Christmas 2011

Christmas is our favorite time of the year!

We try to pack a ton of things in the short time between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
There was decorating. Grace had her very own tree this year that she got to decorate all by herself while we put up the big tree. Dustin spent a day putting lights on the house. Sometime between the time he started hanging them and the time he finished several areas went out so he had to put up new lights. We made butter crunch. Grace got to help for the first time! I have my Grandma's recipe memorized and I plan to pass it down to my girls. We drove around looking at Christmas lights. We visited Santa. The girls are not fond of him this year. Olivia did not like him at all. Grace said she couldn't sit in his lap because she didn't know him that well and you shouldn't sit in someones lap you don't know. But we did make cookies for Santa.

Grace got to make them herself!

And Olivia got to try one!

Last year we decided to open our gifts on Christmas Eve. It spaces things out a little and lets us have more time to enjoy Christmas.

The girls were being silly for the camera :)

They were very excited to open all of their presents. This year I tried to teach Grace about giving. I let her "earn" money by doing little chores (helping with dinner, laundry, picking up toys, or helping with her sister). She is good about doing these things when asked but I thought letting her earn money and then using it to buy gifts for people would be a good learning opportunity. She even gave one of her dollars to the bell ringer so a little girl or boy would be able to have a new toy for Christmas! She got Olivia a baby doll (that can go in the bathtub!) and a remote control 4-wheeler for her Daddy.

After opening their presents and playing for a while, we changed into pj's. We made sure to set out cookies for Santa!

Olivia helped herself to one of Santa's cookies.

We let Grace stay up after Olivia went to bed to watch a Christmas movie with hot chocolate and popcorn. I think this is going to become a family tradition!

And then Santa came!
Grace was so excited for Santa to come that she wanted to go to bed around 4:30 on Christmas Eve. We were tracking Santa and when he got to Canada we ran to bed so we would be asleep before he got to our house.

This is what our tree looked like on Christmas morning!

We were all very excited about the new toys!!!!

The girls loved opening their stockings. Grace told everyone that Santa brought her a dollhouse and soap (bubble bath).

And we had to see if Santa ate his cookies and drank the milk we left out.
He left some crumbs!!

Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!!!

Christmas Fantasy at the Zoo

The rain finally stopped so we were able to go see the snow, lights, and fireworks at the zoo! It was a really fun experience and we all had a good time.

{ready to go!}

{bundled up and waiting in line to see SNOW!}

{We are in an Igloo!}

{and there was a snowman}

We saw that you could pay 500 Yen to ride down a slide and we decided it wasn't worth it. But when we saw it we thought it might be fun after all. They let Grace go free too!

{Weeeee!!}

After we saw the snow it was time to eat so we went up to the pavilion we used for Grace's birthday party. We had packed a meal for Grace since most of the food at this type of thing is either noodles or fried and we are not fans of either. We ended up getting some french fries for us and hot chocolate from the vending machine! While we were eating we spotted a big inflatable Elmo and thought Dustin could win it for Grace. I am confident he would have won if we had more clear of instructions. We thought you had to throw the ball and hit the numbers and get 3 in a row. Turns out you had to throw the ball hard enough to knock the number out of the frame they were in. We didn't find this out until after he had hit a number and didn't have enough balls left for a bingo. Oh, well. Grace ended up with an inflatable wand instead!

When it got dark they lit up the entire park in Christmas lights. It was so pretty!! The pictures are not very good but you can somewhat tell what we saw.

Then we started making our way back to the entrance so we could watch the laser light show from there and then make a quick exit. Grace thoroughly enjoyed the laser lights! She was clapping and dancing to the music!

{watching the light show}

{on Daddy's shoulders}

We have taken several videos the last few days and I finally moved them to the computer so I am going to share a few.

The first 4 are from the zoo!

{checking out the snow}

{the little sled ride}

{still the King of Pop in Japan}

{this is very bad quality but I think you can get a little idea of what it like here!}

Grace had a wonderful Christmas morning! She got a new kitchen from Santa Claus and food, pots & pans, and a baking set from Mommy and Daddy. She got a lot of other things too - way too many to name them all!

{Grace playing with her new kitchen from Santa on Christmas morning}

Christmas Eve was a gorgeous day! Dustin fixed the wagon (a screw had came out) and took Grace for a ride on our balcony.

{going for a ride}