.

Gemma kept moving her stool from the tree to the
table (where the ornaments were) and back again,
trying to determine which location would allow her
the most access to the ornaments.  If she enjoys the
tinkling sound of glass breaking on a hard floor as
much as Veta and Hazel did when they were younger,
I have no doubts that we will be needing to purchase
new ornaments for next year!

Gemma has been enjoying this Thanksgiving/Christmas season a lot.  She had her first taste of eggnog last month and now she can’t seem to get enough of it!  Fortunately, Danny also shares her taste for it, so we have kept it in stock since it became available in stores.  Gemma has also discovered that the bathroom stool is mobile, and constantly carries it around with her so she can reach places that were unobtainable before.  Nothing is safe any more!  Gemma loves to push buttons.  It’s become quite difficult to do anything on my laptop when she is nearby because she likes to help me type.  She particularly loves remote controls, but she will settle for a cell phone if the remotes have been hidden from her.  Gemma has an uncanny ability to navigate menus to completely change system setups or access options that should be a lot harder to get to, like purchasing Microsoft points on the Xbox.  Some time ago, she managed to get one of the Xbox controllers while I was busy sorting mail.  I didn’t pay too much attention to her at first, but after a few moments I realized she was watching Green Lantern.  That was when I realized that she had purchased $30 worth of Microsoft points, then turned around and spent the points on the movie.  It might have been less annoying had we not seen Green Lantern already, or if we had actually liked it well enough to want to buy it...either way, we have been more diligent in keeping the controllers hidden away where Gemma cannot find them!  More recently than that episode, she managed to change the audio in our receiver from digital to analog.  It took several minutes to figure out what had happened, and we’re still not sure how she managed it!  Lastly, Gemma has grown another tooth, bringing her total to seven.

I like this picture of Gemma because you can see what mischief
she causes by the look on her face and the trail of destruction
behind her - also, you can see all seven of her teeth!