Christmas morning

Christmas morning is sure fun with 3 excited little girls. Ben was woken by Evie at 3:30, and never went back to bed. It was nice to have the dishes all put away out of the dishwasher, and everything else perfect when I woke in the morning. Kiersten was up at 7. she was able to wake Evie and me successfully, but Kara didn't want to get up. So I went down and got Ben, Kerry and Lana, who were watching a movie, and we let Kiersten and Evie come find their stockings and gifts from Santa. I was worried about that shopping cart Evie got. She loved her last one, but it just kept falling apart, so Santa brought her a new one. She wanted nothing to do with it when she saw it. But today she has loved it, and pushed all her things around in it, so I guess she likes it afterall. She only cared about those tubes of mini m&m's. once she saw those, she wanted them opened, and didn't care about the rest of her goodies. She carried them around til after breakfast, I think Ben distracted her long enough to make them disappear.

Kara woke 45 minutes to an hour after the other girls. She was really cute and excited about everything. Kiersten had her stocking emptied, and tried to show her everything in there in about 15 seconds.

Evie kind of loves/fears this bunny from Grandma Howard.

I knew Kara would love this doll, but I am surprised how much. It hasn't left her side since she opened it.

The girls were opening everything so fast. Kerry and Ben had a hard time keeping up with getting things out of the packaging.

Evie's new baby doll is probably her favorite gift. It is constantly being fed and put to bed all day long.

Kara's big gift from us, was her own camera. I was looking through it this morning and she has some pretty cute pictures. I got her a memory card today, so now she'll be able to take as many pictures as she wants.

We gave Kiersten this story telling Belle. She is pretty fascinated with everything it can do. She's also worried about her perfect curls getting smashed.

We gave Evie this fun discovery table. She was getting sleepy, and laid on the box, so I couldn't get it open for her. She wouldn't get off for quite a while.

Being a little tired, she was not cooperative for her picture with gifts. This was the best we could get.

Kiersten with all of her fun things. I know a few things got left out of the picture, in the chaos of our livingroom, or Kara playing with her stuff. you can kind of see her santa gift in her lap. It's a set of little disney princesses in wedding gowns marrying their princes. She is in love with those things.

Kara is pretty pleased with her spread as well. Her santa was that my little pony next to her on the couch.

the girls made all of us play twister.

This morning Evie kept wanting to wear the little glasses that came with one of her baby dolls.

Her new favorite toy. Kara has the cutest picture on her camera of Evie kissing her baby this morning. I guess she was carrying it around and stopping every few steps to give a kiss.

Hope you all had a merry Christmas this year!

the week before Christmas

The girls have been having so much fun this week, being out of school. Here they are jumping on some bubble wrap that came in a package from my parents. Notice they each put on one shoe to help them pop it.Ben got these littel masks for them to color. Kara is a reindeer.Kiersten is a snowman. Evie had an elf one, but I didn't get a picture.We also made little tiny gingerbread houses. That was a huge hit.Ben also got them these ornaments. They colored in the area meant to put a picture, but I'll probably add pictures in later. This is the one Kiersten made.There's usually quite a difference in Kara's coloring, and Kiersten's. Kiersten is getting better lately, though. This is obviously Kara's.On another day we decorated stockings for Papa and Grams. The girls have just been thrilled about them coming to spend Christmas with us this year.Kiersten tried so hard, but her decorations all turned into blobs. Papa and Grams loved the stockings when they arrived yesterday morning. The girls were very eager to show them.Here is some of the candy the girls helped me make. I didn't remember to take a picture til it was already mostly gone.making chocolate suckers. Kara did a very good job on some of hers. Good enough that I put some of them on the plate I sent to work with Ben.Here are some cute foam ornaments the girls made. Kiersten actually wrote "Anna" on her snowman, because that was what the picture on the packaging said. Kara kept making fun of her for it. I just had her write her own name on the back, and we decided her snowman is named Anna.Kara's santa and snowman.Yesterday they got to help me bake a giant snowman cookie. We did chocolate chip. They haven't decorated it yet, so I don't have a picture of the finished product. They were great at helping me clean off the spatula and beater. Who needs a dishwasher?Since Kerry and Lana are here, we decided to go to zoo lights last night. It wasn't nearly as cold as the last 2 years. It was crazy busy though. Here's our little group, sans Ben.Notice Papa is smiling while being smacked in the face by a light wand. He's a great sport!Evie really enjoyed the lights. She was so cute running around and pointing and jabbering excitedly.Our annual picture in front of the purple and green tree.The girls are so excited for Santa to come tonight. Kara keeps pestering me about the gifts under the tree that say, "Christmas Eve". You really can't sneak anything past her. We have 3-4 more projects to do today, and I also need to get the girls running around a lot so they'll be extra tired tonight. Kara is on a kick of trying to stay up all night. She tries it at least once a week, and resists going to bed almost every night. I think she'll be willing to go to bed tonight, but I do suspect she may try to stay awake in her room. So I especially want to get her super tired.

