Christmas Celebration Round 1 of 3: Christmas at our own house

 Auntie Lois made us this cute advent calendar. Chelsea was very excited to put an item up each day. This was an early Christmas gift this year and so Rick and I were excited to see what was coming up too, as we had never seen it before. Thanks, Lois! It will definitely be coming out for many Christmases to come!

 Last year we celebrated Christmas Eve with the Kelly family and Christmas Day with the Heit family. It is SO wonderful having all that family in town. We are quite spoiled, but love every minute of it. But that left our own individual family gift session until after Christmas and it was a couple days before we got around to opening our gifts. It was fun, but for me, it didn't have the same feeling once Christmas Day had passed. It almost felt like one more thing on our to-do list. So. This year we opened up the celebrations with our own small family gifts on the 23rd. Round 1 of 3.

This is the zhu zhu pet that we got for Brie. It was a big hit with both girls. I'm contemplating getting one for Chelsea for herself, but I haven't felt quite justified in buying another toy so soon after Christmas. Maybe for her birthday. But don't tell her, I want it to be a surprise. 

 I'm very happy with our decision to open presents early. It was laid back and enjoyable. The girls had time to open up and play with some fun new things. As the kids get older, the more fun Christmas time is. I loved shopping for the kids the most. I volunteered to do the shopping for all the Heit kiddos too, even though generally I buy for the Kellys and Rick buys for the Heits. (not exclusively, but generally)

 Brie got her own backpack now. I figured we won't be hauling a diaper bag around forever (no we haven't started potty training, but I think Brie might actually be getting kind of close to learning a little bit more) and Chelsea has her own little Princess backpack that she likes to take on sleepovers to Grandma's. So now Brie has a cute little Dora the Explorer backpack...that she wears around her neck. We'll have to work on the details.

 Yeah I'm a boring shopper for Daddy. He doesn't seem impressed with....a shirt....Just kidding! He didn't mind getting a shirt. He got some other cooler things too. =)

Here are the girls after the festivities of the evening were over. Baths were done, and they were getting ready for snack. They are modeling their cute new pajamas. The shirts are none too big, but the pants are quite long for both of them. Brie's are Dora, in case you were curious. 

There's more excitement to come!

Annual Christmas Torture Fest-er, uh,-Photo Shoot!

 My Chelsea is SO cute, but SO uncooperative when it comes to getting her photo taken. She loves to see herself in photos, but posing for them is torturous for her. She was decently distracted here, but we were trying for a decent shot to send in a Christmas card. (I should clarify-for GRANDMA to send out with HER Christmas cards. We've yet to get around to doing the Christmas card thing ourselves, so don't feel bad that you didn't get a card from us with one of these photos enclosed.)

Yeah, we thought that ONE kid was tough to get a decent pose from. Try TWO little ones at the same time! Moving targets!

 This was the main winner. Most cards got this picture along with Grandma's news letter. A select few got a second photo which is very similar, but they are serious faced, but still looking very cute. (It ended up at the end of this post.)

 We tried to do some individual shots to see if we could get one of them at a time to cooperate. We (me, Grandma Kelly, and Auntie Jennifer) were all trying to get Brie to look up and smile. I glanced over at Chelsea and saw this. Ha! Too funny.

 Then she did this. Hilariousness! The funny part is that she was not trying to be funny. She was just being bored. Made me laugh.

 She realized she was being cute when I started laughing at her. Then the hard part was trying to get Chels to look at the CAMERA.

 A little squinty, but way cute!

 Contrary to what most people think, I really like this shot. They are both just hanging out. Brie is checking out the ornaments on the tree (which is a no-no, we spent many trips rehanging bulbs) and Chelsea is admiring her dress. I like it.

 One of the few semi-decent individual shots of Brienna. She wouldn't smile for ANYthing!

 We tried having Chelsea hold Brie to see if that would work. You can see how well it worked out. Chelsea thought it was great fun. Brie, not so much.

 I think we were just about done at this point. Brie was long done already, hehe.

Soooooooooo serious. But they are both looking! I love my cuties, and the adventures of trying to photograph them.

Fort Night

 Daddy and the girls built a fort the other night while I was at work. This reminds me that I need to put up the pictures of our drain tile project now that we have our room back. But I'll do that after we clean this fort up and take a decent picture of the playroom.

 Peek! Here is a preview of the back of one of the new toy cubbies, which is acting as blanket/wall/ceiling support. And a window.

 It's hard to capture the coolness of the fort, but they did a great job.

 Brie can stand upright in most of it even though she's ducking here.

And at the back there is a nice sleeping tent/igloo. I wasn't looking when I took this picture, hence cut off heads, but Chelsea sure looks cute!

Old Time Photos

 We had the girls' pictures taken a couple months ago almost. This is the free 8x10 that we chose. We also opted to get the CD and copyright release, which is very important to one who works in a photo lab and had to deal with angry customers not able to receive their precious photos for lack of a copyright release.

 These are the raw files. We have to do our own editing now to make them look old-time. Rick is good at that sort of thing. I'll let him take care of creative editing. In the meantime, I am happy to share what we've got.

 I realize that they are not smiling in, well, any of these. But I still couldn't help myself. They are still precious photos to me!

 I love this one.

