2008 -- New Year's Eve -- Celebratory Fun!

Note:  This is the second post of the day.  Please enjoy the post below this one first as it summarizes Christmas.  Thanks.

This morning, we hopped in the car and headed to Des Moines.  We met an old friend of mine from the college days, along with her four kids and celebrated the Noon Year at the Science Center of Iowa.  We arrived in plenty of time and had a blast playing.

We created bubbles.

This is my favorite picture of the day.

You'll see a video of the balloon drop at the end of this post.   Big Sis sat on Cool Daddy-O's shoulders and caught a balloon.  Lil Sis sat on my shoulders and caught a balloon.  A friend of ours from our home town caught a picture of us, but I don't have it.  I have a picture of our friend's son on his dad's shoulders taken from a distance (not posted).
Here are the girls predicting stormy weather for our forecast.  There's a green wall where the kids can stand and view themselves on a TV screen.  This seems to be a favorite spot.

After we returned home, Lil Sis thought it was dance party time.  

She's so goofy sometimes.

More dancing.

Next came the jumping.

Jumping and dancing.  It was a wild scene.

Mid-air for Lil Sis.  Post jump for Big Sis.

Big Sis takes off.

Mid-air... someone's head is missing.

More jumping and general craziness.

Celebrating Christmas with Family

On Christmas morning we awoke and  found this on the floor.  After reading the note from Santa, the girls looked out the window.  Big Sis thought she saw something peculiar in the yard. Both girls immediately grabbed their snow boots and went out to investigate.  They found sleigh bells that fell off Rudolph and then spied some "reindeer poop".  Hmmmm...  There was also a pink tooth fairy angel bear which was accompanied by a letter from the tooth fairy.  The tooth fairy told Big Sis that she'll likely be needing to leave her first tooth behind in the next year.  When she leaves the tooth in the bear's pocket, the tooth fairy will know it's time to visit. We're still a bit perplexed about how the tooth fairy and Santa communicate.Big Sis said she heard the bells jingling in the middle of the night and knew Santa was visiting.  She was very happy about the bells that fell off the sleigh.

We then opened the presents from Santa and the presents under the tree.  There were packages of toys, art supplies, and new clothes.  Cool Daddy-O got a toy John Deere R tractor and I got a GPS for the car.
We then drove to grandma's house and consumed a delicious lunch and had another small birthday celebration for Big Sis.  Next was a visit to the nursing home to visit both great-grandmas.  Here they are with their 88 year old great grandma.
Here they are with their 91 year old great-grandma. She lives across the hall.  The girls had fun skipping between their rooms.
Lil Sis seems to like her new jumper, scarf and hat.  She seems oblivious to the 80 degree temperature in the nursing home.
Now, jumping ahead a couple days, the girls tried out their new baking set.  They each mixed up and baked 2 cakes, one heart shaped and one teddy bear shaped.
Here is Lil Sis showing off her completed cake.  They enjoyed eating their cakes too.
Now, jumping ahead a few more days (yeah, I could have made a separate post, but I'm on a roll and wanting to wrap things up) to another family Christmas celebration.  Here are my 3 brothers cutting and serving the pie made by my sister-in-law (wife to the brother in the middle).  It's rare that they are this close and even more rare that all three would be serving up the dessert, so I had to take a pic.  They were so busy, they didn't even notice me taking their picture.  All of us (except for my second oldest bro) are turning gray at alarming rates.  (I cheat though.)
We have a grab bag on my side, but we did get a gift specifically for one of our nieces who happens to be a big Jimmy Wayne fan.  We exercised our connections and obtained an autographed photo for her.  She was quite surprised.

I'm going to end this post now.  There's going to be another one immediately following.  Next stop, our New Year's Eve celebratory festivities!

Christmas Eve and Preparations for Santa

Tonight we celebrated Christmas with Cool Daddy-O's side of the family.  We attended church, came to our house, feasted on lasagna, and opened presents.  There's a long standing tradition from my side of the family that we're continuing with our children.  Prior to opening presents, we sit around the tree and a selected person reads the Christmas story.  Usually, this is read from the Bible, although other versions are acceptable if a child is reading the story.  This was Big Sis's first time reading the story and she read "The Stable".  
Not to be outdone, Lil Sis, noticing that all the attention was focused on her sister, disappeared into the toy room and returned in a princess dress.  She promptly hijacked my camera and walked around taking pictures of everyone in the room.  She took this picture of one of the illustrations in the book.
After everyone left, we started preparing for Santa's arrival.  Big Sis hung the magic key on the doorknob to allow Santa to open our door.
The girls worked together in preparing treats for Santa and his reindeer.  Lil Sis had the forethought to include a napkin for Santa to wipe his face.
Next, it was time for Big Sis to write the annual letter to Santa.  She wrote this on her own (she did ask for a bit of help on spelling 2 words).
Santa will most likely write a reply when he stops later.  Who knows which answer he'll be circling.

After their bath, they put on their new pajamas (another Christmas Eve tradition) and held their favorite presents they received tonight.  While the girls were in the tub, I finally figured out how Barbie Mariposa's wings work.  I couldn't understand the directions, so I went on-line to read the reviews on amazon.  One of the reviews made it quite clear and I was very excited when I got it to work.

Sometimes Christmas toys are very frustrating until you figure out how they work.  Sometimes they don't seem to work as advertised, which is also a valuable lesson.  Pixos, for instance, will be under the tree.  We hope this will be a good gift, but if not, we'll have another lesson in how marketing and advertising make things look a lot cooler on TV and when kids actually try to use them, it can be very frustrating.  

Not to fear, there are also Legos under the tree.  Legos never fail.  They are awesome!!

