Christmas - Part 1

Since we were going to be spending Christmas in Oklahoma with my family we wanted to have Christmas at our house a little early.

The Friday before Christmas was "Christmas Eve." We made sugar cookies and decorated them, went out for dinner, and drove around and looked at Christmas lights.

Before bed we set out cookies and milk for Santa. Grace made sure we bought some carrots on one of our grocery shopping trips so we could leave them out for Santa's reindeer.

 {Ready to see what Santa brought}

The next morning (Saturday = "Christmas") Grace woke up earlier than normal and told me "My tummy feels like Santa came." Her tummy has been telling her some funny stuff lately! She waited patiently for Olivia to wake up. While we were patiently waiting for Olivia to wake up I put some hot cocoa on the stove to cook. I think the noise I was making in the kitchen made Grace's wait a little shorter. 

The girls both ran down the hallway to the stairs. Grace never looked down to see what was waiting until she turned the corner. The entire upstairs hall has the wrought iron banister.

And then Olivia had to stop to look downstairs.

The first thing Grace did was look in her stocking and look what was right on top peeking out! A new Glimmer fairy! This was the thing she always said she wanted Santa to get for her. I think if that is all she got she would have been happy.

 Olivia got a Tinkerbell fairy!

 {Look, a Barbie!}

After going through their stockings they decided to check out the big stuff Santa brought.

 How cool is the little trampoline? 

And we had to see if Santa ate his cookies and drank his milk. 

After moving their bog stuff out of the living room we sorted presents and started opening them. Grace couldn't seem to open them fast enough. As soon as she opened one it was on the the next.

Olivia wanted to take her time. After she opened a present she would say "Please. Open." And then she would play with it for a while.

See? She wanted to play with the princesses before she opened the next present.

They both got a lot of fun stuff! Grace got a fairy from the new Tinkerbell movie. And Olivia got a set of little fairies.

Just look how excited Grace was about her Easy Bake oven. We made cupcakes that afternoon!

We spent part of the day running a few errands (Christmas returns/exchanges before Christmas!) and Grace even got to pet a real live reindeer at the mall.

That evening we watched the movie Elf. Now we think about Buddy every time we have waffles with syrup on top.

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!!!

Visiting Santa

One day last week we decided to take Grace to see Santa Claus at the local mall. I had a doctor appointment that morning so we had a bit of waiting to do before Dustin was able to meet us during his lunch break. We made a quick stop at Wal-Mart to pick up a few things for her birthday party and then we met Grandma at the mall. Grace played at the mall playground with her grandma while I did a little bit of shopping. Then it was time to change clothes and go wait for her Daddy to get there. Grace could hardly stand waiting. She was ready to go talk to Santa!

Once Dustin finally got to the mall she ran right up to Santa.
And then she didn't want to leave!!

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}

Our Wonderful Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas this year! I am going to share our day in pictures (starting with Wednesday!)

{Grace painted a Christmas card for her Daddy on Wednesday}

{These poinsettias have been blooming outside our house for a few weeks! Those are our Christmas lights in the picture too}

On Christmas Eve we decided to make some fudge. It was a lot more difficult than I imagined. It took close to 30 min before it got to the right temperature. But it turned out GREAT!

{Grace got to help by licking the spoon}

{Mmmm... Delicious!}

On Thursday night we went to the Botanical Gardens light display. We were disappointed to find out that they are not doing the light show and fireworks this year.

{Here is a small glimpse of what we saw}

{This is one of the main photo op places}

{They gave us 20 tickets worth 100 Yen each when we went in the gate. We walked all over trying to find something to buy with them. Finally, we decided on a game where for 300 Yen you pick a marble out of a bucket and find a prize with a matching color. Grace got this princess wand!}

Then it was time to head home so we could go to sleep so Santa could come. Grace got to wear her cute Christmas PJ's and she set out cookies and egg nog for Santa and then fell asleep.

{It looks like Santa has been here!!!}

This morning when she woke up she just kept pointing at the door which is her way of telling me she wants to go to the living room. I think she knew that Santa had come! Maybe she heard his reindeer last night?

After we fed Grace breakfast we set up the web cam so my parents and one of my brothers could watch Grace open her presents. She had so much fun playing with her new things that she never opened the last one! She was also much more into the web cam than she has ever been. She played peek-a-boo with my Mom for quite a while! We had the computer on the coffee table and Grace would duck down and then stand up and say "Boo." It was so cute to watch!!

{She LOVES her kitchen and pots and pans}

{she played with this almost all day}

{But she didn't forget about her old toys}

I decided I would make a big Christmas lunch. We had turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, cranberry sauce, and honey wheat rolls.

{There was so much Grace needed 2 plates!!}

We had planned on going to the zoo tonight to see the light show and snow but it was raining and they won't put snow out if it is raining. Hopefully it will be a nice day tomorrow! Instead we just decided to go for a drive. We thought we might be able to pick up some dinner somewhere on base but EVERYTHING was closed. Then we decided to go to Toy's R Us (we noticed that almost everything off-base was open) but Grace started getting tired of the car and we were passing by our house so we decided that home would be just as good. We did enjoy getting out of the house even if we never even got out of the car!

{All in all it was a great day!}