I will have to get my pictures together and organize them before I can post about Christmas. So for a few days I will leave you with the photo we used for our Christmas card.
And an outtake. Papa took these pictures and this was his favorite. :)
Hope you all had a very merry Christmas!!!
I have been meaning to create a fun advent calendar for the girls and I just never got around to it this year. But next year it will be a top priority! I am trying to decide between something like this or this or this. They are all so cute I can’t make up my mind!
For now we are doing a book advent (where you wrap 24 Christmas/winter books and they get to pick one and unwrap it each night), an idea we borrowed from Auntie Nae last year.
And of course we have our Lego Advent calendar that is just for Bug and Daddy. They get to open it after Boo is already in bed.
And we have been trying to do a few activities that will definitely be a part of our future advent calendar, whichever one I pick. :)
Here’s Daddy helping the girls pick something out of the World Vision catalog. Bug picked bunnies and Boo picked a duck and chickens. :)
Another thing we’ve done is make treats for the people at Daddy’s work.
We made smore pops. Marshmallow crème between two graham crackers on a stick and then you dip the whole thing in chocolate. Yum.
We also went out and delivered our Christmas cookies (now a week old, but hopefully not tasting like it) and Christmas cards to the neighbors. I have 15 ideas written down for our advent next year so I need to come up with 9 more.
What a fun way to count down the days till Jesus’ birthday!
On Monday we went to Bug’s Christmas Preschool program. They got to have school at the church so they could practice.
I think we are part of the best preschool around! The kids were all dressed up and sang several adorable songs. It was so cute. I got a little clip of each one of their songs.
Bug is the second one from the left.
T leaned over and whispered that I should use the zoom while I was videoing. I’ve had this camera for two years and never realized you could do that. :P
After the program there was a lunch, and all the parents and grandparents got to eat and visit.
We are so blessed to be part of such a wonderful preschool!
For my mom’s birthday we bought her tickets to go see Disney On Ice present Toy Story 3! Last year we took Bug and she loved it, so this year we decided Boo was old enough to enjoy it as well. The show was amazing! They really know how to make it exciting! The costumes were so fun and had such variety and several times someone would go flying through the air. It was great!
I told Bug that she had $15 of her own money to spend on whatever she wanted but she chose to save it. I bought them mini-donuts for a snack but, surprisingly, she saved her money…even though she really wanted a Jessie snow cone. :)
Boo did great during the show. I think the only reason she stayed focused was because we were so close to the ice. Every now and then she would get squirmy but they someone would go flying past her and grab her attention again.
My friend had given us a code that let us get tickets before they went on sale to the public so I decided, since this was for Noni’s birthday, I might as well upgrade to the nicer seats. I didn’t buy the really expensive front row but whoever was supposed to be in front of us didn’t show up so we actually were in the “front” row!
What an awesome show! The costumes were so elaborate! My favorite was the “Woody’s Roundup” where they were all in cowboy/girl costumes. Although the Barbie number (Bug’s favorite) with tons and tons of Barbies skating around in neon colored workout jumpsuits was pretty cute too.
After the show was over the girls went and touched the ice to feel how cold it was.
What a fun birthday celebration!!!
Happy Birthday Noni!
Just wanted to pop in with a brief (no pun intended) update. Boo has been very easy to potty train! She has not had a single wet accident since the first day and has woken up from 4 naps dry AND woke up this morning dry! (And Bug was wet…haha)
AND she actually tells us when she needs to go potty! She will look up and say, “potty time!” and we set her down, she goes, and then she is off and running again. So nice!
She figured out the #2 side of things on Thursday of last week so it took her four days to bowel train and one day to bladder train. She is still reluctant to poopy in the potty but she will do it for a “special treat”. I realized she needed more incentive than an m&m to poopy in the potty so I put some Halloween treats into a glass jar where she can see them for motivation. It has worked so far. She had five poopy accidents in the first four days, and hopefully there won’t be anymore, but 7 accidents total made me thankful! It was NOT that easy the first time I did this! :)
Good job Boo!
“The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear!” – Buddy the Elf
On Sunday some of the dancers got together to perform for the nursing home residents.
They are starting to get pretty good at this little routine! :)
Bug and her friend from church also got to sing their Happy Birthday Jesus song again. But they only got through it the first time when everybody burst into applause. On the way out Bug said, “I only got to sing a little bit of Happy Birthday Jesus.” :)
Each class performed their tap routine and then they all sang We Wish You A Merry Christmas.
What a fun way to spread Christmas cheer!
Bug was an angel in the Christmas play yesterday at church. She did such a good job! She had a solo where someone asked her who the baby was and she sang, “Jesus, Name above all names, Beautiful Savior, Glorious Lord, Emmanuel, God is with us, Blessed Redeemer, Living Word.”
After the program was over she and one of the older girls sang a song for the offertory.
You can kind of hear Boo squirming around in that video. She was being a handful while we tried to video Bug. :)
I got this video when they were rehearsing before church. I thought Boo was especially funny in it. You can kind of hear her singing “Happy Birf-day Shee-sus! I so gad is kiss-mas!” She knows the song pretty well after listening to Bug practice it for several weeks. Funny girl. :)
Our little Christmas Angels!
