The beautiful Catholic church across the street from our home is still ringing out the Christmas hymns so I guess I can still crank out the Christmas posts, no?

Do you ever wonder, “Golly, it’s 5:30 in the morning! I wonder what the Dawsons are doing right now?”

Sadly, we are usually NOT sleeping. (actually we have recently pushed the girls bed time back to 8:00 so that they will wake up at 6:00…yes, 6:00 is sleeping in around here)

A day before we left for my parent’s this is what we were doing at 5:30 in the morning, you know, in case you were wondering!

Our 2010 Christmas elves (James and Jingle – every year we have different elves) brought the girls a nutcracker, a book with photos from Balanchine’s ballet and the CD of Tchaikovsky’s fine music. We like to call him dear Pyotr, you know, just cuz.

The girls were thrilled!

Off came the pjs and on went Millie’s leotard and practice skirt.

And the party got STARTED!

But we did so much more than dance…

…we realized our clenched teethed, gotee sporting nutcracker was deathly ill (remember we were listening to a Russian composer so we had to have death and sadness thrown into the mix, it can’t all be romantic – that’s not Russian enough!!)

(He was treated with such tenderness – I just don’t know how he got to be so badly off!)

Dr. Dawson bandaged him

Put him to bed

And checked him regularly

And in the end, assured us that all would be well.

I know what you are thinking, Chekhov would have written a different ending, but my guess is that IF he were still alive, he would be fast asleep at 5:30 in the morning.

Poor fellow, clearly he would have missed out!