Santa!

We've had a pretty low-key weekend with a few highlights tossed in there.

My girls, still in their pajammies, are currently playing with Anna, Elsa, and some other Barbie-type dolls driving them in a school bus and a Little People chariot because that's how we all should travel, of course. Violet thinks she can run now since she started walking less than a month ago, so it's funny to watch her try to push the chariot or the bus along as fast as she can! The Steelers game is playing in the background, Andrew is playing Xbox online with his friends and George is sleeping. The sun is shining and even though it's 37 degrees, it is much happier than the rainy weather we have been having the last couple days.

Friday night, I had planned on taking the kids to the Children's Museum Christmas event to see a penguin and a reindeer, but it had rained all day long. It was still raining when we got home from Lily's school and a few errands and it was cold.  The thought of dealing with traffic, parking and downtown stuff resulted in a "let's stay home" decision.  We all ended up in bed pretty early Friday night anyway.

Saturday, we went to a local nursery near our house to visit Santa.

Lily isn't in the screaming phase anymore, but still isn't crazy about going up to him.  Andrew decided to go over to Santa first to help his little sisters see it's ok.

Lily thought Violet should go first before her, so that's what we did.  I stopped to get Violet a cookie first to keep her occupied and maybe she wouldn't really notice I'd set her down next to someone...
It didn't work out quite that way.  She held on to her cookie though!

I asked Lily if she was ready and she said no. I picked Violet up and of course she was completely fine. I sat down next to Santa for a minute and Lily came over next to us comfortably. Baby steps, I suppose.

Lily asked Santa where Rudolph was and seemed satisfied with his answer. She replied that she wanted Frozen toys when he asked her what she wanted for Christmas.  She wanted to talk to him, just not be right next to him and Violet, as you can see, was content again.

Lily and Andrew had their cookies and it was time to leave.  As we drove away, Lily exclaimed excitedly, "We live near the North Pole!"  I love that magic!

We headed home for the girls to nap before we were going to another local light up night event that evening. This one was in our old, old neighborhood before Lily was born, but it's where she goes to preschool.  I was helping out with some crafts inside Lily's school for her teacher who was in charge of this entire event. You know, after just having given birth 5 days before!

Violet loved just walking around and trying to run inside Lily's school!  The kids "painted" puffy snowmen made of shaving cream, glue, and glitter, colored in coloring books, and made candy canes. Andrew helped cut the red stripes for the candy canes to be glued on.

We headed outside to listen to some kids sing and watch some others dance before strolling by Santa and waving from afar. :) Violet was clapping along and "singing" too and both girls were dancing along as well.

Soon the evening had come to a close and it was time to go home. While the kids waited for me to get packed up and into the car, Lily could not take it anymore and zonked.

When we got home, I put the girls to bed, and watched the rest of my favorite Christmas movie, "It's a Wonderful Life" on tv.  George has been working a lot of overtime lately, so in addition to it being tough with the overnight shift he works, he's been going in early too.  It's simply the season we are in and I'm grateful for such a hardworking husband.  I miss him too!

It's Beginning to Look Like Christmas

We decided not to go to Pittsburgh's Light up Night on Friday night due to traffic, crowds and the cold.  The girls went to bed early that night anyway, so it worked out for the best. Since we missed it, Saturday night we went to a local light up night for Lily to meet Frosty the Snowman.  That was our main objective!

The weather had warmed up a little bit Saturday. We were happy about that! As we were walking from the car, the fireworks started which made for a nice kick off! The kids were excited to see them and as we got closer, we could hear that there was Christmas music playing along while the fireworks were going off.

When the fireworks ended, the crowd headed into the area where Santa would be. We headed over towards the outdoor Christmas tree to take a couple pictures and to look for Andrew's friend, Jake. We found Jake pretty quickly for the crowd size! 

While we were hanging out there, I spotted Frosty coming out of the library.  We made our way over to him. Lily was so excited! 

 Violet did pretty good with Rudolph!

 And of course, Andrew had to be with The Grinch! hahaha

We lucked out catching them all quickly!  After our photo ops, we headed into the library to make some crafts. Andrew requested we skip the Frozen karaoke though.  First up was a picture of a Santa hat. Lily was excited to glue a "snowball" {cotton ball} on the top. She also loves to write her name, so she made sure that was on there even though she started to high on the hat and ran out of room at first. :)

Next, was a Christmas tree card that she got to glue the pieces to make the tree. Although it won't look like this exactly when Oma gets it in the mail because the old lady "helper" didn't think Lily had enough glue, so she "fixed" it.  Here's a lesson lady...it's better when it's "imperfect" done by the child. While we were at this station, we ran into another of Andrew's friends' dad and little sister.  It's been awhile since we've seen them and it was nice to catch up.  Andrew and Jimmy have been friends since we moved here when Andrew was in 2nd grade and although they haven't gone to school together since 4th grade, they've remained friends since.