Well, it's time to go get to work on the tasks at hand.  We think this may be the last year we have where both children "believe", so we're going all out to provide evidence.  There will be cookies left in the toy oven (tradition), a note on the dry erase board, half eaten cookies and carrots, and outside, there just may be some jingle bells that just happen to come loose and fall off a reindeer in the drive.  That same reindeer or one of his cohorts, just may happen to need to relieve himself on our property and leave behind something smelly.  Don't worry, no animals will actually be harmed in this process.  (I have a friend who raises miniature llamas and he helped out with some of the evidence.)

Cookies - Mixing, Baking and Decorating ... oh, yeah ... and Eating!

The weather in Iowa has been downright frightful.  Ice storms, sleet, snow, blowing, cold temps, wind chill warnings, blizzard warnings. All this in the last 4 days.  

In preparation for the storm and Christmas baking, we made daily trips to the store last week. On Thursday, we baked sugar cookies.  I wanted to be able to decorate them on Friday if we lost power.  Fortunately, we had sleet.  Yes, it made the roads slick and canceled school on Friday, but it didn't coat the power lines.

Friday was a fun day for all.  School and preschool were canceled.  Cool Daddy-O stayed home and worked from home.  I spent 3 hours wrapping presents!  That was exhausting, but I'm mostly done.

On Saturday, I mixed up a triple batch of frosting.  We pulled out all the food coloring and ended up with all colors of the rainbow, plus white.

Lil Sis used most every color of frosting and a wide variety of sprinkles on each of the cookies she decorated.  Big Sis was much more exact and meticulous in her decorating style.  It's fun to watch their decorating styles evolve each year.  I think the first year Lil Sis was allowed to decorate (20 months) she ate more than she put on the cookies.  The floor was a lot more colorful that year also.  In fact, the girls were transported directly into a soapy bath tub after decorating.  This year, a simple wiping of the face and hands was sufficient to clean them up.
Here's a view of the finished product.  We decorated a lot of Christmas tree cookies.  We also had stars, candy canes, snowmen,  and mittens to decorate.
I had a bit of fun with the pampered chef frosting / cake decorator tool.  Cool Daddy-O thought I used a bit too much frosting on some of them. Case in point, the star in the photo above and the green tree with frosting garland.
Big Sis declared this cookie her favorite (note the pattern of sprinkles).  She chose that one to eat after supper that night.

Today, we made 3 more batches of cookies, including Sparkling Butter Toffee cookies, Peanut Butter Blossoms, and Ginger Snaps.  The ginger snaps are chilling til tomorrow.

Cool Daddy-O requests acknowledgement for his help in rolling 1 inch balls to form the cookies, cleaning the floor, running the dishwasher frequently, and keeping up with laundry.  To my knowledge he hasn't been sneaking many cookies.

The real reason for all the baking?  Well, the kitchen is on the north side of the house.  The floor has been cold.  The best way to keep the kitchen warm is to have the oven on.  We can't just have the oven on for no reason, so we bake lots and lots of cookies!

The girls and I get to sleep in tomorrow morning due to a 2 hour school delay.  Unfortunately, this throws a kink into all the fun stuff on the girls' schedule for tomorrow.  Lil Sis is supposed to have her preschool Christmas program tomorrow, but the rule is no preschool if there's a school delay.  Big Sis is supposed to have a pajama day at school and watch "Horton Hears a Who" for movie day.   Hopefully, she'll still get to watch her movie.  Due to Friday's school cancellation, she missed her class party.   

Our Greeting To You

Make a Smilebox greeting

Action Packed Weekend

On Saturday morning, we headed to a local tree farm.  We bundled up in layers, snow pants, boots, scarves, mittens and went in search of the perfect tree.  The girls spotted this small tree and spent some time nurturing it.   Who knows, this just may be our tree in a few years.
After walking, throwing snowballs, making snow angels, throwing children in the snow, we finally found the perfect tree.  Big Sis and Lil Sis gave this tree two thumbs up.  Prior to cutting down a tree, Cool Daddy-O insists all three of us "girls" shout "Cut it down" three times before he'll make the first cut.
Dragging the tree up the hill toward the car.  This tree farm also shakes all the dead needles, etc out.  After we paid for the tree, we loaded it up in our tree carrying vehicle.
Here it is.  Every year, the tree farm owner laughs at us and tells us we need a bigger vehicle.  Every year, we laugh back and say, "We can haul anything in a Honda".  Cool Daddy-O says this is the 9th year we've hauled a Christmas tree for this farm in this car.  We're prepared to do it again next year.
Well, the tree fits in the living room.  It's only about 6 inches from our ceiling.  It looked so much smaller on the tree farm standing next to the giants.  We managed to get the star on top.  The star is touching the ceiling.

All done.  Big Sis did much of the decorating herself this year.  She did pretty good.

On Sunday (today), we had a fun photo session after church.  Here's just a sampling of the many silly faces and poses.

There was lots of giggling and saying of silly expressions.  

More laughing...

Ahh...this one just might make the final cut for the Christmas card.

After lunch, we headed to Cool Daddy-O's employer's Children's Christmas party.  There were giant inflatable slides and jumping areas.  Lil Sis spent much time sliding and jumping.
She insisted I make movies of her jumping and sliding.  Big Sis spent most of her time throwing bean bags and earning tickets.  She then exchanged her tickets for little trinkets.  

The only bad part of the day was when the girls were working on crafts in the craft room.  Big Sis had an unfortunate run-in with a drop of glue from a hot glue gun.  After much sobbing, applying of antibiotic ointment and a band-aid, she returned to earning tickets and having a blast.
I think this may be the first year Big Sis sat on Santa's lap.  Lil Sis refused to sit on his lap, but was willing to stand next to him for a photo.  Notice the look on her face.  She wasn't happy to be there, but she was brave!  What a girl!