Holidays at Our Home, 2014

I have so many happy memories of Christmas with our little family of four growing up. (And luckily much of those memories are well-documented by one Garry Johnson on VHS.)  I get all warm and fuzzy thinking about the memories we're making with the kiddos during our own holidays at home. It's just the best feeling on the planet. These are the days to remember! :)

Making reindeer food, as tradition dictates. This year they wanted to make glittery goats and stir them with carrots for Rudolph.

Bea wanted to make sure that Santa had both milk and kefir to go with his cookies, because well, of course she did!

After reading a couple holiday stories together on the couch tree-side, the little sweeties drifted off to visions of sugar plums.

On Christmas morning we awoke to this...

Then I put the camera down and except for a couple of blurry images and a couple videos that may or may not ever make their way to the blog, we just enjoyed our Christmas morning together. I will share that a really big standout of this year's Christmas was that the girls completely got the GIVING part more than ever. They were seriously more eager to give each other the gifts they'd picked out for each other and give us the gifts they'd chose for us than they were anything else. Lou and I looked at each other and he literally said "Whoa, do you realize what's happening here?!" It was a pretty incredible realization.

Now all that's to say that yes, they were of course very excited about getting presents too. Top gifts for Bea were her My Little Pony castle from us, Marble Track from Josie and "American Girl(esque) doll," games and projects from Santa.

Bea was also still quite under the weather on Christmas morning, so took her new sleeping bag as the perfect signal to nap under the tree. Little sweetie!

...Then set up a fort for herself later in our bed so she could rest uninterrupted.

While Bea napped, Josie and Lou headed outside to practice with her favorite gift of the year - an archery set from us. She also really loved her 500 piece puzzle from Bea and pile of new books and projects from Santa. (She also got really really excited that she got new sweat pants. The girl is obsessed with sweat pants.)

Here are some more scenes from celebrating Christmas at our house - including a fun afternoon with their "big girl cousins" playing Forbidden Island.

After this we headed to Xenia for the annual holiday extravaganza at my parents' house. But, that gets its own post.  Upon returning back to Cincinnati a few days later, there was more holiday break action to be had. Because the weather cooperated and because we were in desperate need of fresh air after all of us battling that dang flu of 2014, we hit our favorite playground while Lou headed to work and we had the whole place to ourselves!

We also started a series of home upgrades. More on that another day. We'll call this the before picture.

And of course, loads of time spent playing with new toys and games!

The girls have hit a second wind on playing with dolls. They have some pretty elaborate role-playing that goes on with them. I just absolutely burst with love for them every time I walk into their room and see scenes like this - all three beds ha!

Josie is really, really proud of her K'nex roller coaster that she assembled almost entirely on her own. I think this girl may have a future in engineering.

Holiday Happenings

December is filled to over-flowing with some really fun annual holiday traditions. (Just as it should be IMHO.)  Here's the wrap-up of this year's holiday happenings.

First up, the Downtown Dazzle. Believe it or not, this is when Santa, Rudolph and a couple of elves actually rappel off of a building downtown and land behind the jumbotron overlooking Fountain Square - setting off a fireworks show choreographed to Christmas music. Yeah, it's just as awesome as it sounds!  This event has special significance for us because we used to live less than a block away. We used to walk baby Josie over there each Friday in December for the big show! Then have her back in bed before the rest of the downtown visitors had even made it out of the parking garage. Sometimes, we really miss living in the heart of the city. Anyway, clearly these pics show how mesmerized the girls were!

We spend an insane amount of time with the girls on our shoulders. 

After the big show we headed across the street to Macy's to hear Mrs. Claus read stories and to visit the Nutcracker.

Yep, there's just so much Christmas magic this time of year. Look who Louie ran into in the elevator one afternoon! I love that Santa posed for a selfie (and that Lou thought to ask), ha!

Other traditions include the annual trip to Grandma & DD's house to visit Santa and make cookies while Lou and I take care of some holiday magic at home. This year they added a gingerbread house to the list of festivities! Isn't it perfect?!

Lou and I had a really fun night out that started all gussied up for his work party and ended around a bon fire drinking bourbon with friends from California that we were in town for a night of swapping stories about how wonderful life is.

The girls had a great time with Santa! 

For the past few years we've had the privilege of attending the big Awaited Christmas show at Crossroads Church - reveling in the amazing work of our talented friends who make this show happen each year! If you're local and this isn't on your list of holiday traditions, change that stat.

The other big show for us is the Cincinnati Ballet's Nutcracker! It happens every year on our "Christmas Eve." We go see the Nutcracker then come home and prep for the arrival of Santa who will visit our house just in time to open presents for our Christmas at home on the 24th.  It's such a fun way to fully get into the Christmas spirit!

Now, the bad news here is that through much of these past several photos we were actively battling the flu!  Tamiflu & hand sanitizer in hand, we ventured out in small doses as we all could.  The Nutcracker was about all Bea could handle this day and she totally fell asleep toward the end of it. Then, instead of heading to the stage to meet the cast, she insisted on a little nap in the lobby.

Josie was bummed that Bea didn't want to come with her UNTIL she ran into a long-time friend - whose mama captured these great photos backstage and shared them with us.

We all really loved watching the Sugar Plum Fairy this year, since we had spent the past several weeks watching her rehearse before the girls' ballet classes started each week.

So, another month of holiday happenings were on the books! And now it was time for the HOLIDAY itself!