December 2015

We spent December preparing for our first Christmas at home, and of course doing our other day to day things: school, playing with friends, playing at home and just living life.


oh and this. Eva was quite proud of herself when she wrote her and Ella's name in 'chalk'. She is in the phase of writing in mirrored images, this is exactly how it looked (not a mirrored picture), it was perfectly backwards!

We went to the train park for Bennett's first birthday, had fun playing at the park and riding the train, but it was chiiiilllly! We drank lots of hot chocolate. The train ride was so awesome because we rode it at night and they had all of the Christmas lights up along the way.

Eli came home from a golf tournament and sheepishly told me not to freak out when I looked at the gigantic charge on our credit card. I was annoyed at first until he told me he bought a trip for us! We ended up choosing Belize and going in March!


There is the saying, 'like a kid in a candy store' but in Ella's case it should be 'kid in a beauty store'. While Eva was at school, Ella and I ran into Ulta and ended up spending over an hour in there exploring the aisles and trying different samples. She tried just about every lotion sample she could get her hands on (which was over a dozen), I sprayed her with a few perfume samples, and I even put some eye shadow and lipstick on her. It was probably the best day ever. We have gone back two more times since then, and she calls it her favorite place. When she finds a sample she always asks, "is this lotion or soap" so she knows if she can use it or not...which brings me to wonder why on earth they have so many soap/shampoo/conditioner samples available. No one is squirting them in their hair while in the aisle, what's the point other than to confuse my 3 year old and make her all sticky when she sneaks it without my knowledge!

Our elf visited, and one morning the girls woke to find her sitting in her own chair, by their chairs. Aww so precious, all sitting together. 

• This year we went to the North Pole Experience where we get to explore Santa's workshop. We do this up in Flagstaff where it's cold, and the kids may actually believe we are in the North Pole. 

 One of the rooms at Santa's workshop was dressing stuffed animals.

 They had to load boxes to the conveyer belt to go onto Santa's sleigh.

And of course a cookie break.

 Writing letters to Santa...or drawing pictures in our case.

And a visit with Santa!

We went up with Dave, Rochelle, Wyatt and Bennett and we were able to stay in the same house we had last year.

 We also had breakfast with Santa

 We had Eli's birthday party when we went back. It was a hoedown.

We had Eva's preschool Christmas party. 

 Fruit loops and glue are always a good time.

We went to Zoolights, it's always so cute and well done!

We had our first Christmas at home. It was bittersweet. It was so nice to get to stay in one place without any driving, and have all of their presents here for them, but very quiet on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day when we're used to be surrounded by family. It's hard to say which on I prefer!

cookie making with Nana

We went for a walk around the neighborhood to look at lights.

    Getting ready for Santa, cookies, milk, coke, we weren't quite sure which commercial to buy in to.

 Santa came! Santa footprints and all. And in my overzealous state of our first Christmas at home, I 'may' have overdid it. I am pretty sure they would have been perfectly content with just the contents of their stockings...

 Eva's favorite gift was her glasses.

 Ella's favorite gift was her Olaf 'magnifier' (humidifier). So that was a total shock ha! She was a bit sick and needed a humidifier and I got one the day or two before Christmas and since it was Olaf decided to wrap it up and pawn it off as another gift...good call on my part.

 Eli got me sunglasses for Christmas, but first he gave me these.

Doing the newest Disney Lego castle - this one is Tangled. I mean technically it's a gift for the girls but.../

 Ella is slooooowly getting the hang of her balance bike. It sort of takes her forever. Someday she will have it down, I am sure of it (okay, secret's out, I am actually writing this post a full year after, it is December 2016 as I write this December 2015 post, and yes, Ella has totally mastered the balance bike, all my hard work paid off)

Our friends Jen and Brad went to Thailand, so we had their boy Bear for almost two weeks! I'd say he's a large dog...and it took him a little while to realize there are little people to be aware of, he pretty much rolled all over the girls shortly after the above picture, there were a few tears even while they were being crushed. But he's such a good boy, we loved having him! Jen told me he'd probably just lay around the whole time, that's what he does with them and it's pretty typical with big dogs to not be quite so energetic, but no, this guy never sat down, he was so interested in everything the girls did and never wanted to miss a thing so he just followed us around nonstop. When he did go back home, Brad said he'd never seen Bear so exhausted, he slept for two days straight.

 Their sleeping masks were also a big hit.

 Eva says, wait, so we have a dog, who looks like a cow, and his name is Bear.

Aunt Carol came!

 Best burglar prevention ever...(referring to the legos above...but yea, also the giant dog with a crazy loud bark below)