Santa

Joel's work invited Santa to visit the office and have cookies with all the kids of employees. After Larkin and Willa woke up from their naps they started squealing and were so excited to go and see Santa. I was pretty surprised at this because we've tried to see him in the mall and they usually do not get within 10 feet of the guy without crying or frantically gripping my leg.

They picked up out their "fancy clothes for Santa" and spent a long time combing their hair in the bathroom and getting everything just right. Larkin was upset that she didn't own a pair of real high heels and thought that they would be perfect for meeting Santa.

Joel met us in the parking lot and told the girls that he thought Santa had come down the chimney into his office, which scared Willa a little bit. She grabbed Joel's hand and immediately started looking to the ceiling, as if he would fall from the sky at any moment.

Once we got to him, the girls went up to him pretty easily and we asked him what his favorite cookies were. Santa said he loved peanut butter cookies the best, which made both the girls grimace since they've never had peanut butter cookies before and they thought that sounded disgusting. Santa also said he loved egg nog, and they didn't know what egg nog was either, so they looked at him (and at me) like he was speaking some other language.

As soon as we got off the topic of food and onto what they wanted for Christmas, thing got better. Willa talked to him for a little while and told him she wanted a baby doll and a dress, and I don't think Larkin said anything but she did smile a lot at him. Santa even had presents for the girls--some princess sticker books!

After all the kids had a chance to talk to him and get their gifts, we went into a conference room and had cookies. Santa walked in and Willa looked totally amazed and said loudly, "HEY! SANTA CAN WALK!!"

All in all it was a great first Santa experience!

Holiday stuff

Here's some pics of what we've been up to in December!

The girls were so excited to decorate sugar cookies. They picked out all the cookie cutters they wanted to use (butterflies, flowers, and hearts were top of the list! Sorry Santa!) and we made the dough together. They always push chairs in front of the oven when we bake cookies and sit and read books while watching them bake.

Here's Larkin reading a book while she waits for her cookies--a few days before I took this picture she came up to me while I was in the middle of cooking dinner and said, "Mom, I'm ready to learn how to read. Teach me right now." I stopped everything and grabbed her some easy readers and she's been working at it ever since!


Anyway, once the cookies came out we made the frosting--and Larkin got her finger caught in the beaters! And I do mean caught--her finger was wedged between the two beaters and I could NOT get it out! We ran to the next door neighbors for help, and eventually it came out under running water. Thankfully nothing was broken--the doctor did some x-rays and said she just needed a finger splint for a few days. Larkin learned her lesson though and now keeps her hands behind her back when the mixer is on!

Look closely and you can see her finger splint!

Princess Joel and Willa enjoying some cookies after our stressful night!

We also made a gingerbread house this year from scratch! It was a lot of work but was so much fun! And thanks to the hot glue gun, our roof didn't fall off this year! Yea!!


And finally, we took the girls ice skating this weekend at Whole Foods. They have a rooftop ice rink that was just the perfect size for learning to skate! They were both nervous at first that that they might be skating on a pond with water underneath (Mom, What if the ice cracks? Will I get stuck in the water?) but once they realized that it wasn't a pond they were good to go!


Both girls caught on quickly and were skating solo in no time! I kept trying to coach them on how to skate (while holding their hands) but then realized that the best way for them to learn was to just let go and let them figure it out. They did fall a few times but didn't mind at all!


We paid for a one hour session and thought they wouldn't last the whole time, but both were near tears when we told them our hour was up. They both kept saying, "I don't want to put my tennis shoes on! I want to wear my ice skates!! Let's go ice skating again RIGHT NOW!"

Bastrop State Park

Here's some pics from our day trip to Bastrop State Park a few weeks ago. It's about 45 minutes from our house and has lots of great hiking trails in the woods with pines and hardwoods. The area is actually called the "Lost Pines" because it's the only pine forest in Central Texas!

Here's Joel under the bridge pretending to be the troll from the Billy Goats Gruff. The girls ran over the little bridge probably twenty times pretending to be all the billy goats! "Who's that tromping over my bridge??!"



