December Moments

Painting Party

Angie's Christmas present to all the ladies was to host a painting party at her house. We each had our own canvas and she helped us paint a picture. She treated us to Pita Jungle and had some wine and other treats. It was such a great idea and a wonderful way to spend the day after Christmas.

Christmas

We had such a wonderful Christmas. Mommom and Poppy joined in through Skype for some of the morning. Ellie was so excited about everything. She wanted to play with each and every present after she opened it so the process took a long time and we had to take a breakfast break.
Patrick would have been happy with just the big candy cane from Mommom and Poppy.  He was prancing all around the house so happy holding that candy cane.  He also enjoyed climbing on or sitting in the boxes. Both kids made out like bandits thanks to Santa and Mommom and Poppy.
We spent a lot of time outside so Ellie could ride her scooter and Patrick could try out his little trike and big wheels. He really liked walking around in the helmet. Grandma, Grandpa and Uncle Mike came by for a while. We were outside walking down the street when Papa turned the corner. Patrick got a special ride on Grandma's lap in the car back to the house. He looked like he was big stuff in there.
Ellie talked about how it was baby Jesus's birthday quite a bit. She said that everyone wants to marry Baby Jesus on his birthday. She put on LOTS of lip gloss and her special new Tangled dress for him and hasn't taken it off much since.

 

 

Christmas Eve

Christmas eve was spent at Grandpa and Grandma's house. They hosted a fun party! It is a long standing tradition that we all get together on Christmas eve and then spend Christmas day with our own families. Some fun memories of this year's Christmas eve bash were Grandma and Grandpa's festive decorations and outfits, all the delicious food, watching Mikey open his big truck, and Patchy loving his new helmet. The best was when Ellie and Mia opened up some brand new sparkly boots from Mia's Grandma. They opened them at the same time and it was the funniest thing to see their reaction. It was the perfect gift for those two girlie girls. When we got home, Ellie put cookies out for Santa, reindeer food out for the reindeer and then she conked out fast. Good thing because the big fat jolly man was headed to our house!

 

 

 

 

Holiday Festivities

Ellie and Patrick,
December has been fun fun fun! We brought hot chocolate, snacks and Chloe down to Tempe Town Lake for the Festival of Lights boat parade. It was pretty neat although Ellie enjoyed dancing around with Chloe a lot more than she enjoyed watching the boats go by. Patrick liked crawling all over the hill and the airplanes that flew right over us. The night ended with some pretty "firecracks".

 

Zoolights was very fun this year because Patrick was amazed at everything and Ellie had been waiting to see the dancing lights for over a month.

We attempted to visit the Bass Pro Shop Santa but the wait was over 3 hours so we just walked around and enjoyed the winter wonderland.

We did lots of shopping and running around outside enjoying Christmas decorations and the holiday spirit everywhere. These pictures are from Tempe Marketplace. You were all dancing on the stage until you got kicked off by the security guards. At least you had some fun before you got booted!

 

We had a Little Explorers Christmas celebration to end our first semester. I am so happy that we started our little preschool group. It is so much fun and something Ellie truly loves each week.

 

We had a nice advent countdown with the princess advent calendar that mom mom sent. Ellie, you did good at eating only one chocolate everyday even though you tried to convince us some days that you still needed your chocolate. We didn't do too hot with the one book everyday until Christmas...I think all 30 books were opened by December 10th. Maybe we will try it again next year now that Patrick loves books.

We had a fun sleepover with the girls. Grandma even stayed the night! We made gingerbread houses and snuggled on the couch and watched Elf. Auntie Angie came over early the next morning join in on the girl time. We have done this for the past few years and Chloe promised that no matter how old and busy she got she would always make time for a sleepover before Christmas to make gingerbread houses.

 

And...of course, no Christmas season would be complete without making Coffee Cakes with Grandma.