Christmas Morning

Here is the pre-carnage picture of what Santa left at our house. As you can imagine, it got pretty messy pretty quick. I will never ever forget the looks on the girls' faces as they came running down the stairs. Julia started freaking out and jumping around and Audrey's eyes got really large as she uttered a simple, "woah." It was perfect and it made Santa feel a little less guilty for totally spoiling them rotten.
The kitchen was an instant hit. Seriously, have you ever seen a cuter kitchen. Word on the street is it took the elves three hours to put it together. Given the play time it has received already, well worth it.
And so we dig in.
Julia got a cowgirl outfit from Santa but was too embarrassed to model it for all of us, so Audrey stepped up and put it on. I am pretty sure it stayed on until she took a nap. Ride em' cowgirl. What's with the random hand in the picture? hmmmm...
Julia knew what she had asked Santa for. Every time she opened a present she would say, "This is great, but where's my Strawberry Shortcake house?" Luckily Santa eventually pulled through in the end.
Some of our favorite people the Hagbergs came and spent the morning with us. I'm so glad Kara got a hold of my camera to catch some awesome make-up-less, pink pajamaed shots of me.
The Bryan with his awesome Transformers t-shirt. I thought it was a great gift, if I do say so myself. But the hit of the day were the Nerf dart guns I gave Landon and Bryan. You can imagine the girls and I were hit with little suction darts all the day long. Never gets old, never gets old. I think the low point was when Audrey took one to the neck.
Oh my heck, what is wrong with us? I think it just looks like SO much because our family room isn't too big, right? Spoiled, spoiled, spoiled. Though I must say as Bryan went to bed tonight looking forward to heading to work tomorrow he mentioned that it really has been a perfect Christmas weekend and I couldn't agree more. We had so much fun, the girls have been in heaven all weekend and we got to spend it with many great friends. The only thing missing was all of the family that lives so far away.
Based on the color palate of this picture do you question that girls live in this house? Whew that's a lot of pink and so much stuff! Where am I going to put it all? And why is Audrey scaling the piano in this picture?

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve for us began by getting dressed up in Christmas sweaters and heading off to see the Princess and the Frog. Going to a movie was a tradition growing up and nothing beats a fun Disney movie eating popcorn and milk duds. Audrey was even a trooper through the entire movie.
We then had a delicious ham dinner with great friends. These friends are moving next year so we have had to make the most of our last Christmas spent together. Seeing these little buddies together makes my heart happy. They have been such great friends. Julia eating yummy homemade rolls. Here they are with silly faces. They were all curled up on the love sac watching a t.v. show. One of those cute little moments you could just freeze in time. So we had the professional photographer Monica do it for us.
We then headed on home and whipped out the pj's or nightgowns in this case. Audrey thought she was so big like her sister to be wearing a princess nightgown. I had a really difficult time getting her to take it off.
We allow the kiddos to open all the presents from family Christmas Eve so it is separate from all the Santa gifts the next morning. The only problem was they got so dang spoiled Christmas Eve I'm pretty sure Santa didn't even need to come the next day. Thanks to every one for the wonderful things you sent! Seriously, my girls were beyond spoiled this year.
Audrey giving the baby some love. (Thank you Grandma!)
We then read the Nativity, sprinkled reindeer food on the deck, left Santa a note and some cookies and went to bed. I thought for sure the girls would be up in anticipation but I think Christmas Eve wore them out so much they crashed the minute their heads hit the pillow.

Lay Off Me, I'm STARVING!

Now that Christmas is over and I have sufficiently gorged myself on mass quantities of delicious food I am ready to post about the Christmas going-on's.

The girls have been cute for church these days and require the obligatory picture in front of our little tree. This tree was literally purchased by my mom over twenty years ago for 19 dollars. I remember it in my house as a child in our basement, to being strung by popcorn with Bryan our first year of marriage because we didn't have money for ornaments, to now being sat in front of by my two beautiful little girls. Christmas time certainly does bring about many memories of years gone by. I feel so grateful for what this year has brought me and overwhelmed by the many blessings our family has. We really couldn't ask for more.
We have certainly been blessed with good friends. Julia had a little graham cracker gingerbread house making get together with some of her best buddies.
I love that these two siblings have identical expressions on their little faces.
My Julia.
Little Godzilla. I hot glued the houses in order to prevent any frustrations on the little ones' behalf. Audrey promptly ripped her house off the paper plate and took a mammoth size bite right out of the top. I had to dig the glue out of her mouth. Of course this was her reaction when I took a picture...the stare.
Aw, what the heck. I'm going back for more.

Ben is obviously in awe of Audrey's demolishing skills, or appalled, one or the other.
Now that I've got that taken care of I can soon cover the exciting Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I hope yours was wonderful and perfect and that you sufficiently gorged yourself on good food.