The girls LOVE to hike and probably did close to three miles this day without a single complaint (well, ok Willa did ask to be carried once but not for long!). They do like to make lots of stops though to check out the scenery on the ground. On this hike the pine needles were a big hit. Larkin was very meticulous when it came to collecting her needles. She inspected each needle before taking it, and then stacked them one by one, all facing the same direction. She kept saying that they were so beautiful and that this was the "greatest day" since she got to collect so many pine needles. I tried to tell her that if she likes the pine needles so much, she could just grab a huge handful and shove them in my backpack. She looked at me like I was crazy and stuck with her own method.

Willa however had no qualms about grabbing huge handfuls!


We spent about half an hour just sitting on a trail while the girls collected pine cones and needles. They're at such a fun age where the little things in life are so entertaining and interesting to them!

Get up! It's Christmas!!

The girls had a good Thanksgiving--we went to Cat Mama and Papa's house for the day and ate and relaxed over there. Cat Mama and Papa went to visit Matt, Laura, and cousin Ethan the week before Thanksgiving (and had turkey there) so we had ham for our Thanksgiving dinner. The girls were excited about that because they are pretty emphatic about not liking turkey!


We visited Great Aunt Mary in the hospital while we were there and Joel took them for a ride in her wheelchair (of course!).

The girls made sticky buns from scratch in honor of Gramma Ruth (Joel's Gramma) who passed away a few weeks ago. Ruth always had sticky buns for Thanksgiving (well, any occasion really!) and a few days before Thanksgiving Joel said that he wanted to go buy some sticky buns just like Gramma's. The girls and I surprised him and made him the buns from scratch, and they were delicious!! I think we will be continuing Gramma's tradition.

At about 6:30AM the morning after Thanksgiving, Larkin was in our room saying, "GET UP! IT'S CHRISTMAS ALREADY! LET'S DECORATE!!!!" So by 7:00 we had all the boxes out of the shed and ornaments everywhere! By December 1st we had the front trees all decorated with lights, the tree inside up and fully decorated, 12 new ornaments already painted, and Christmas cookies all baked (more on the cookies later!).

I love this outfit of Willa's--can you tell she dresses herself??! Skirt AND a dress, ruby red slippers, and a hat and gloves for 50 degree weather!

The best $4.00 I ever spent!

If there's one thing these girls can't get enough of, it's puzzles! Sometimes we have four going all at once at different spots around the house, and as they walk by they stop and work on them. Other times they just get into the puzzle zone and will sit and work on puzzles for an hour straight without talking. Our coffee table ALWAYS seems to have a puzzle going on at all times!

Larkin started out doing the 24 piece puzzles, and I knew it was time to get her harder puzzles when I found her spilling out two puzzles at the same time and then solving them both simultaneously. We gradually worked our way up the puzzle difficulty charts and last week bought a 150 piece puzzle. I helped Larkin with it the first time, and then swore I would never help her with this puzzle again! I don't have the patience to sit and find all the right pieces and got frustrated after about an hour. She can do it by herself now though and is so proud of herself for doing a "big girl" puzzle.

Larkin in her favorite puzzle spot.

Willa loves to do Richard Scarry puzzles. They are bright colored and have a lot of different things going on in them, which makes them easy to put together. The first few times she did puzzles solo she would squeal and grin every time she snapped a piece into place-it was so cute!

It's been interesting to see how the two of them attack puzzles so differently. Willa is very picture oriented and will look at the picture on the box when searching for the right piece. She'll say things like, "See here, Mama? I need the rabbit's ears. They're missing." She almost always works the puzzle as a whole unit and does not break it up into smaller sections. Larkin has never been one to refer to the picture regularly, and likes to piece together smaller portions and then combine them later.

Gymnastics

The highlight of the girls' week is always their Little Gym classes! Almost everyday they wake up and ask, "Is it my Little Gym day today?!" Willa takes a parent-child class (I go in with her) and Larkin goes in to a class by herself while we watch behind the glass. Our friend Daphne had her birthday party at Little Gym this weekend, so it was the perfect opportunity to snap a bunch of pics of what the girls do there each week!

