With a Spade of Snow

After much anticipation, and some angst (how will Santa's sleigh land on our roof without snow?!), we finally had our first real snow of the year today. And after much anticipation and some angst, we convinced the girls that it was worth putting on their snowsuits to go out and play.

We hit all the classic playing in the snow activities:

Riding on the sled:





Making snow angels:





Snowball fight (although we didn't get any photos of that one)

Playing on the swingset:





Building little snowmen:







(one on his head)





Letting the snowmen play on the swingset:





And building a big snowman:





Our snowy adventures were followed up with everyone's favorite snowy day treat - hot chocolate with whipped cream and marshmallows. (Yes, and. I made the mistake of asking the girls to choose one, and they chose both. Ah, well.) Unfortunately, it was warm enough today that by the time we were finished with our hot chocolate, all three snowmen's heads had fallen off, and our snow is pretty much gone now. But we enjoyed our first snow day of the year!

Fence Project

Our major home improvement this year was a fence. Like all of our projects it took much longer than expected, I think I started in June and and I finished wiring the last lights at the start of December. At least it looks nice in the snow with all of Kristin's Christmas decorations.

Originally, I had more pictures of the work in progress, but at some point I lost most of them. The first two pictures are of the house as it looked when we moved in (ripped from google maps) and of the house after lightning hit the big oak out front and we had to take it down respectively. From there on it's close to a timeline.

Christmas Season 2011

It seems that this year the family has been particularly enjoying the Christmas season. Abby got to help us put up the tree for the first time and both of our girls got to help place the ornaments. We've shown each of the girls which ornaments are from their first Christmas and they love to point them out. They also can't wait to come downstairs every morning to turn on the Christmas tree lights and move the advent calendar one day closer to Christmas.

We have a few pictures from our tree ceremony.

We've missed the last year or two so we decided it was time for another visit to Santa. Nora is very excited any time she sees a picture of Santa Claus. On Thanksgiving she watched most of the parade with Kristin and was ecstatic when the Santa float finally came. She kept grabbing hold of Kristin and yelling, "Santa! Santa! Santa!".

All in all we thought she would really enjoy seeing him, we were wrong.

We had fresh ginger bread cookies before we left.


Abby was reasonably excited to sit with Santa and tell him what she would like for Christmas.




Nora was slightly less excited to sit with Santa.




She calmed down eventually, but was pretty wiped out at the end.


Here she is hiding from Santa.

We did a little shopping afterwards and as we were walking to the van we went in the direction of Santa and Nora started saying, "No Santa! No Santa!". We'll work on it though, by next year I'm sure she'll have forgotten all about it and be excited to see him again.

A Purple Princess and a Monkey Princess

Happy not-quite-a-week-after-Halloween! For those of you who've been waiting, my apologies for taking awhile to get the pictures up. But it's great timing - you have a whole extra hour to enjoy them tonight. You're welcome!

Saturday before Halloween, we carved our jack-o-lantern. After some debate over whether what kind of face we should draw (Abby thought we should do a "really really scary one!" but Adam and I talked her down to a happy one) we broke out the Sharpie and saw and got to work. It was iffy for a bit - Abby didn't want to participate in the beginning and Nora got very sad when I wouldn't let her grab the saw as I was cutting the lid open - but eventually they were drawn in to the chance to play in pumpkin goop, and we all ended up having a great time.

Our happy face pumpkin:

Sunday afternoon the girls tried on their costumes for the first time. Abby had wanted to be a purple princess for months, and was thrilled to finally get to try her costume. Nora had been so excited about being a monkey, but once she saw that Abby got to wear a tiara she wanted one too, so we had a last minute transformation into a monkey princess. But, hey, it worked.

A Purple Princess:

A Monkey Princess:

Since Abby's in preschool this year, we got to have two Halloween celebrations. Her class had a costume parade on Monday morning, so the whole family went to preschool. After some waiting around, some group pictures, and some chaotic lining up (although, what can you expect from 24 3-year-olds and their younger siblings?) all the kids were in line and marched around the lobby, collecting treats from all the parents.

Preschool Princess:

Monkey Princess:

Lots of Waiting:

Class Picture:

Mommy and her Monkey:

Monday night, the girls were VERY excited to go trick-or-treating.

They looked adorable together! (Abby decided that she didn't want to wear her tiara, so Nora decided that she wanted to wear her monkey hood.)

They posed by our jack-o-lantern before we headed out.

They cleaned up on candy this year! We went several blocks, and they did a great job knocking on doors and saying "Trick or treat!" And they've been thoroughly enjoying that candy for the past week. I think it's going to last for a few more.