Merry Christmas

Callie has taken to accessorizing herself, like Kenna does.  She also enjoys spending time staring at herself in the mirror.

Well, I have gotten progressively worse about blogging.  I am now, finally, posting about our Christmas festivities.

We kicked off December with a fabulous ward Christmas party.  Alixa was in charge and pulled out all the stops.   We even had a guest appearance by Santa, who was actually Opa.  Kenna was very thrown off by that.  Opa did not fool her for a second and she couldn't figure out why Opa was dressed like Santa.  She finally accepted the reason that Santa was too busy to come so Opa came instead.  She was still perfectly happy to sit on his lap and tell him what she wanted.  Callie only cared about the candy cane.

We enjoyed modernly cold weather most of the month and spent the time swinging and riding scooters.  This year was my first experience with having a school break.  We kicked it off by attending Kenna's "winter party" at school.  She made two snowmen - one out of paper and one out of donuts.  The best part was that she got to leave school early!  We had a little party after school for her friends with a gift exchange and sugar cookie decorating contest.  It was so fun for the kids!

Grandma and Grandpa decided to make the trip to Texas after much begging and persuasion.  They felt a little guilty leaving the other kids at home but in the end, the grandkids won and we're very glad they did.

There were lots of scooter rides and trips to target.  My kids also got the great treat of going to Donald Duck's (McDonalds), a place I despise and never take me kids, several times.  Kenna told grandma, "I just don't get it.  The food here is so good but my mom thinks its terrible."  Yes, I'm that mom.

At gymnastics they have to stretch in the warm ups.  The coaches make them hold each split for about two minutes.  Most times I watch I laugh out loud because Kenna is squirming every way to try to figure out the most comfortable way to hold it.  She usually ends up with her bum in the air.

On Christmas Eve Jenna and Bo came over to make gingerbread houses.  In school Kenna had a homework assignment about traditions.  She wrote about our tradition of making gingerbread houses on Christmas Eve.  After that we had to make it a tradition.  This year makes two years in a row.  Nate and grandpa got a little carried away and competed to see who could build the tallest house.  I'm still not sure who won.

After dinner we drove through some neighborhoods to look at Christmas lights.  We let the girls hop around the car while they 'oohed' and 'aahed' over the lights and animals.  It was fun to listen to Callie shout, "Look! Uh bwoo (blue)".   Kenna very adeptly left cookies out for Santa when we got home before we sent he kids to bed.  The adults enjoyed the night watching movies in front of the fire.  It was nice and relaxing.

I woke up the next morning to Kenna tapping me on the head and whispering, "Santa came!  And my wish came true.  He brought me my own elf on the shelf!"  I didn't want to wake Callie up and luckily Kenna was content to snuggle with her new elf and play the iPad in bed for the next 90 minutes.

Kenna got to take her earrings out the day after Christmas and was thrilled to open a new pair of earrings from grandma and grandpa.

Christmas was extra special this year because Callie was old enough to understand what was going on.  She was so excited when we told her Santa had come.  She had a blast opening her presents and running around with her new toys.

Much to Kenna's disappointment we spent Christmas day playing outside in the 55 degree sun instead of the snow.  She is adamant that next year we have to spend Christmas somewhere with snow.  Nate got the girls a new swing that they could swing on together.  It was a decent consolation prize for the lack of snow.  He got it with the hope that they could power it themselves so we wouldn't spend all our free time pushing them.  It was a vain hope.  Now we push them together on the double swing.

At any point during her two weeks off Kenna could tell you exactly how many days she had until school started again.  She was very sad to see her break end but looked forward to her trip to Mexico several weeks later.