Here's Willa on the balance beam. She is a little too confident on here and sometimes tries to break out into an almost-run! In Larkin's class they do forward rolls on the beam--which made all the moms (me included) panic a little the first time we saw them do it!

Larkin on the uneven bars--she knows how to flip over the bar by herself, and she even did it once on the high bar!


Parachute! The girls love when they get to take out the parachute and toss balls around in it, sing songs while rotating it around, or hide underneath it with their teacher!
Air Track--This is a big inflatable that the kids love to bounce on! They get to sit on it too when it's inflating/deflating.


We read a book about a circus this week and Larkin's been going around telling everyone that she wants to be an acrobat when she grows up. She spends at least an hour or two each day working on her "homework"--which she assigns herself. She'll do about 50 handstands or cartwheels until she gets it just right, and if you try to give her some kind of help or tip, she'll say, "Mommy, just watch me. I'm doing my homework and I'm learning and learning. I have to keep practicing to get strong for my Little Gym. "


About a week or two ago Willa figured out how to do a handstand. She let out the biggest squeal once she realized that she was really doing it! A couple of times at night we've heard really weird noises coming from her room and when we went to check on her, we found her doing handstands in the dark!! It takes her three kicks (and a few grunts) to get her legs up above her, but she can do it!

Happy Halloween!

The girls had a great Halloween! Uncle Ryan, Aunt Jaime, Uncle CJ, and Aunt Carrie were ALL down here for the weekend. I somehow managed to not take a single picture of all our visitors, but just know that it's been a wild and fun few days!

Here's our hunter-scarecrow in our front yard, and yes, that's a real hog skull!

The girls went trick or treating tonight with our cat-friend Daphne, and policeman friends Liam and Rowan. They all went to the houses together and had so much fun! Such a change from last year when they were too young/shy to go up to the doors by themselves. I think last year we only went to about 5 houses, and this year we did close to 15 and they were asking for more!

Camping

Our friends invited to go camping at a private ranch about 1.5 hrs from Austin. After about 4 hours of packing our things (!!!) we were ready to go! So funny to think that Joel and I used to be able to pack up our car in less than 15 minutes when it was just the two of us!

We headed to Wolf Creek Ranch in Blanco, Texas. It's a huge ranch that's been subdivided into smaller parcels, but also has community areas with equestrian and hiking trails, a creek, picnic pavilion, and awesome views of a lake.

We started setting up our tents and then of course some dark rainclouds started heading for us--but luckily the rain didn't last but 15 min or so and everything stayed dry!

For some reason Willa was really clingy and kept hugging Larkin--I think she was nervous about camping.


The girls went to bed very easily and slept really well all night!
Morning around the campfire--waiting for the breakfast tacos
There were lots of roaming cattle on the ranch. Here's a cow that came to visit us.

Willa fell asleep on the ride home with her purse in hand!
We had a great time and can't wait to do some more camping now that the weather has cooled off!

Nature notebooks

The girls keep nature journals (they call them nature notebooks) and write/draw pictures in them sometimes when we're doing things related to nature. Usually I'm the one who has to remind them to bring along their notebooks, but the other day when we were headed out to go fishing Larkin said, "I want to bring my nature notebook and draw some worms!!" That made the teacher in me smile!

There's a storm pond near out house that someone has been keeping stocked with fish. It's the perfect place for little kids to fish!

Larkin taking a break from fishing to go press/dry flowers in her notebook

Joel handles all the fishing related stuff--I just take the pics! I tried to take a hook out on this trip and got totally grossed out.

Larkin's page on worms--worm drawings and two W's--and then said
"I put two W's--W for Willa and W for worm!"

Another day we cut open a pie pumpkin and made guesses about what the inside would look like. Then we cut it open and the girls drew seeds, pumpkins, and even a few purses and deer footprints. Willa was especially into this --she sat there for over 20 minutes drawing tiny pumpkin circles.

Speaking of writing, Willa wrote her name for the first time this week! She was drawing and then said, "Mommy, will you help me write my name?" She wanted it on her favorite color paper--purple. I wrote her name letter by letter at the top, and then she wrote her name underneath. She's only made a few letters before this (H, T, L) so was very excited to write her name!