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!