This isn't all of the images, but most of them. I thought he had taken more than this, but it's all good.

I love my kids!

Early December

 We've had such light snow falls that it's just piled up nicely on the little picnic table. So far it's easy to gauge how much snow we've gotten! I have a feeling it won't stay that way.

 Chelsea pulled out the Johnny Jump-up all on her own, hooked it up to the rocker, and proceeded to climb in and, well, jump! (I like how Brie is holding three babies. She's really getting into babies!)

 I love these goofy expressions!

 Yes that is a headband around her neck. She wears it that way sometimes because Brie likes to wear it that way, and she thinks it's pretty funny.

 I love my kids!

 Double peg leg Chelsea. I was afraid she would be stuck once she walked, but nope. Her little feet just popped right out!

 Here Brie is demonstrating her favorite way to wear headgear: around her neck. Tiaras end up around her neck as well. (She loves necklaces as well. And they actually belong around her neck!) She's recently started putting her outside hat on, backward, but otherwise properly. She's too cute all bundled up. I'll have to take a picture of her looking like a marshmallow in her snowsuit. Chelsea insists that she's a snowflake, not a marshmallow.

 Family home evening tonight. (Yes, I said tonight! I'm blogging these on the very night they were taken! I can't be any more caught up than that, right?) We had a lesson on sharing. (Sometimes I'm lazy and just redo my lesson from nursery. Tonight was no exception.) Then we made cookies shaped like little bears. We are going to share them with Daddy's home teaching families tomorrow.  Nice how that all fits together, right? Sometimes I feel like a good mom, hehe. (The lesson went really well and the activity was well enjoyed and smooth.) Life is good.

 Remember that photo of Chelsea wearing my pajama pants? She decided to put on Daddy's pants this time. 

 Yes she is nearly naked. Again. But this time it wasn't just for fun. We had spaghetti for dinner tonight, and I'm working on teaching Brie how to use a cup instead of a bottle, so I stripped Brie down to her diaper. Chelsea decided she wanted to be "all naked" too. She's still got underwear on, but that's it, hehe.
She looked like a little mome rath running around like this. Remember those little thingies from Alice in Wonderland? Strange cartoon. Oh, and do you notice all the ponies watching TV? Chelsea makes sure they are fully entertained.

 Here is our bedtime snack: eating some of our cookie bears! Yum!

 I was trying to get a decent picture with both of them with their cookies, so I took a couple shots. Chelsea was so sweet and accommodating and "smiled" over and over even though she was quite eager to munch. Brie wasn't so patient.

Aren't they cute?

All of November

Brie was climbing on the shoe rack one night and decided to weigh Daddy's shoe...with her teeth...Yuck!

She got hung up here for awhile, poor thing.

Check out the stockings and shoes. And there's Brie going through the cupboard in the background.

She hasn't yet become camera-shy.

No, Chelsea is not wearing pants. She's kind of weird that way. She's always liked being barefooted, but recently she's preferred pantsless as well. I don't know where she gets that. The rest of us like wearing pants just fine. =)

At least she's looking at the camera. Nowadays she likes to say cheese but look off to the side.

Behind the couch (she's headed there) is sometimes a fun place to crawl.

I don't remember why Chels brought her pillow and blanket out. But both girls liked resting their heads. Too bad they bonked noggins. They were being so cute sharing a pillow!

Chelsea is eating her lunch nicely.

And Brie was walking around hugging and patting this bottle of lotion like she would a little baby. 

I'm pretty sure this was Thanksgiving Day. I didn't take many pictures that day. We had planned to go to the Hornbacher farm to celebrate and pig out, but we had gotten snow and were expecting much more. So we stayed home. The snow storm was a disappointment and we totally would have been fine driving. We missed seeing the Hornbachers, but we still had fun with the Kelly Clan.

The day after Thanksgiving Chelsea got to make cookies with Auntie Beth.

While they did the cookies, Brie unloaded Grandma's cupboard. This cupboard is regularly gone through, emptied, rearranged, etc. Brie's newest thing is putting a plastic tub on her head or face and looking through it. Goofy girl.

Frosting time! I accidentally deleted one of Chels adding sprinkles. I'm too lazy to re upload it. Just imagine her face in deep concentration, similar to the one here, and you'll know prettymuch how it looked. Daddy got in on the action a bit as well.

The finished product! They are great cookie bakers! They turned out tasty as well as beautiful!

The girls got a kick out of Daddy squirting them with water.

Brie out cold. What does she look like immediately upon waking?

Just like this!

By the way, she did have a blanket to start out with. She must have thrown it out of the crib. She does stuff like that.

Brie isn't the only one that likes to put things on her head!

And it's time to decorate the Christmas tree! Chels is pretty good at helping to put ornaments on.

Brie is pretty good about taking them off again.

Nice earrings, Daddy!

So there's a concentration of candy canes. The perfectionist in me wants to spread them out, but I've resisted so far. I'm trying to leave them alone. =)

Brie is cute snuggling the little nativity figures that Chelsea lined up so nicely.

The finished product. Brie nearly cried when we stopped her from taking things off the tree/touching things on the tree. But she got over it. Now she is very good about leaving the tree (and the presents!) alone.

Why she chose this location to color her picture I don't know. It must have been comfortable. =)