Leading up to Christmas

We kicked off the excitement for Christmas with a neighbor's birthday party. Cara turned 6, and her mom had Santa and one of his elves come into their home to visit with the kids. The elf painted faces, and Kayla chose a tree and snowman.  Unfortunately, Kayla had no interest in sitting on Santa's lap, so no adorable Christmas card pictures for me.  As Santa was on his way out the door, he offered to hold Maren for a pic.  I laid her in his arms, and she burst into tears.  So much for that idea.

My mom came into town to stay with the girls so we could go to my office Christmas party.  It also allowed us to go to a neighbor's party without the kids.  Kayla got to try out a gift from Christmas last year (chef hat and apron) and help make cut-out cookies - an annual Christmas tradition from when my sisters and I were little.

As is well known from previous blogs, Aaron loves to have the girls do the "stand-up trick", so Maren's already been doing this for months (see Maren's first blog picture of doing it and here's Kayla's).  Maren has the one-legged stand down to a science, but it never seems like I have the camera out when Aaron's tossing her around.  I made an effort one day to get some photos.

Kayla had a little Christmas program at school, so I decked them both out in their Christmas sweaters.  Kayla's was actually from last year, but I still made it work.  I was trying to snap some photos before I took them to school.  For anyone that has a 1-yr-old, you know it's virtually impossible to get them to hold still for a picture.  I think this one highlights Maren's understanding of karate.

If I haven't mentioned this fact yet, shame on me.  If I have, sorry for the repetition, but Maren loves to climb through our kitchen table.  There's a nice ledge at the lower part of the bar height table, and Maren has claimed this as her own personal jungle gym.  She's always crawling through, around, and over it.

Here's another Maren favorite, my Blackberry.  Thank goodness you can lock the keys.  I honestly think she'd be content with this for hours.

We felt very special this year because Santa was able to visit us one day early!  On Christmas Eve eve, we set out cookies for Santa, and the girls opened their traditional Christmas Eve gift, holiday jammies!  The girls were dancing around in excitement, and we caught this photo, which I thought was pretty cute.

On Christmas morning, Kayla was VERY patient, letting us get ready before she went out to look at the presents and stockings.  She found that Santa had left her a little bit of cookie, so she cleaned the plate for him (and notice the cute Dora Christmas PJ's).  Kayla brought out her little stool to put the cookies on for Santa, and even set out her rocking chair next to it so he'd have somewhere to sit.  We discussed that the rocking chair was probably too small for Santa, and she agreed and pulled it away.  But you can still see it off to the side.  Hilarious!

I had a tough time finding Maren's jammies this year, but couldn't resist these when I saw these.  The tutu was just awesome.  She looked like the perfect portly ballerina!

Here they start digging into their stockings.  This was always my favorite part when I was growing up.

Maren had more toys down in her stocking, but as soon as she found her new milk cup, she didn't care about anything else.  Unfortunately it was empty, so tried to get it from her so I could fill it up.  But she wasn't about to let it go!  Kayla had asked for a black cat for Christmas - thanks to Aunt Wendy fostering some kittens a couple months ago.  Fortunately, Santa didn't bring a real one (though this kitty does have his own snow board!).

Our big gift to Kayla this year was a new princess bike.  We wrapped her princess helmet, which she was almost equally excited about.  We then told her we should go try out the helmet with her roller skates in the basement.  She was surprised to find her bike waiting for her instead!

Maren wanted to take a spin on the bike too!