12/17/11

Friday was Kara and Kiersten's last day of school until January 9th. They had a Christmas open house at the end of the school day for their parents and siblings. I still can't believe I forgot the camera, but I did, and got no pictures. Some of the other parents had cameras, so I can probably see if someone will email me a few. They got to perform their dances again from the recital. So we got to see Kara dance with her partner this time. Kiersten was so cute strong arming her little partner, and telling him what to do. They also sang some Christmas songs for us, and then gave us gifts they bought for us on their field trip on wednesday. Then they had their gift exchange. They each had to bring 12 gifts earlier in the week, and the teacher wrapped them all up, and put them in giant gift bags. So each kid got a big bag full of little gifts to open. She also had gifts for the siblings. Evie was thrilled to get her own little bag with a few books, a ball, a stuffed owl, and a sucker. As soon as we got home, they all got into their goodies, and spent most of the evening coloring, and doing projects.

I really appreciated their teacher for having something for Evie. It truly made her day. I tried to get her picture playing with books, but of course she insisted on standing up in her picture spot.

They got mostly the same things, but a few things were different, so they made a good effort to share all the things that were different. Their teacher sent home a packet full of worksheets and projects for them to do over the break. Kara is almost completely finished with hers. I'm not too worried about them getting bored, though. I have several projects planned to do with them, and Ben came home from playing basketball and football this morning with another bag full of little projects he found at the store.

I did get this picture of Ben reading with Evie. This was before she noticed the camera.

These are the girls' pictures with santa. You may notice a difference between the two santas! I took Kara and Evie a few weeks ago, and Kiersten the following week. Kara and Evie were with me when I took Kiersten, and Kara definitely knew it was a different guy. She had been so sure the real santa was there when I took her and Evie, and as soon as she saw this guy, she whispered to me, "mom, it looks like Kiersten doesn't get to see the real santa. She should have come with us last week." I told her not to say anything to Kiersten about it. When Kiersten was on his lap, he kept trying to talk to Kara too, and asking her questions, but she really wanted nothing to do with him. It was hard not to laugh, and he was definitely confused by her. He gave her a candy cane as we were leaving, and she handed it straight to Evie.

dance recital

The girls had a Christmas dance recital on saturday.Kiersten was so excited to be in the recital, instead of watching Kara from the audience.The last 2 years, they have done "santa claus is coming to town". So I was happy and surprised that they did "rudolf the red nosed reindeer" this year.For their second dance, they did a partner dance to silver bells. Kiersten has been so excited about this. At first she was upset that Kara got to dance with Devin, who is the oldest boy in class, and all the girls wanted to dance with him. but he refused to dance with any partner but Kara. So Kiersten got to dance with Chayce instead. They were a perfect little dancing couple.It turned out not to be such a great thing to be Devin's partner, as he got sick the day of the recital. The teacher told Kara to just pretend that she was dancing with a partner. I was worried that she wouldn't take it very well. But she actually did a really good job with her pretend partner. Some of the younger kids were still watching her to see the steps. I couldn't help but laugh a few times, and I think the video I took ended up a little shaky because of that. I was pretty impressed that she was such a good sport about it.Last night the girls drank some hot chocolate and wrote their letters to santa. Then we made some more snowflakes for the wall. Kiersten wrote her entire letter, with a little help from daddy to tell her which letters she needed to write. She asked for a princess wedding set.Kara didn't need any help writing her letter. A few months ago, she was telling us she wanted a 3DS for Christmas. around thanksgiving, when she was looking through toy catalogs and coming up with a list, she decided she didn't want one anymore. Ben even tried to talk her back into it a little, and she insisted that she'd rather have a toy. That was fine with us, of course, given the price difference. Then when I took her to see santa last week, she told him she wanted the 3DS. We panicked a little, as we knew that wasn't in santa's plan. But we talked about the possibility of changing up a few things so it could happen. But then last night when she wrote her letter, she didn't mention the 3DS. just the toy she has been wanting. So that was a relief.
This is their last wek of school before a 3 week break for Christmas and New Year's. They have a field trip on Wednesday, and then a Christmas party on friday. I have a few fun projects and ideas for them to keep busy during their break. They are getting pretty excited about Christmas, but this morning when I dropped them off at school, Kara exclaimed, "I can't wait til thrusday of next week!" Her teacher asked why, and she said, "because I can't wait for it to be the first day of WINTER!". hopefully she wont be expecting to suddenly have a bunch of snow.