Christmas Catch-Up

Sprinkling reindeer food, thank's Riches for this year's supply!

Keeping Santa's strength up with a little cookie snack.

Opening presents!

Jax wouldn't get out of the wagon. He just opened his presents in it!

On the way home from Ron and Kim's they fell fast asleep, again.


We had such a wonderful Christmas, I hope you all did too! This post is a little late, but hey, better late than never right? Christmas Eve we made sure to spread the reindeer food outside for the reindeer to be able to find our house, then we set out Santa's cookie snack. Our kids are notorious for being late sleepers, but Christmas morning was rediculous. At about 10:30 am we finally decided this was late enough so Ryan and I just woke them up. They were excited when they finally realized what was happening. Jax loved his wagon and Emma loved her Diamond Castle Barbies. After presents we went to Ryan's brother, Ron's, home for breakfast. Yummy! We spent several hours with them and when our kids were past the point of irritable we took them home where they proceeded to fall asleep in the car, ugh! We had a nice evening at home. I love Christmas, but also love it when it's done. Now on to planning for next year ;-)!

Preschool Christmas Program

Doing her part with a smile! ;-)

Mini meltdown!

Emma's awesome teacher, Ms. Jani!

Yeah, a smile!

Today was Emma's preschool Christmas program. She was so excited and knew her part by heart. We got to the library and she found her seat up front. Shortly before it started she got very scared and had a little bit of a melt down. After several deep breaths and a tissue she agreed to go back up and sit with the other kids. It took several minutes and a few of her favorite songs to get her back into the happy mood. By the time it came to her part she got up and did a great job. She said, "Please wait while we get Christmasy". The program was very well done and all the kids had fun. Ms. Jani is such a great teacher and Emma loves her to pieces. We are so greatful for all she teaches Emma!

Ballet Christmas Recital

Last Saturday Emma had her ballet Christmas recital. She did such a great job and we love watching her perform. Martina is such a great teacher and is so great and patient with Emma. The dances were great and so were the costumes. Emma had so much fun!

This is both classes posing for their group picture.

Emma in her cute little candy cane tutu!

They danced to "Fairies" from the Nutcracker.

CooCoo for Cocoa Puffs

The other day Jax decided he would bust into the pantry and get himself a snack of Cocoa Puffs. This is the result. There was so much cereal on the floor (it was almost a completely full box) that even the dogs got sick of them and gave up. So now all the cereal has found a home on a higher shelf. Live and learn I guess.

Aaww!

I just thought these were so cute and I needed to share! I love my little spuds!

The Joy of Having a Big Sister

I think the pictures speak for themselves. Such a good sport!!!

Christmas Tree Decorating

Okay, so Ryan put the tree all together and of course the strand of lights right in the middle was out, it's a prelit tree. So we wanted to get it fixed before putting on the decorations. After about 3 days of waiting, impatiently I should add, Emma decided to wait no more. She decorated the tree her way and put some of her prized items from her shelves on the tree. If you look close you will see her glass ladybug doll, a pair of doll shoes, and a doll dress her Great-Grandma Flegal made her a few years ago. She also put items wrapped in toilet paper around the bottom of the tree and told me that Santa wouldn't come until the tree was beautiful for him. What a character.

So finally Ryan just took off the offending strand, one bad thing about prelit trees, and I just added a normal strand. Which I have to say doesn't look nearly as bad as I thought it would. Emma and I started to decorate with the round glass balls. I put on a gold one and before I could even turn around and pick up another one that Emma had put a hook onto Jax had snatched it off the tree and thrown it across the living room floor where in proptly shattered into a million pieces. He thought it was great and eagerly looked at the next one in my hand ready to go onto the tree. So I made an executive decision and if you look closely at this picture you will notice that our ornaments this year are only above the garland that Emma made. We put the garland up at the level of his reach so we knew how high the ornaments had to be. Emma was a little disappointed because it's hard for her to see all the ornaments, but when I explained that it's this or only lights, she was happy with only half the ornaments. So here's my tree for this year. We'll see how next years looks.