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!!!

Our Christmas 2010

This year we decided to start a new family tradition. We opened our presents on Christmas Eve! Since Christmas morning can get sort of hectic when you live near family we thought this would be a way to really enjoy everything more and also put more focus on the reason for Christmas and not just opening presents. So that evening after dinner we made some hot chocolate and a plate full of Christmas cookies and candy then we pulled out our book that tells us the real Christmas Story. After we were finished reading the Christmas story we let Grace open her presents.

She got a Little People farm! Our neighbor in Japan had one of these and she would play with it every time she was over there so I thought it would make a great present. I think it was her favorite thing she opened that night.

She also got Candy Land because I thought that would be something she would enjoy later. When she saw what it was she had no idea!! She kept asking us "What is it? What is it?" We told her it was a new game so then she would say "What is it? A new game!" We still haven't opened it but I know she will like it when she is a little bit older.

Then we put out cookies and eggnog for Santa. Grace even wrote him a little letter!

Then it was time for bed so we could wait for Santa to come. Grace woke up early but I think she was actually just cold and wanted to be snuggled with. She was trying to go back to sleep but I would let her because I knew it was almost time for her to get up and check out her present from Santa.

{Checking to see if Santa had been here}

Santa made a big mess in our house! He left a trail of marshmallows all the way from our fireplace to the back door. And he set Grace's coat, hat, gloves, and shoes all out for her. I wonder what he could have left?
A PARK!!!

Grace enjoyed swinging for a little while before she got cold and wanted to come in. And it was still dark out and she was still tired. She got to play on it a little more that afternoon and she can climb up the ladder and go down the big slide all by herself. I was quite impressed!

We headed off to my parents house to spend Christmas morning there. My Mom always makes breakfast on Christmas morning and this was the first time in a few years that we have all been there. This was Grace's first Christmas in the US!

Grace got even more toys and had a great time. After about 3 presents she was tired of opening them and we had to work hard to get her to finally open the last one. She got a Barbie Jeep, and books, and a baby doll, and Dora blocks, and a bubblegum machine, and lots more.

One of Grace's favorite things this year has been the Nativities. We have a little one and she will line up Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus, and all of the Wise Men. We were doing a little after Christmas shopping at Hobby Lobby and she wanted this HUGE outdoor nativity. She kept asking me if we could go see Baby Jesus again.


And then we all headed over to my Grandpa's house to open even more presents. We made it there right at 10:30 so you can see why we had to get Grace up early that morning. Papa Bill gives us money at Thanksgiving and lets us buy our own presents and surprise him. Grace got more Dora blocks and a swing for her swing set. Papa has a hook in the ceiling of his living room that we used to swing from growing up. We hooked Grace's swing up and she got to swing until it was time to play games and eat. Her little cousin even got a turn and fell asleep!

That afternoon we headed back to our house. Grace was having too much fun to sleep so she went outside to play on her new swing set.

Christmas Pictures

A few weeks ago we had my mom take some pictures of Grace for our Christmas card.
Grace did SO good! She is at that age where it is very hard for her to sit still for very long. She would so much rather be exploring something. But she sat right where we told her to and she gave us some really cute smiles!

Here are some of my favorites

It looks like she is ready to have fun on that sled!


Such a cute smile

This is probably my favorite of all of them! She just looks so sweet :-)

Such a big smile!!

And here she is just being silly

I posted all of them on facebook and if you haven't seen them there you can click HERE

I think we will need to go back for more pictures soon because my little girl is turning TWO!
I have just a couple more days of her being 1. She already tells us everyday "I'm big girl!"