Santa Came to Town

We were at the Farm over the weekend for Christmas with my husband's family.  The girls got to have tons of fun playing with their cousins.

The grown ups got to have lots of fun visiting.  This is a photo of me with my also-pregnant sister-in-law.  She is due about two weeks after me.  The woman brought O'Doul's.  Gotta love a fake beer on Christmas Eve.

And then of course, the Christmas festivities began.  We opened gifts with the family, which is kind of crazy since my husband has five siblings.  There were 14 adults and 13 kids opening and slinging wrapping paper all over.

It was fabulous.

One of the biggest gift "hits" was this "Rody" for Miss from my husband's parents.

Daddy blew it up and away she went.

It caused a bit of friction once Little Sister noticed it.

She was pretty upset at not being able to ride it right away.

But Big Sister is such a sweet girl, she let her sis have a turn,

hovering nearby the entire time, of course.

And, time's up!

It's a really cool toy.

Finally, Miss got distracted and Lass got to have a bit of time on it.  Oh, the holiday drama!

After family gifts, the kids all went downstairs to wait for Santa.  In my husband's family, Santa arrives on Christmas Eve before the kids go to bed.  They have to wait patiently downstairs for him (while the moms put out stockings and all the Santa gifts upstairs).

When he arrives, he makes lots of noise stomping around and "Ho-Ho-Ho-ing."  The kids scream and run up the stairs, hoping to catch a glimpse of him before he gets into his sleigh and rides off.

We all got to see him as he ran out of the house and back to his sleigh waiting in the grass.  Unfortunately one of the older cousins may have seen him a little too much.  He said to his mom something like, "I wish we got to have the real Santa, not the one with dark hair and eyebrows."  I guess the wig wasn't quite straight on my brother-in-law!

When we went back inside, of course the girls had a blast with all their presents.

Miss got the two Care Bears she asked Santa for, and they haven't left her side since.  Here she is reading one of her new books to Grumpy Bear.

In my last post I wrote about how Miss has been insistent about wearing her "ballerina costume" of leotard, tights, and ballet shoes.  The trip to the Farm was no different.  I told her she had to wear some nice clothes for Christmas dinner and family gifts, and we compromised by putting her nice clothes on over the ballerina costume (if you look at some of the pictures above you can see her little ballet shoes). After getting her Santa gifts, the "real" clothes were off and she was back in ballerina mode.

I finally got her out of the ballerina costume when we went on a treasure hunt on Christmas day.  I told her she needed to wear warm clothes and that her ballerina costume really needed to be washed while we were out.

The weather was chilly but beautiful, and as always the treasure hunt was memorable.

Lass was a bit like the little brother in "A Christmas Story."  she was so bundled up she could barely move.

Miss found some shells and some acorns for her "treasures."

She got to check out lots of interesting things, like this deer rub.

She got to examine some mushrooms growing on these trees

And look at these little berries.

Lass fell asleep during our walk in the woods.

Overall, the trip to the farm was a great time for all.  And when we came home, the girls found that Santa had been to our house too while we were gone.  He left some gymnastics mats, a balance beam, and a baby doll high chair (which so far has only been used to feed pizza to Care Bears).

Oh yeah, Santa left bubble wrap too.

I am still trying to get things back in order here after so much holiday traveling. Yesterday I folded six loads of laundry and I still have more to do!  The toys aren't all put away, but they've at least all made it into the house now.  The spare room in the basement still has wrapping paper strewn all over the floor.  But the traveling was absolutely worth it, and we had a magical Christmas.  I hope you did too.

Christmas-ing

Oh, we are a-Christmas-ing at our house this week.  Lots of carols and shopping and wrapping.  We even did a bit of crafting, making ornaments out of bread.  We started by using cookie cutters to cut shapes out of the bread.

Lass mostly just wanted to eat it.

After we got them cut out I used a straw to make holes in them for hanging and we left them to dry out/get stale over night.

Then we painted and glittered them (I mixed some glue into the paint).  Yes, I hate glitter.  But it is a necessary part of holiday crafting with little girls, in my opinion.  So, we braved the glitter.  Lass hasn't done painting with a brush yet (unless you count her painting/eating endeavor with the pumpkins at Halloween), so I was just going to let her go to town with crayons and a piece of poster board.

But she saw Big Sister with the paint and was not about to settle for boring old crayons.

She did a great job.  She did immediately try to put the brush in her mouth, but refrained when I told her no.  Perhaps that's why it wasn't long before she got tired of painting and wanted to get down.

This girl, on the other hand, was all about focus.  She painted and glittered ornaments for her babysitters, her two teachers, and her Daddy, carefully choosing the shape, paint color, glitter color, and  hanging ribbon color for each recipient.

There are only a few left that haven't yet been given out or put on our tree.  I think they turned out pretty cute, though I'm not sure how well they'll hold up.  The one Miss gave to her Daddy is already in the trash after Lass tried to eat it and broke off the top of the ornament where the string hole was cut.  They are made from bread, after all...

Today was Miss's holiday party at her school.  She got to play a game where she tossed a big jingle bell into a bucket to win a present.  This is her shy smile after achieving her objective.

She decorated cookies to set out for Santa.

And she filled a bag with reindeer food (which looked like a mixture of oatmeal, glitter, and maybe some flour, with a few jingle bells and cinnamon sticks thrown in).  We will be taking this to the Farm tomorrow night.

The girls had lots of fun playing with the Christmas tree tonight.  You might have noticed that Lass has a new hairdo by the way.

The barrette just wasn't always working that well, even when she did keep it in her hair.

So we're all about the spouting pony look these days.  It works much better and is so stinking cute.  You wouldn't believe the number of comments this thing gets when we go out in public.

I did a little experimenting with my fun new-ish camera lens to try to achieve a new photography effect I have recently learned about.  It's called "bokeh" and is basically "the aesthetic quality of the blur," or something like that.  Look at how the Christmas lights are twinkly and out of focus behind the girls.  That's what I was going for.

I love Holiday bokeh!

And I love this.

Check out the leotard/tights/ballet shoes combo on Miss.  Notice she's wearing the same leotard in the top photos as well.  She has been in one or the other of her two tights/leotard combinations since we got back from Kentucky for almost every moment of the day.  It is like pulling teeth to get her to put clothes on to go to the store or to school.  She had on that adorable Matilda Jane top at her school party today, and asked to change back into this as soon as we arrived home.  She got back on the ballerina kick when my Auntie got her a magnetic wooden "paper doll" ballerina for Christmas.  The first night we got home from Kentucky she asked to put on her ballerina costume.  I let her put on the shoes and tutu, since it was almost time for bed (thinking these would be easier to get into and out of when it was time for jammies).  She ended up sleeping in those anyway, and has slept in some sort of ballerina get up every night since.  And she dances the part too.  It's awesome.  

Tomorrow will bring lots more Christmas-ing, with tons of shopping, wrapping, caroling and then packing and traveling to the Farm, where the Christmas-ing will continue through the weekend.  So I'd better get some sleep!