It's Begining to Look Alot Like Christmas

I love having kids at Christmas! When they get excited, I get excited. And the entire month of Christmas has been pure excitement. We've done so many cool things, too many to count. We've had Christmas celebrations with friends and family, eaten a ton of yummy meals and cookies, made cookies with friends
(thanks Kathryn!), eaten our daily Advent chocolates, imbibed with delicious drinks (thanks Carol for showing me how to make Amaretto), and gotten a few good rest days thanks to my cold/sinus infection/ear infection (thanks Jer for watching the girls and being so wonderful to me)!

The night before Christmas, Santa's elves put the final touches on the Wizard of Oz set that was the girl's main Christmas present. A month earlier, Mrs. Santa had bought all of the little Madam Alexander Dolls of the Wizard of Oz- 12 in all. She also bought 5 bird houses (Emerald City, Witch's Castle, Dorthy's House,and two Munchkin Houses), a box for the dolls, a box for the entire present to be stored in, and 20 rectangular wooden slabs (the yellow brick road) from Micheal's to be painted to look like the Wizard of Oz set. Santa and his elves worked very hard on painting it, cutting out the doors, and hot gluing flowers and sequins onto it. Needless to say, they outdid themselves. On Christmas Eve, they set it up under the tree.

On Christmas morning, Victoria woke up first and comes out from her bedroom. First thing she says is "Did Santa eat all of his cookies?" Next we wake up Bella and head into the living room. The girls loved their Wizard of Oz present; they played for about 15 minutes with it. Victoria's favorite present was a Barbie doll, (although she had been asking Santa for a $200 ride on dinosaur that was bigger than a dishwasher- not gonna happen- Santa can't deliver something so big.) Bella's favorite was a Curious George doll. The funny part was when I asked Victoria what her favorite toy was, she said "a rock"- she had just been playing with a little toy dinosaur and it's environmental rocks.

It was a wonderful Christmas! And now the clean up begins. I had thought that today I could finaly conquer the mound of dirty laundry that has been piling up, however, Victoria woke up throwing up and Jer just got a cold, so it's been a TV watching day. We watched a movie that my brother Jeff gave to Bella and Victoria- Pippi Longstocking- one of my old favorites, and now, one of the girls' favorites. Although I got nothing done, I truely enjoyed this day of taking it easy.