Not to avoid all things Frozen, the next station had Frozen coloring pages and Lily was pretty happy to be there for quite some time! She colored the snowflake, but we convinced her to take Olaf and Anna home with us, so we could go find her a balloon!

We left the library and headed over to the middle school where the other activities were being held and got in line for the balloons. We grabbed a cookie while we waited. 

The girls both got flowers and Andrew got a sword! When the clown tried to hand Violet her balloon, she wanted no part of him. She looked at me with a pretty scared look and turned her head! She happily took the balloon from me though. :)

Our final activity was cookie decorating.  Lily loves sprinkles so this was a great activity for her! She made Andrew one first and then did one for herself.  She wanted to do one for Violet too, but Violet was still working on her first little cookie. I think Lily just wanted to use more sprinkles!

I'm never one to miss a photo opportunity that is presented to me, so despite this little penguin being too narrow for anyone's face ever, we took it. 

We decided to skip Santa and wait for Daddy to go with us, plus Lily was sure that The Grinch was Santa anyway.  She keeps calling The Grinch, "The Arch".  Not sure why, but that's what she thinks his name is. 

So, lastly we headed to finally take the picture in front of the tree before going home.  We had a fun night and I'm glad that even though I often drag my teenager out with us for things like this, he still enjoys himself. 

This was the best I got.

Oooooh too bad Violet didn't look my direction...

 And well, these last few...this is what picture taking often looks like with this crew.

Christmas Day 2012

Christmas 2012 was one of the most relaxing holidays I've ever had in my adult life. We stayed home all day and the only place we had to be was to pick up Reagan at noon from her mom's.

We waited until Lily woke up before coming downstairs. She gets up around 8:00am everyday and Christmas was no different. Andrew was ready for her to get up!

 

 

George, Andrew, Lily and I enjoyed a quiet morning opening gifts and having cinammon rolls to munch on until brunch later for when Reagan came home.

Lily excitedly came down the stairs with her same, "Ooooh look at the pretty lights!" exclamation she had been doing every day with the Christmas tree and the first thing she saw was Geo and Bot from Team Umizoomi! She already had Milli, so she was super excited to see the other friends! Santa had brought her her very own chair and she kept saying, "I love my chair!"  Santa win.

 

The older kids get, the more difficult I have found to buy for them.  We didn't want to get another video game which is pretty much all Andrew had said he wanted, so Santa decided to go with the new tv he can play on. He was really surprised and excited! Another Santa win!

It was nice to watch Andrew help Lily and just simply enjoy my family this Christmas. Lily received a lot of Little People this year! So once she got the house and the castle opened, she just wanted to play!

Soon it was time for George to head to pick Reagan up. The kids stayed home with me while I fixed brunch. We had a yummy feast of french toast, scrambled eggs, bacon, fruit, and orange juice.

I wanted to make these cutie little Santas for my two year old who screams everytime she sees Santa, but didn't want the richness of cream cheese etc., so I decided just to use whipped cream...as you can see the whipped cream just melts and slides! hahaha  Some of my Santas are apparently Asian.

 

Lily didn't seem to care at all. She just loved that she got lots of strawberries!

 

We were all starving by the time it was time to eat!

 

I also made a special Lily candy cane for breakfast and snacking.  "Candy Can, Mama!"

After we ate, Reagan opened her gifts and the kids happily played. We spent the day just relaxing and enjoying being home together.

Santa brought the kid who wanted nothing, yes nothing, for Christmas a special art kit in a wooden case to have good art supplies to hone her drawings. 

 

Lily was really happy everyone was all home at the same time and spent a lot of time going back and forth between everyone playing with, climbing on, being silly with and loving on. 

Lily's face cracks me up

 

 

We had a delicious ham dinner special requested by my adoring husband. And despite my not liking ham very much, I'm happy to provide something simple for the man who works so very hard to provide a good life for us.  We watched Lord of the Rings later that night...the blu-ray set was Andrew's gift to George and after seeing The Hobbit on Christmas Eve, they both wanted to watch. Luckily for them, Reagan and I like the movies too.  It was a very blessed, relaxed Christmas for us this year. ♥

best "things" I've ever done.