Pure Randomness

I have some random Christmasy things that have been going on and I thought I would post them in no particular order...

Julia came down the other day and asked me to put the headband on the blanket so she could be Mary. This girl has got more Christmas spirit than anyone I know.
This was the outfit Julia wore to preschool looking as cute as can be in her new tights Uncle Adam and Aunt Camille sent her.
Audrey just looks like she's totally out of it.
We went to the downtown library to see their amazing train exhibit.

Julia and Audrey got some early Christmas packages that they got to open. Aunt Jody sent some pajamas. I don't think we were supposed to open them early but one was torn a bit and I saw that they were pajamas which was perfect because Julia had to wear pajamas to preschool and the only one's she has are 3T and more like capris. I don't know what's wrong with me but I have the hardest time spending money on new pajamas when they can still squeeze (and I mean SQUEEZE) into their old ones. Jody it was literally the perfect gift. You are far too thoughtful. We were beyond excited over the jammies and even more excited at how cute they are.

Audrey will only give me this stare for pictures these days. Absolutely no expression. At least she's looking at the camera.
These are the cute tights and book Uncle Adam and Aunt Camille sent. The ruffles on Audrey's little bum are just too cute. Audrey is giving Julia a hug in this picture, but rest assured that hair pulling and tackling were done by Audrey probably minutes after this photo was taken. That Audrey is a bit of a tiny bully. Good thing her big sister that is almost double her size is a good sport. She is always saying, "Audrey you are my best friend." And then Audrey pays her back by stealing her toys.
Julia has become Audrey's protector as well. While at a friend's house the kids were playing upstairs. We suddenly hear Julia yell, "If you do that to my sister again, I'm going to POUND you!" I'm pretty sure I laughed for a solid five minutes. Pound? Where in the heck did she come up with that? I wonder what she pictures in her head when she thinks of pounding someone?

We LOVE Santa

Can you tell?
After a panic attack from Audrey and literally having to shove Julia in his direction, she finally was able to mumble to him what she wanted (though there's no way he heard her unless among Santa's magic is super-human hearing).
We also made my mother-in-law's famous fudge.
The girls approved.
And unfortunately so did Bryan. He had just come home from running. Nothing un-does the benefit of running like a big scoop full of fudge.
Hope you are enjoying some delicious treats this Christmas time.

Wild

Ooooh it's so cold outside but before it got too cold we headed to the zoo for the lights.

They were better than ever this year.
Santa's reindeer were even there, though Julia was a bit concerned Rudolph wasn't amongst them (we could tell because none of them had a red nose). We even saw Santa but panic ensued when we thought about sitting on his lap.

We saw a few animals. They are rather lively at night.

This was Julia's very favorite part. The lights went a long with the music and at one point Rudolph in the background was actually singing Rudolph. It's so funny to me that seemingly little things are the most magical when you're a kid.

If Your Nose Gets Stuffy

The weekend after Thanksgiving we set up our Christmas decorations. Julia has loved every minute of it and has been helping a great deal, often times in her own special little way.
Here she is putting the flowers in the tree. I was actually impressed with how well she did. There of course were times she put like five ornaments on the same limb, or wore the tree skirt around the house like a cape, or had the nativity scene intermixed with her princesses but overall she really did great.
Bryan even lit up the outside of the house with a couple of great helpers.
The excitement of having our house illuminated was so magical...
That was until they had to come inside because it was too cold, and then it became devastatingly unfair.

The cruelty of it all. She would have spent the entire night outside if I would have let her.

Julia has gotten into some interesting decoration ideas. The first being the arranging of the stockings she took upon herself.As you can see they made it to corners of frames, Santa's feet and around candles. When you don't have a chimney you make it work and Julia knows how to make it work. Julia came down the other day with this new ornament she had made while she was "sleeping."

She actually assembled an ornament with a bulb syringe, baby headband, hair bow and a few bobby pins to hold it all together. It is what you would call a "functional ornament." If you ever have a stuffy nose...problem solved!
Future ornament genius in the making if you ask me. Now I need to take a picture of the makeshift ornaments she has hanging in her room. This girl has got the Christmas spirit.

Gobble Gobble

Thanksgiving was just perfect this year. We had our very good friends the Gaileys come and visit and spend the night. The girls went and saw a movie and the boys played in the Turkey Bowl (unfortunately Bryan is more than willing to sacrifice his body for the sake of the game and he paid for it two days after Thanksgiving). We had delicious food and even better company. Thanks to everyone for all their work and preparation and for making it such a wonderful day. (and thanks to Monica for the pics)
These girls are just the best. Check out who's plate is the fullest. Yeah that's right.
The kiddos at the kiddo table. I think two bites were eaten and then it was time to play. Audrey went from plate to plate taking care of the jello. Mmmmmm jello.....
My sweet little girls.