Christmas at Home

Christmas Eve Eve, we had our Christmas at home. It was an eventful morning. The girls were in matching Christmas night gowns, only we woke up to find Ava had had her first, and I pray, her last blow out diaper. No fun. :( But we got her cleaned up and found some more Christmas PJ's so we could get to the important part of our morning...PRESENTS!!

Ava found cookies in her stocking and she pretty much was satisfied for the remainder of the morning. I'm not sure where her sweet tooth comes from! :)

Ava modeling her new toboggan and eating a cookie.

Carli opened this gift and immediately started drawing. I asked her to hold it up and show me what she drew. It's Naggy and Pappy's house all the way up in Amarillo! Do you see it?

One of Ava's homemade gifts, a fabric pull. If I could just get her to put the fabric back in the box when she pulls it all out! This was one of my first "sewing" ventures with my new machine Grammy and Pa got me for my birthday. Turns out sewing in a straight line isn't too had! :)

Carli LOVES the rainbow rice. She has played in as long as an hour at a time. She does a really good job at keeping it in the container too. Ava on the other hand tends to get more on herself than in her cup, or spoon, or container!

Carli and her Leap Pad

Rainbow Rice, a Cookie and a Baby...not a bad combo

Logan comes over to play a lot and Ava LOVES his little cars. She was happy to get her very own cars in her stocking!

Carli got some cars too...this is her "pink" car. And also a preview of our latest project, rebuilding our mantel!

Carli bought Keith some pajama shorts. She really did decide that is what he needed and this was the only pair we could find since it was the middle of winter!

I got a treadmill!! I am very excited. It's even new! :) Keith got it put together for me Sunday night and yes, I've already used it.

Our Christmas at home was really good. I do have some rather dramatic children. Carli ended up sitting at the table for a good hour b/c she didn't want to eat her mini cinnamon roll b/c I made the mistake of calling it a baby cinnamon roll. Nice. Then after we got all our Christmas cleaned up, bags packed, house picked up and almost ready to go - Ava got sick, in the kitchen, all over the island. Blah. Really a bummer since we were about to drive 2.5 hrs, stay in a hotel and fly the next day. But we got her and the kitchen cleaned up again, lined the immediate vicinity around her car seat with towel, crossed our fingers and headed out for our next Christmas in AMARILLO!!

Merry Christmas!!

Just one Present

We finally gave in, actually we bribed the girls to cooperate by the promise of opening just one present. It was just a preview of what tomorrow morning is going to be like...so much FUN!!

Carli opening her new pink ball and glove...

Her first comment was, "Oh good Daddy, now I can play ball with you and Logan!" She wouldn't try on the glove b/c it is an outside toy. Duh!!

That did not keep Ava from throwing the ball around the house though!

We pulled out a gift for Ava and this is immediately what she did...

Once it was unwrapped, she actually sat on it correctly and played for a good three minutes - which is record time for her sitting still! :)

Even Momma and Daddy opened a gift at Carli's persistence. Daddy got one of "those" shirts, so he is officially a Tylerite. Momma got some awesome snapware containers.

Tomorrow is our big Christmas at home with the girls before getting ready to celebrate with our extended families! It'll be a busy busy day! Can't wait!

Christmas Art

After having Thanksgiving/Christmas with my extended family we needed to send out some thank you's to all the sweet relatives who blessed us with a wonderful day! So, it was time to make our annual hand cards!!

Carli was much more excited to participate this year! She did a wonderful job on all 18 of her hand prints!

She had to take a few rest stops...

Ava thought we were nuts at first but then she really got into it and was not very patient for us to reapply the paint on her hand! Thus a lot of her little hand prints were a bit smudged and mis-shaped!

Our Santa and Rudolph!

An up close look at our creation...

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Sweet Sisters

The girls do really well at sharing a room. Our biggest complaint is that Ava is a very early riser. We were worried that this would mess up Carli's sleeping habits, but it turns out that it just has brought the girls closer together! :) We've consistently gone to get the girls up in the mornings and found this...

Ava wakes up early and starts talking or playing. Carli in turn wakes up and promptly joins the fun in Ava's bed. I rarely wake up smiling, but to hear two giggling girls through the monitor brings a smile to my face every time!

Adventures with Santa...

We were very hopeful that this would be the year that Carli would go see Santa.

They got off to a rough start when she was 14 months old...

At 2 things were a little better, but she still wasn't so sure about things and refused talk to him...

And at 3, we just knew this would be the year! She has talked about him for quite awhile now. Our mail man actually looks like Santa, and she loves to wave to him and yell hello! We even snagged a "session" with Santa at our church thinking that he would be in a familiar place and Carli would warm up to the idea of talking to and taking a picture with Santa...

Instead, we got a family photo...
She did talk to him, but he got in trouble when he attempted to pat her arm. Ha! She told him she would be flying high up in the air to go see Naggy and Pappy, she would stay in a hotel and come home to see Grammy's snowman. Santa just smiled and nodded!

