Painting Pottery

Today our activity was for Lily and I to go paint pottery together.  They aren't always such a big activity and they usually involve all 4 of us, but every day is different.  Lily was very excited to go paint pottery and she loved it even more than I thought she would!!!  She would have painted every single piece of pottery in the place if I had let her. 

Christmas Sing-along

Lily is the girl with the giant white bow right on top of her head in the middle of the sea of kids.  I did not put her bow there, but that is where it ended up.  Here is Lily and her friend, Kara, trying to re-tie her bow during Hanukkah is Here.  I have a few funny videos of the singalong that I need to cut down to put on the blog.  The part that made us laugh the most was first, of course, Lily yelling for her coat and second, Lily clearly being a trouble maker!  I recognize this shouldn't make us laugh, but it wasn't real trouble...she was trying to get the kids around her to dance instead of doing the hand motions and then, once her bow was untied, she was putting the ribbons on the other kids heads.  Silly girl!!

Christmas Sing-along

Lily had her school Christmas sing-along on Tuesday.  She actually sang the words to lots of the songs!!!!  She didn't do a single hand motion and at one point was yelling to me from the front that she wanted her red Christmas coat.  But she loved it and so it was all fine with me.  Again, the line to meet Santa was 1 mile long and again, Lily opted out.  Fine by me!!! 

Christmas Get-together

 We got together recently with Bryan's Mom and Step-Dad and siblings and their spouses and kids to celebrate Christmas.  We had lots of fun seeing everyone.  Lily is definitely at the age where she LOVES her grandparents and was so very happy to see her Granddaddy especially!! 







Making gingerbread houses. 

Loving our new Deck still!!

My parents bought us a little Christmas tree for our deck and cranberries and popcorn to string for it.  Lily added some pretzels as well.  We were hoping birdies would come and eat the food from the tree but none ever did.  This was a great project, but not one that Lily would really help me with because of the large needle I hate to use.  I have now heard that some people do fruit loop garland and I think that's what we'll do next year so that Lily can help and though it is less classic, I do think it'll be equally as cute.

 

Our Advent Calendar

Years ago, my smart sister started doing daily activities as her advent calendar.  I loved that idea.  I liked making the time leading up to Christmas have a focus on family and spending time together when it's so easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of the season.  So, I was searching for my own way of doing this.  Then I saw this...

http://familyfun.go.com/crafts/cone-iferous-advent-940425/

and thought it looked super adorable!!  Of course, we put our own twist on it, but I think it turned out pretty well.   I wrote activities on little pieces of paper and each day we do one.  It's been a lot of fun.  Lily has loved it!! 

We keep it next to the girl's girly tree. 

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Caroliney is holding her turkey hat--she would NOT keep it on her head. It's almost as if she doesn't like to be dressed up and laughed at. Odd. 

It's Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas!!

This costume is meant for 9-12 month sized babies. If you could see the back, the whole thing is wide open and the baby's legs are supposed to be zipped all of the way up in the tree. BUT, I think it looks super cute on Lils as well!!!! Can't wait to put it on Caroliney as well.



This is Lily and Caroline's purple Christmas tree. We got it for Lily last year because it was too cute to resist. Lily now knows it's for both her and C. We stole the tradition of giving her a new ornament for it from Aunt Johanna and this year the girls got a whole set of princess ornaments.

Still dressing up...

A tu-tu with a Wonder Woman dress, scarf, grass skirt (worn around the neck) and Sleeping Beauty high heels. She gets her fashion sense from me.

Playing Outside

Though it feels very wrong, we are enjoying these warmer temps.  Especially with our new deck, we are taking advantage of it and being outside.  Both girls LOVE to be outside.

  

She crawls everywhere now!!

She has recently learned to go up stairs and can go all the way up the staircase inside.

She is obsessed with her sister and is always checking to see what she's doing and where she's going. 

Eating mulch.

Mowing the slide, obviously. 

Lils and Sammy.  Sammy has been sick lately.  Though we think she's going to rebound again.  This is the second time in the last 6 months that we've been thinking we were going to have to say our goodbyes to her and it, we think, is the second false alarm.  She is almost 13 years old and is having some issues, but we are keeping our fingers crossed that she'll recover from her most recent illness and we'll get to keep her for a little while longer. 

Our new deck!!!!

My wonderful parents came to visit and my dad, Bryan and a man that we hired built our new huge deck in 2 days!!!  We love it and have been spending a lot of time out there since the weather has been so fabulous.  Before our deck, we had nothing out there, since we had the awful patio that was here when we bought the house removed.  So essentially we would just hang out in our mud pit.  Now we have lots of plans for cook-outs.  The man who helped to build the deck also built our fence.  He is very nice and a very hard worker.  He was very kind to Lily while he was here and would help her in the yard and talk to her.  When he was done on the last day and we were all telling him bye, she went up and hugged him goodbye.  It was very sweet.  

Our first meal on our deck!

When we bought the house...

Now!!!

Kids and boxes...

You know how everyone always says that all you should get babies for Christmas is a wrapped box because that's what they like best anyway...  I think we can extend that to 3 year olds as well.  A present came for Caroliney in this box and Lils had a great time playing in it...until she wanted her mom and her sister to get in it along with her and it broke.  Oh well!!