Opening gifts at our house...

The kids opened their gifts from us on Sunday. Lee works next weekend, and the weekend after that we will be in Arkansas celebrating Christmas, so yesterday was just a good day to do gifts at our house. Analese got a Barbie and Ken in a balloon carriage:




Mariele got various baby toys and a pair of shoes. She really only cares about how her gifts taste:




The big gift to the girls from my mom was a Barbie Jeep! We got mom onto iChat so she could see Analese's reaction as she saw her jeep in the garage. You can see me holding the computer with my mom on it in the background:




Mariele loved it too! That is until Analese stepped on the gas, and the noise totally scared her! She is not quite ready for such wild fun yet.

Christmas lunch with friends...

Saturday we got together with our friends for a Christmas lunch and gift exchange. It was the only time we all had available between now and Christmas. We are all so busy! We enjoyed a wonderful feast (I will post a photo of it on Friday), then we let the kids open some gifts.




Here is Auntie Yng Yng with Mariele:



Me and the girls!



Then Analese and I went to go see The Nutcracker. She was hesitant to leave, because she was having so much fun with the kids at our house, but once I got her out of the house, she had fun with me. We met some friends there, and we were able to sit front row, center, which was really cool! She did really good the first half of the show. She enjoyed a sprite and some cookies during the intermission, so she was a little wigglier during the second half of the show. But we made it through, and I'm really glad we went. Maybe it can be an annual date for us.

Soup to Share!

Analese and I got this idea of Soup to Share from her Highlights High Five magazine. We took the pretty jars, and layered in the soup ingredients. The layers are barley, green and yellow split peas, lentils, alphabet pasta and spices. Analese enjoyed pouring the ingredients into the jars and making the pretty layers. We also tested the recipe ourselves, and it made a really hearty vegetable stew!




I have a lot of blogging to catch up on. We had a great weekend having Christmas at our house a little early, since Lee works next weekend and we are going to Arkansas for the actual Christmas. I will try to blog about our weekend as I get a chance to do so.

TOO SMART for her own good!

First of all, don't flame me, but we are not that into Santa at our house. I have never emphasized Santa with Analese. I don't shield her from the influence of Santa or anything. She enjoys Christmas cartoons as much as the next kid. I am just not making a huge effort to instill in her this belief in a fictional character. Lee and I were both raised with a de-emphasis on Santa at Christmastime. The emphasis was more on the religious meaning of the holiday, the birth of Jesus. And presents came from our hard-working parents. We knew that, and the joy of the holiday was not in any way diminished. So naturally, we are raising our children in the same way. So I am sitting here right now watching the Dora the Explorer Christmas special with Analese. Santa is one of the stars of this movie. He keeps two separate lists, a list of kids and characters on the nice list, and the naughty list (Swiper the Fox is on this one of course). So just for the fun of it, I asked Analese, "Are you on the naughty list or the nice list." First of all, she looked at me like I was nucking futs and her reply was, "I'm not on ANY list because there is no Santa!"

Phone Photo Friday

Mariele has a boyfriend. Seriously, this baby is at The Little gym on Wednesdays when Analese does her class. She LOVES this baby!




Here she is posing on the mirror in the dance room:

Analese the primadonna ballerina...

The past two weeks, Analese's ballet teacher has come up to me after class and gushed about how amazing Analese is in the ballet portion of the class. Either she is kissing up for more tuition money, or my child truly has a gift;) Anyway, here she is practicing her ballet at home before her class:

Wordless Wednesday - Handsome Devil!