On my birthday we went to eat and decided to check out Santaland. We thought we would give Santa another shot, b/c Carli was so excited that he was going to be there. She was going to hold Ava's hand and take her to see Santa...Ava took one look at him and figured out Carli's intentions and immediately started crying. And so, I was able to capture my 30th birthday photo with Santa, just like I planned!

Maybe next year Santa...

Rainbow Rice!

Keith and I aren't really buying the girls Christmas this year. Instead we are making most of it. I did get some clothes and a few toys from the CCC Sale, but mainly we are sticking to the homemade gifts. Pinterest has helped a lot with ideas. We figure we don't need a ton of new toys and that the girls will most likely have just as much fun opening the present as they would discovering what is in it!

So on my list of Christmas Gift to-dos, was rainbow rice. I've been wanting to get the girls a sandbox, but the Cicada Killers are very popular here and they tend to lay their eggs in the sand. I found this idea with rice and it was much cheaper and added an extra element of fun...color!

I actually let the girls help me color the rice. It was part of the fun after all! I bought a $5 bag of rice and the food coloring and we spent a good 45 minutes "making colors" as Carli liked to repeatedly say! Ave spent that 45 minutes attempting to out maneuver me and sneak up on the table. :)

Carli helped me measure out 8 bags of rice with three cups each in them. Then I added 4 tsp on rubbing alcohol, and then the food coloring to each bag. Carli's job was to "SHAKE, SHAKE, SHAKE!" And she took this task very seriously!

Ava even joined in a time or two!

Carli had to show her exactly how to shake, as it is a very skilled task.

After we got them all mixed together, we laid them out to dry on the table. I didn't quite think this one through b/c it was very near lunch AND I had not had any caffiene all morning. By the end of the project and asking Carli to not pull the paper and Ava to stay off the chairs I was needing a Sonic run real bad! :) But, Whitey Tighty is notorious for getting on the table. Have no fear, I just took them all with us to Sonic - two kids, three dogs and a Momma with little sanity. A good mix! :)

After surviving Sonic, and eating lunch in the living room on TV trays. I got the girls down for a nap and thankfully the rice was nice and dry. I put them in 4 separate plastic containers so I could wrap them and put them under the tree later. What's kind of crazy is Carli hasn't asked where the rice went! It was fun and I'm glad I got the girls involved, sanity loss and all!

Oh Christmas Tree...

We got our Christmas Tree up last weekend. So far, we've broken two Christmas balls. The girls have done really good at just looking and not touching. We hear a lot of..."AVA NO!" and peek around the corner to see Carli attempting to lecture Ava on why we don't touch the Christmas tree! So I decided to give them a little tree of their own to decorate. I thought it turned out pretty well. I like the ornaments - the tree itself has an issue of staying on the wall. My command strips aren't doing their part! Of Logan, Carli and Ava, Ava loves it the most which is good because she has heard a lot less lecturing from Carli, at least when it comes to touching the Christmas tree!

I made ornaments with each letter of all three kids names. Carli picked out each color for each kid. Logan got camo, Carli got pink and Ava got purple. Maybe next year, we will actually put these letter combos together to spell their names. For now, Carli just makes sure to tell me that the camo and red ornaments are Cousin Logan's!

On and off, on and off and throw them all on the floor, repeat!

And when Ava completely empties the tree, Carli comes around and exclaims, "Oh NO!" and starts picking them all up. If only she'd do that for all the toys she throws around my house!

The decorated tree, Ava and Carli style!

A thru G Memory Verses

I've made a real effort to stick to our consistency board that we started a while back. We've had a couple of weeks where I didn't hold up my end and a few more where we would do the same letter twice just to make sure we got the memory verse. We are mostly focusing on the days of the week, the weather, our address, the memory verse and our purposeful prayer. I figure the next time through we can work more on the letter writing and such. Uncle Tone took my amateur video and edited it for us so that it is much easier to follow Carli as she recites her verses. I'm very excited to be able to have this memory on video!

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
www.onetruemedia.com

Painting - in the Bathtub

Yep, you read right! Last week when we picked up Logan from school, I got the notion to let them paint. And then I remembered seeing a very simple recipe for bathtub paint on Pinterest. It took me all of 3 minutes to whip up three colors - and it took the kiddos even less time to get ready to start painting!!

No worries, everyone wore their skivvies while we painted, we do have some modesty here. :)

Logan drew Spider-man and Captain America

Ava pretty much painted herself and sang "wee-wee!"

Carli really liked the red paint!

Pretty sure this is the best picture I have ever gotten of all three of them...
notice my girls covered in paint and Logan had scarcely a spot on him! It was pretty entertaining to watch him try to make sure he didn't get any paint on him either by his own doing or Ava's!

Serious business, this painting stuff...

We will definitely do this again! It was so easy and kept all three kids entertained for a good 30 minutes! We had lots of laughs and smiles!