Christmas Day 2014

Charlotte's Santa Gifts:  Small Tent and magnetic doodle board

Arabelle Santa Gifts:  Pottery Barn Kids Vanity, some thrift store accessories to go with it and the only thing that she actually asked for for Christmas: a hula hoop

Jeffrey Santa Gifts: Nexus 7, Batman Lego Video Game, Fly Guy Box Set of Books, Star Wars Legos

Stockings had play dough, notebooks, colored pen sets and bubbles

Charlotte immediately squished all her play dough together

Arabelle made "Papa" out of her play dough

Arabelle loved her make up travel set and big bag of fun barrettes that I found second hand

Charlotte hates her tent, but she has gotten a ton of use out of her doodle board

Unsurprisingly Charlotte is a bit jealous of Arabelle's vanity

I also found this kind of strange light up make up case at the thrift store

This Calico Critters set was all of Charlotte's wrapped gifts, I just bundled it into groups and wrapped separately.  I found the school set on Craigslist and have been saving up the critters that I have found at thrift stores

Jeffrey's wrapped gifts were the "My Weird School" box set, an Avengers Puzzle Set, a Play Dough Create and Destroy Set, a Paper Airplane Making Set and some legos.  His reading has really taken off in the past couple of months and he read all the fly guy books immediately--they were too easy for him.  He can pretty easily read the words of the "My Weird School" books, but the content is a bit advanced and I think it confuses him.  They will be good for him to grow into eventually though.

I asked Charlotte if she wanted to wear the Santa dress and hat to the Bailey family Christmas Party, and she surprised me by excitedly saying, "Yeah!"  After I got the outfit on her, she said, "I say, 'Ho ho ho'".  It was obviously very cute.

Arabelle is using her nail polish set that she received last Christmas.  I was surprised that she knew what those toe things were for.

Arabelle's wrapped gifts were some legos, an electric "Princess Peach" toothbrush, and a few craft sets.

Christmas Eve

John accidentally made this bunny pancake.

 We started off Christmas Eve morning with some decadent pancakes that John made.

Jeffrey opened his present from Memaw and Papa early on Christmas Eve morning.  He had a lot of fun putting together his lego super heroes.   Arabelle and Charlotte opened their presents from Phil and Danielle.  Arabelle got watercolors and Charlotte got this cool moldable balls set.  Kind of like playdough but made of tiny balls.  They both played with their gifts immediately.

After Santa Claus cooties, we had hot chocolate.  Since we used these tiny mugs I only had to make one cup of hot cocoa which we all shared.

Of  all the kids, Arabelle was the most excited for Christmas this year.  It was her idea to prepare milk and cookies for Santa and carrots and apples for his reindeer.  We decorated gingerbread cookies on Monday, and Arabelle immediately put all of hers away for Santa.

Arabelle and Charlotte opened their gifts from Memaw and Papa on Christmas Eve night, and Jeffrey opened his alien slingshot from Phil and Danielle.

Christmas Family Photos

"my twins"

I would just like to submit the following as proof that even taking advantage of digital cameras' ability to take millions of photos does not guarantee one good one.  I got several I liked of just Jeffrey and Arabelle, since they were willing to cooperate, but Charlotte was a different story.  She was mad because I made her wear a dress and did not want to get in the picture.

Here's John trying to insert Charlotte into the photo

We bribed Charlotte with holding the dog.

She's quite proud of herself.

Arabelle's Joy School Nativity Pageant at the Nursing Home.  She is a shepherd and she's picking at her cuticles.  Charlotte was unwilling to participate.  She was supposed to be a shepherd as well, but she was throwing a fit because she wanted Arabelle's candy cane shepherd's crook.  I had anticipated the problem of not having identical crooks for both girls and had looked around for an identical one for Charlotte but was unable to find one.  I purchased the closest thing I could find, but it was not good enough, so the best I could do was distract Charlotte from what was going on so she didn't ruin the whole play.

Tree Trimming Party

Arabelle's, Charlotte's and Jeffrey's finished gingerbread houses.

Charlotte is wearing jammies but I did get her to add a skirt for Church.

Poor Arabelle was sick.

Jeffrey got bored with the party and sneaked away to his phone.

Phil and Danielle were the only guests that made it.