Christmas

Every year we take a picture with the gingerbread house that we make, and usually this picture becomes our Christmas card picture. This year I had a cute Santa suit for Sadie to wear and "Christmas dresses" for the big girls, but we had a hard time finding a time when: 
a. Sadie was awake and also dressed in her Santa suit
b. The girls were in a good mood and in their dresses
c. Joel was home from work in time to do both a and b

We kept the gingerbread house on the mantle and kept waiting for all of the above to magically come together. Then all the sudden it was Christmas Eve and we still hadn't taken our picture. So we ditched the Santa suit idea and just took the picture as is! We took a few family pictures and thought they were good enough--then Sadie started crying and was ready for bed. Suddenly we remembered that we forgot to put the gingerbread house in the picture--so we had to do one more! Here's the final picture-

We went ice skating again this year. The girls loved it and kept saying things like, "Look! I'm really skating!!"  They made up a "rule" that each time they fell they had to come off the ice and get a sip of hot cocoa. The cocoa was gone in no time!

In Larkin's letter to Santa she asked for a stuffed zebra, and Willa asked for a snowflake. Santa brought Willa a snowflake but it melted, and he got her a penguin too!

Holding "Pengua" and "Zebrie"

We opened gifts at our house Christmas morning, then headed to Cat-Mama's and Papa's for a big meal and more gifts!

 Sadie slept through most of the picture taking opportunities on Christmas. Here she is on Christmas night wearing one of Larkin's old outfits!