Lights All Aglow

In early December the Holmes family joined us for an evening at the Garden of Lights, a walk through light display at a nearby garden.  It was a frigid evening for being outdoors (especially for our Texan-born friends), but we toughed it out and enjoyed the evening together and the amazing light displays.

One thing that made the cold temperatures more bearable was the indoor train display.

Every year a local train club sets up these trains for display in the Conservatory of the gardens during the light festival. 

It's always fun to see how they create new scenes from year to year.

The kids were fascinated for quite some time.  Either that or they just liked being warm.

After we left the train displays, we took in some more lights outside and then headed home to warm up.

We enjoyed hot cocoa, cookies and popcorn.

Then the adults played a game while the kids

alternated between playing together and raiding the popcorn bowl.

Dinner is Served

They do make the most delicious food around here. 

And the cooks are cute, too.

They must be good cooks, just look at the mess they made.  That's the sign of a good cook isn't it?  I'm thinking so, since my kitchen is perpetually messy.

Attention

Do you think this baby could use a little more attention?

Actually, maybe a little less attention would be better.

Hands On Christmas

The beginning of December brought lots of Christmas festivities to the Pull house.  One such festivity, that actually didn't happen at our house at all, was a MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) Christmas Playdate.  Lots of moms from our local MOPS group got together and shared a morning of Christmas activities.  

Our morning began with cookie decorating.  The girls thought it was especially fun that they got to lick the knife when they were all done frosting their cookies (see above).

It was also fun to see their personalities shining through in this activity.  Xandra was very careful and meticulous with her cookies getting the frosting on just so and taking 30 minutes per cookie to do it.  Theia glopped it on her cookies in about 3 minutes total, made a huge mess on the table, plate, her hands, face and shirt.  I'm pretty sure she licked every cookie in the process, too.

Aliyah, being the delightful age and stage that she is, spent a lot of the morning like this

and like this.  Could someone please control this child?

When she was on break from throwing fits, she did participate in a few activities with us.

Her favorite was the playdoh station, where she spent a good portion of her time trying to eat the playdoh. 

The homemade playdoh was red and green, of course.  There were Christmas cookie cutters and rolling pins set out for the kids to use and when we were done, each child got to take their playdoh home.

Xandra and Theia liked this station, too.  In the end, I think what they liked most of all was mixing the red and green playdoh together.  It's so ugly, but so fun.

The other stations were craft making stations (which we never made it to), a nativity station where the kids could play with nativity sets, and a book station filled with tons of Christmas books to read aloud together.

Our friend, Beth, came along for the playdate and she read a book or two to the girls at the book reading station.  

Joey hung out in the sling the whole morning, napped and missed all the pictures.  I'm guessing next Christmas he'll be the jolly one pushing playdoh up his nose, arching his back on the floor and sticking his fingers in other people's cookie frosting.

Platypus Turns Three

Happy Birthday to one silly girl.

A good sister

who's a bit, or rather, a LOT messy

a tad adventurous,

and very huggable.

I hope you have a sweet birthday, Platypus!

I love you with all my heart!

Chocolate Rebellion

House rules are that no one gets sugary treats until they turn two.  On each child's second birthday, I bake a cake, decorate it, and then they get their first try at sugary, sweet cake and ice cream.  At least, that's how it's supposed to happen.  It seems Theia and Liyah have different ideas about the way things should work around here.

Remember our Thanksgiving Turkeys? Two weeks past Thanksgiving, they were still sitting around with Hershey's Dark Chocolate Kisses inside. Well, they were until Liyah found them and devoured the chocolate, wrappers and all. When she saw me, she immediately started crying.

That's how I feel when I get caught eating all of the chocolates, too.

Speaking of eating all the chocolates, I wrote it before and it seems to be true once again...if I had simply just eaten ALL of the chocolates in the turkeys (just like if I had just eaten all of the chocolates in the van), this never would have happened. 

Lesson learned.  Baby Joey, from now on, I will do my best to rid our house of all chocolate goodies from now until the time when you turn two, so that you, too, will not fall into temptation.  Either that, or I could just learn to pick up after myself. 

I think eating the chocolate sounds much more reasonable.

Again, Please!

Despite how I have felt the last few weeks as we've been recovering from the holidays, this video, which I didn't know Joe took until I downloaded pictures recently, makes me want to do it all over again. 

Anyone with me? 

PS - I love that you can hear baby Joe's talking on the video.

PPS - I love Theia's excitement about the T on her stocking ornament from cousin Nick.  Her little gasp of exclamation was heard again and again this Christmas each time she opened a present.  It's wonderful to see life as fresh, new, and exciting from the eyes of a child.