Christmas at Home!

 

 

We spent Christmas at home for the first time ever. It was such fun starting our own traditions and spending time as a family. Here, Evy puts the finishing touches on our Christmas Eve prep. She hand selected the cookies for Santa and the carrots for the reindeer.

Token Christmas Eve Photo

Santa brought Charlie a Sesame Street ball pit!

This girl loved opening presents and was afraid Santa forgot about her "Jungle Animal Park"

Charlie is screaming "Nummies" at me. In English that means, please give me some M&M's.

We bought Daddy a remote control helicopter just like all of the rest of the seven year olds in town. He deserves a toy since the house is filled with dolls and Barbies. I think he was more excited about his toy than the girls were about theirs.

Nothing better than an Amana ham served by candle light and eaten while wearing jammies!

Christmas at Grammy's and Papa's

Evy has so much fun playing with her cousin Kate!

A family picture! It's a Christmas Miracle.

Aunt Julie playing with Charlie's new toy.

Evy's first Lego set

The big reveal...could it be a new car?!?!

A pink rocking horse! This was the number one item on Evy's Christmas list.

Thank you Grammy and Papa!

Merry Christmas

Christmas Days

Christmas fun has been kicked into high gear at our house this week. Here's what we've been up to:

Our Elf, Elfie, arrived. He doesn't do all of the crazy things that some other elves do, but he did leave some magic elf seeds for Evy to plant. Overnight the seeds grew into cookies! It was Christmas magic!

 I started a tradition of giving Evy Christmas pajamas on Christmas Eve, but then she only got to wear them once during the "Christmas Season" so I decided to give the girls their jammies early this year. They've been loving them and wearing them every night. It puts me under a little pressure to get laundry turned around quickly so the jammies don't get "over worn" but it's been fun! We've also been watching The Nutcracker a lot this year. Charlie was chilling with her arms behind her head during a recent Nutcracker viewing.

Project Holiday: A fun new tradition with friends. Our group adopted a family for Christmas. Here Evy and her friend go a little crazy during our shopping trip for the family.

All of the Christmas Elves who helped with Project Holiday.

All of Santa's Helpers.

Evy had her first preschool Christmas program. Her class sang four songs.

Belting out Jingle Bells between two of her best friends.

And we celebrated my birthday. Not related to Christmas, but something that always happens this time of year!

Char Char

When did this sweetie turn into a toddler?

Oh, Charlotte. You are so funny and so happy. You love singing and say "more, more" after we finish a song. You love to dance, mostly you just turn your chubby self around in circles. You love to chase Evy. You are so clumsy that you fall down at least 10 times per day and run into something another 10 times each day. You smile a lot and recover from owies very quickly! You are so cute that I kiss your face about 40 times each day. And you say "muuuhhhhh" to me indicating that you want to give me a kiss. You are so smart! You know all of the movements in Eric Carle's book From Head to Toe and act them all out while we read. You can find the mouse on every page of Goodnight Moon. You are talking so well that your teachers didn't realize you were only 16 months old. You are also a stinker! While wrestling and playing you nuzzle your little face into us and sometimes surprise us with a bite. It hurts like crazy! You take toys from your sister and scream at her when she wants her toy back. You yell at us if you want a snack or juice. Yesterday your teacher reported that you are starting to swat at kids. Love you, cute little stinker!

Typical Mommy Day Part 2

Last Tuesday I shared what we do on a typical "mommy day." Last Tuesday must have been a pretty good day because I didn't blog about any of the common challenges we face on our mommy days. Today was a different day. I want to show both sides of the story because parenting is hard and things in our house are far from perfect!

 

Charlotte was on a rampage this morning. First, she hit Evy in the head with two sippy cups and then later she got her on the cheek!

I remember this stage with Evy and lets just say it's not one of my favorites. All day long Charlotte stands by my leg and cries for me to pick her up. While I'm brushing my teeth, while I'm eating my breakfast, while I'm going to the bathroom, while I'm doing dishes, while I'm preparing meals, while I'm putting away laundry, while I'm getting dressed. I do what I can while I'm holding her, but sometimes you just need two hands.

 

Cute little stinkers...

 

Christmas Time

[Grammy Sherry gave us this cookie jar last year for Christmas. When Evy spotted it this year she said, "It's so beautiful I can't even take my eyes off of it!" Then she begged me to make cookies to put in the cookie jar. It took me three days to get to the grocery store for chocolate chips and only for these girls would I start making from-scratch chocolate chip cookies at 6:30 p.m. on a Thursday!]

 



[Where's Charlie?]

[I would like a pink rocking horse, said Evy. Not Scott.]

Every year we have non-Christmas traditions the first two weekends in December so it takes a little longer to get switched over to full blown Christmas mode. Last night we were at my brother's house and took in a "beautifully" lit house in his neighborhood, and told Santa about our Christmas wishes. This morning our elf, Elfie arrived. Let's do this!

Swim Lessons

Evy just finished her first session of swim lessons. She has always loved the water, but has a strong dislike of getting water in her face! I would say the lessons were a success. She put her face under the water tonight! Some notes from our five weeks:

 

Lockers: Evy was intrigued by the lockers. Why do we put our stuff in them? Why do some of them have locks? Why do we lock our stuff? Do we have a lock? Can you bring the lock next time? After five weeks I finally remembered to bring my padlock that I used a lifetime ago (when I actually went to a gym). She loved locking our things up and then watching me do the combination to open it up. She also loved that my padlock is purple.

 

Showers: Occasionally, we've tried to get Evy to take a quick shower at home and she refuses because she doesn't like the water in her face. During swim lessons she loved the shower in the locker room and asked to shower after each lesson. Tonight she even washed her own hair in the shower!

Vending Machines: Evy is enthralled with vending machines and always wants to get a treat when we see one. A friend of mine suggested letting Evy get a snack after the last lesson. So, we did this with dance lessons last year and of course Evy remembered the deal for swim lessons too. For five weeks she's been asking "Is tonight my last swim lesson?" just because she wants to get the treat. She picked Mike and Ike's but they wouldn't come out, so her second choice was a rice crispy treat.

A Typical Mommy Day

Today the girls slept until 7:30! I felt like I won the lottery. We are normally up between 6:15 and 6:30. The morning starts out with orange juice for Evy and milk for Charlie, breakfast, and about an hour of TV while I run around like a mad woman starting laundry, getting dressed, etc.

After they get bored with TV they will usually play together somewhat nicely. I know there's a problem when I hear Charlie screaming. Today they were being a band.

Loaded up and off for our morning activity/errands.

 We didn't have any appointments and the weather was awesome so we went to one of our outdoor favorites--the raptor center!

 

Prior to this picture Charlie face planted on the gravel at least 3 times. She kept trying to run and I think her boots are too big. Had to go back to the car for the stroller to prevent further injury!

 

**At this point in the day I simply ran out of enough hands to take pictures. We went to Costco, dropped some things off at a couple of our friends houses and ate lunch at home with Dad. Charlie takes an excellent afternoon nap and Evy refuses to nap anymore. I allow Evy to stay up but she knows she has to entertain herself during "rest time" as it's my time to tackle laundry and a few projects.**

While Charlie was asleep Evy wanted to make a boat out of this box. She drew a motor, water, steering wheel and labeled it with her name.

After Charlie woke up Evy took her motorboatin'.

Pampers Rewards

After spending $3.4 million on Pampers and religiously entering our "Gifts to Grow" rewards numbers into the Pampers website for four years we earned some bath crayons and a puzzle. Yay, us!