Happy Birthday!

Finally Three! Our party ended up rather small due to threat of blizzard, but that didn't stop the fun. Erin made them each a Minnie Mouse cake in their favorite color. Happy Birthday Hailey & Riley!

Merry Christmas!

Itching to open presents!


Santa came and brought them the drum they asked for!


Riley opening a present:


Merry Christmas everyone!!

Christmas Eve

We spent Christmas Eve at Auntie Sandy's house making gingerbread houses with cousins Jordan and Tyler.

Hailey:


Riley. Ho! Ho! Ho!


Decorating:

It's Beginning to Feel a Lot Like Christmas

We had an early Christmas tonight with Grandma Sandy. So fun!

Hailey: Headphones, iPod*, and toothbrush. What else do you really need?


Cheese!


Aww, cuddly pillowpets, which immediately replaced their regular pillows.




*Hailey did NOT get an iPod for Christmas. I was using it to demonstrate to Hailey and Riley what exactly headphones did. The headphones are really more for Mommy & Daddy in the long run, since they will be using them in the car to watch movies and we can finally listen to grown up stuff!

Brrr

So yeah, it's cold in Vermont. But even the native Vermonters agree this is a little ridiculous!

I haven't been outside much with the girls, I let myself off the hook because they get lots of outside time at school no matter how cold it is (well, I suppose if it were 30 below they wouldn't go out). But today we ventured out. We thankfully don't have that much snow yet, compared to some of the neighboring towns, but it was plenty for the girls to have fun in anyway.

Daddy Time

Chris has been taking the girls out to breakfast on Saturday mornings to allow me to have some nice alone time. They had a great time this Saturday; after breakfast Chris took them up to Church Street in Burlington where they had free miniature horse pulled cart rides. The girls had a blast with their horse Banana! Thank you to the kind stranger who took these great photos.

Decorating

Thank you for allowing me to pretend I'm a photographer.

Sunset

Been a while since I put one of these up.

Christmas Pretzels

What, you've never made Christmas pretzels? Well, we didn't either until yesterday. We didn't get to the "make your own pretzel" activity I'd planned for the birthday party, so we did it last night and pretty soon we were using cookie cutters. They didn't turn out so much like pretzels as soft cookie shaped things that tasted somewhat like they could possibly be pretzels. But it was fun!

Hailey

Daddy's green eyes.

Celebration #2

This morning we had a triple 3rd birthday party at our house with 10 kids ages 2-3! We co-hosted with our fantastic neighbors (who wish to remain anonymous), who also have a daughter turning 3 this month. It went really well, and the few meltdowns that did happen were taken in stride. I'm pretty pleased with the success of our first kid party! Thanks to Grandma Gerry (who is visiting this weekend with Grandpa Scott) we had a great crafts table, and we had goodie bags and treats for everyone. Can't wait til they turn 4! Ok, maybe I can, since they're not even technically 3 yet.

Hailey told Grandma today we have to have another party for them after Christmas on their "real" birthday. So, we have at least one more celebration to go.

(Riley is in the darker pink today.)