Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas 2011!  Another year has come to an end without our sending out any Christmas cards.  Each year I think I might get around to doing one... and then I don't.  And at the rate that life seems to be speeding up, it's doubtful I will ever get around to one.  But who knows, maybe I'll surprise the world someday.  In the meantime, we'll count blogging as my constant year-long Christmas card.

Like I said before, we were able to go to Georgia for Christmas, but because we had such an early flight, we stayed in Phoenix the night before leaving and we were able to take the girls to see the lights at the Temple. It was beautiful, and we got a few pictures. Of course the clearest picture is the one that nobody is in, but at least we've got proof of the memory!

And then there's always the token family picture taken by a well-meaning passer-by.  Why is it that these pictures ALWAYS turn out blurry?

So we headed out of town and the first full day in Georgia we headed to Grandma Great's house to make Christmas goodies.  This is one of our favorite Christmas traditions, and we've started trying to include Brooklyn and Lydia.  I'm pretty sure more gets eaten than made by them (and us), but it's still fun to do with Grandma Great.  We also made some super cute Christmas mice for the first time.  For some reason I never got to try one, but they looked awesome.

One thing that the girls LOVE doing when we go visit Grandma is heading to lots of different parks.  This trip was no different.  We even spent a day at the park when it was raining buckets.  The girls did a great job cleaning the water off the slides.

Hello Christmas cookies.  I'm not sure anyone else likes doing this as much as I do, so I wonder if they'd get baked and decorated if we weren't there...  but Brooklyn and Lydia seem to enjoy it just as much as I do, so we'll stick with it.  Brooklyn actually did a few cookies this year.  Lydia just decorated, licked, decorated, licked, decorated, and licked the SAME cookie clean, several times.  Classic.

Christmas Eve always includes Christmas Bingo, with M&M's, which has proven to be a little too tempting for a certain little girl.  By the end of the night she was sprawled out with her head in my lap, eyes closed, grabbing handfuls of M&M's and shoving them in her mouth.  It was very Greek.

Our Christmas Eve dinner was Jerusalem feast, a different tradition than we have had before, and it was delish.  This is at the end of our dinner.

CLEARLY, Santa found us Christmas Eve.  I mean, we were good last year, but I'm not sure we were good enough for the stockings stuffed full of candy, and all of the toys.  But it was lots of fun with the girls.  We definitely had a princess theme going on.  Princess EVERYTHING.

Brooklyn was very excited to find that Santa had eaten her decorated sugar cookies, drank the milk, AND wrote her a note back!

It took a few days before we were able to move after the feasting we had during Christmas, but as soon as we could, we took Tim to the bounce-a-rama.  The girls loved it so much when we visited in October, it was definitely worth a re-visit.

 

So yes, if we were up for repeats of our last visit, we decided to go to the game ranch again too.   It just doesn't get old-- seeing and hearing Lydia squealing when she sees the animals.  And she was fearless.  She had no problem sticking her hands in cages to feed animals I didn't want to get close to.  "Cow? Goat? Buffalo?  SURE!  I'll stick my hand in it's mouth!"

All in all, a great year, and nothing really huge to even report.  Tim still loves his job, I have done more cakes than I ever thought I would,  and Brooklyn and Lydia are quickly becoming best friends.