Christmas Day

Christmas Day was lovely. Just the four of us enjoying time together. Jillian was up at 3 a.m. because she woke up excited (we told them not to come downstairs until 6). She had apparently already been awake since exactly 1:58 a.m. and was reading, trying to go back to sleep. I sent her back up, but she came down at least 3 more times before 6. This meant I was also up at 3 for the day.

Excited kids ready to open their stockings. These worry eaters (cute creatures with zippered mouths for "eating" your worries you write down on paper) were quite the hit.

Real Minnesotans need these.

Santa left some walkie talkies--endless fun for hours!

Jillian begged for an American Girl doll for a long time. We finally decided to bite the bullet. Meet Samantha.

Adrienne did not get an American Girl doll (yet), but she DID get a 36" tall Elsa.

I asked for a snorkel set to take to Hawaii, and Matt delivered. I'm excited to try this braces friendly snorkel gear out! I bet I get a few stares.

It's possible to enjoy 3 gifts at once...

We finally finished this 400 pc puzzle as a family. Samantha helped too.

After showing the girls The Christmas Story for the first time, we had a delicious meal of pasta and I blew the girls' minds with the lava cakes for dessert. Happy Birthday, Jesus!

Christmas: the aftermath. Can you spot two children, and one large doll who looks like she had a rough night?

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve began with the usual sister gift exchange.

The girls were delighted they each had selected a pack of Num Noms and a Cabbage Patch Doll Animal for each other. Great minds think alike...with a little nudge from Mom!

Jillian gave us a very beautiful clay fish she sculpted and painted in art class.

We had a mostly lazy day at home. Matt and I both got a workout in, and then we paired up to do the two gingerbread house kits our elf left on his last night.

Love the photobomb, Matt.

We got ready for church and went to the 4:00 service.

Once home, we had our traditional cheese fondue dinner, then took a break from eating for a bit to open pajamas. Matt was super excited about his!

Girls were hyped up on Christmas excitement and a whole lotta sugar.

Matt modeling his Star Wars Hanna-jams!

We let the girls open a couple more presents, one of which was this very cool gumball machine that Grandpa Bennie made.

Back to the table for the chocolate portion of the fondue dinner.

Christmas jammies and sugared-up smiles.

Love love love this sweet pic of Matt reading The Night Before Christmas to the girls.

Family pajama selfie (don't worry, I bought myself some new pajamas too!)

Cookies for Santa, and a very large and odd carrot for the reindeer

A late night shot of all the magic. Ahhhh...

My poor little elf was found tuckered out when I went to bed.

Almost Christmas

Last weekend was crazy cold. We hunkered down and enjoyed the coziness of our home. We made Christmas cookies...

...and Adrienne loaded on the sprinkles

We worked on a puzzle together. Still not done.

The girls helped me with some laundry. I went into A's closet to get some more dirty clothes, and discovered that she has a rather unorthodox way of "hanging" up her clothes.

Simon continued his fun around here. Thanks for helping with the Target list!

Yesterday, Adrienne had a gingerbread house making party at school. It just so happened that Matt was working an evening shift, so both of us actually got to attend! She was so happy, especially to have her dad there.

Adrienne's sweet friends at the "green" table....Haedyn, Sloan, and Brevon

Her final creation. "I put our whole family on my gingerbread house. There's Dad and me and Jillian having fun, and you are on the other side doing laundry!" Awesome.

Proof I was there, too!

Today was the first day of break for the girls. Matt had to work, and we had some snow rolling in. The girls and I hit the library to restock. My bookworm was totally in her element. This girl loves to read.

I made more cookies..

And, I introduced the girls to an easy "craft" I remember doing at school as a kid. The house smells fantastic! We are all excited to spend the weekend together celebrating Christmas.

Odds and Ends

Trying to catch up with December happenings...

-Our Elf, Simon, returned after Thanksgiving and he has been upping his game. Generally he just moves from hiding spot to hiding spot, but for some reason this year he's getting a bit more engaging. My personal favorite was when he saw the girls' bathroom looking like this, and decided to say something about it. It worked like a charm! The bathroom is now spotless.

The girls sat with me for over an hour and helped with Christmas cards! Jillian was my stamper, and Adrienne put on the address labels.

The girls are doing better with eating bits of vegetables. They do best with baby spinach leaves or spring greens on their plate. At least I thought they did. Adrienne has been pulling this little trick that I don't discover until I'm cleaning up AFTER the meal. She is sneaky!!

Cold weather and snow means that my mudroom looks like this every.single.day at 4 p.m. It is generally the moment I look at the clock and wish it was 5. The wine desire grows strong!

Jillian rediscovered her fashion plates after about 2 years of keeping them in the closet. Now she is obsessed with them and even made a little book she titled "Book of Awesome Fashions: Volume 1". Apparently we will have more volumes someday. They even got Matt in on the fashion plate action one evening.

Matt and I got invited to go to the Minnesota Wild game last weekend with our friends Felix and Charie Diehn. We'd never been to an NHL game before, and I have to say that it was loads of fun. Matt immediately bought a new stocking hat. You can see him here watching warm ups...

Thumbs up for a Wild win!

A fun night with good friends. We were reminiscing that the Diehns were our first Rochester friends. Felix was 2 years ahead of Matt in residency, and Charie was my Mayo Fellows sponsor who reached out when we moved here over 10 years ago. We were just young childless couples then.  They had us over for dinner and we remained friends. Jillian and Malea are 3 weeks apart, and Adrienne and Emmy are 3 months apart (they also had a little boy 2 years ago, but we decided to let them go on that 3 children adventure alone--ha!).

This week was Spirit Week at school, coupled with the food drive. The deal is that you can participate in dress up days if you bring food to donate. My favorite day was "Dress Like Your Teacher". The girls had very specific ideas of what they could wear and they looked adorable.

Simon got captured by the Disney Villains! Looks like Ursula got caught holding the tape...

Wednesday was Career Day. Jillian dressed as an author (no pics), and Adrienne's desire was a bit tricky. She is still insistent that she will create Cereal World (like Disney World...sort of) someday. So, after much discussion, we decided that an engineer would be the person who could design this masterpiece. Then she remembered that Uncle John is an engineer, and so she wanted to dress how he would dress for work. So we did our best with what we had, and then she also insisted on her props of bowl and spoon.

After a dramatic finale, where my washer got "stuck" running and wouldn't stop--smelling hot like it was going to catch fire (and poorly timed at 11 pm when Matt was out of town)--I bought a new washer/dryer on Tuesday and it was delivered on Wednesday! Hallelujah for limited laundry interruption! I can't unsee this scene I found under the machines when they pulled them out....

After some major shop-vac use and floor mopping, things are looking much better now!

After waiting for 3 long weeks, Jillian's glasses finally arrived. She was SO excited to hear the news of their arrival, and we rushed to Huber right after school.

I had Sabrina tell her how to take care of the glasses, since I knew it would go over better coming from her. She was listening intently

My adorable big girl. Love her in these glasses!!