E's Letter to Santa

I just 'found' this picture.  It reminded me of how far E's handwriting skills have come in the last year.  She's grown up so much.  Last January, our dear friend, Lindsey, joined the Peace Corps and left for Thailand.  E was so sad.  So, we started writing Lindsey letters.  E could write the letter "E" and that was all.  She wanted to learn how to sign her name at the bottom of her letters.  Consequently, we started 'school' in the afternoons while X was sleeping.  Now, I'm not very scheduled (I blame pregnancy and a newborn) and we don't 'do' school nearly enough.  I wish I had the energy/time to do it more, but she is progressing.

For Christmas, she was bound and determined that she was going to write Santa a letter by herself.  So, I spelled out the letters for the words and she wrote Santa a letter and addressed the envelope.  She was so excited.  The envelope says, "Santa Cla North Pole".  I didn't take a picture of the letter because I was hoping to do the old bait and switch at the post office and never send it and take a picture of it later.  However, she insisted on going to the post office to mail it and insisted on putting a stamp on it and insisted on putting it in the drop box herself.  We thought that the post office might just return it to sender and Jut did think to put our return address on it.

The post office did not return it.  Instead, "Santa" wrote a letter back to Miss E.  It was very nice.  She loved getting a letter from the North Pole.  I didn't know Santa wrote back to good little girls...but he did.

E didn't get anything on her wish list to Santa for Christmas.  She didn't seem to mind.  All of her wishes came out of a catalog that is very similar to American Girls and revolved around things for her dolls to play with...Santa had other ideas in mind for Miss E...that she could play with.  Thankfully, she hasn't complained or questioned one bit about her wishes not being granted.

It is amazing to see the changes that happen within a year's time!  Bring on 2012...especially if one of the changes means C sleeps all night!!!  :)