Last year I read about a great little Nativity set on my friend Rachel’s blog. Later, after Christmas, I just happened upon one remaining set at our Christian bookstore. It was 75% off and I happily snatched it up. I had forgotten all about it until I got out the Christmas decorations this year so I wrapped it up and let the girls open it.
The set comes with a pamphlet style book but since the traditional book was, I think 90% off and less than $2, I bought it as well.
The book came with a cd of a narrative of the story so we went through the book, opening each “present” as it came up. The girls were thrilled to find the figurines inside and set up the nativity scene.
At the end of every page there is a catchy little tune that get stuck in your head. It says, “What God wants for Christmas, it’s to you a surprise, in box #7 it is disguised. But no peeking, be patient, for this you must wait, it’s what you offer Him, and it’s really greeaaat!” So there is a ton of build up and Bug was expecting something REALLY GREAT in box #7. After all, it IS what God wants for Christmas, it must be really special!
I must confess I totally laughed out loud at her stricken face when she opened the box and found it "empty”. She almost cried.
Me: “It’s not empty, what’s in there? What does God want for Christmas?”
Bug: “Uhh, a mirror?”
(Yes, my oh-so-literal child, God wants a mirror for Christmas.)
Me: “Who’s in there?”
Bug: “Huh?”
Me: “Who. Is. In. There?”
Bug: (tentatively) “Me?” (then excitedly as the light starts to dawn) “MEEE?”
Such a sweet little set. They have been playing with it every day, going through each little box till they get to the end. Hopefully I can find some more on sale this year, if I do you know what the niece and nephews are getting next Christmas! :)
Bug spent the night with Noni on Monday so that Boo and I could really focus on the potty training and when she came back she had a present from Auntie Nina and Uncle Mike that said, “open right away”. It was this adorable book with a nativity that you can pop out and put together!
The girls were so excited! Bug kept saying, “This is great! This is so great!” and Boo was just clapping and squealing because she loves the “baby Shee-sus!”
I helped them get it all put together.
And then they sat there playing with it so sweetly. I could hear them talking.
Boo: “May-wee?”
Bug: “I put her in the stable. She has to take care of Baby Jesus.”
Boo: “Zho-sef?”
Bug: “Here, you put him in the stable by Mary.”
The “sep-ads” and “an-mals” were a big hit too. What a fun present! Thanks Auntie Nina and Uncle Mike!!!
On Monday Boo and I started our grand adventure…potty training! We went to the store last week to gear up. I let her pick out “big girl” undies, Pull-ups (or “pups” as she calls them for “seep-ing”). She picked M&M’s as her rewards and I let her pick some little puff things for a special potty snack.
She has actually done amazingly well! We have only had four accidents in three days, with three of those being on the first day! The only downfall is that two of the accidents have been #2 and we have had no successful #2’s in the potty.
She has been very good about staying on the potty as long as I want her too…as long as she is sufficiently entertained by books, Super Why (her new favorite that she watches on my iPhone), games (again on the phone), or songs. We are still loving the family potty seat that we got when Buggy was being trained. The other day I noticed that you can buy them at Home Depot now for a little better price.
The first day we had two successful pee-pees right off, but then the dreaded #2 accident. I briefly left her here, in a highchair to eat her snack while I went to change the laundry. I thought she wouldn’t go when she was sitting…I was wrong.
Then after the accident came the two pee-pee accidents right in a row, and then after that we haven’t had a single wet accident again. Yesterday she held her poopy in all day long and then today had a poopy accident RIGHT after getting off the potty.
But overall I am very pleased with how quickly she has picked it up! We even had bible study last night and she went pee-pee three times in the church potty.
Big girl undies! Rapunzel - “Punsel!”
So proud!
Now hopefully we can get the #2 side of things figured out and we’ll be good to go with our new “big” girl. :)
For our small group we chose a parenting study this year instead of a marriage study and one of our recent chapters was on celebrating.
Well last Thursday we did some big celebrating around here. For over a year now Bug has had the incentive of a “surprise” if she could keep her Pull-up dry five nights in a row.
I have never pushed the issue because she is pretty motivated by incentives and since she is rarely dry more than one or two times a month I figured her bladder just wasn’t ready. But then all the sudden about a week ago she was dry two nights in a row (which hasn’t happened since we were in Texas and I’m pretty sure that was because it was so hot that she was dehydrated, haha) and then three, four, and we held our breath as she announced that she made it! Five nights dry!
I knew we needed to do something big to celebrate this with her since she has been trying hard but has just never been physically able to do it until now. I had purchased a Groupon to our local Children’s museum and I thought it would be the perfect celebration for her accomplishment.
We decided to go on a Thursday morning so it wouldn’t be crowded with older kids. Part of the big excitement was getting to see the three-story Christmas tree set up at the mall and getting a candy cane from the big guy himself.
When she first saw the Children’s museum she kept saying, “Is this my surprise? Is this it?” She was squealing and shaking and jumping and giggling. I love how excited she gets about things.
She ran around for a minute trying to take it all in.
The dress-up section with a stage was a huge hit. She put on a costume right away.
Noni helped the girls build some towers and tunnels and Bug would put on a costume and burst through the foam blocks as her big entrance.
Boo’s favorite two things were the water table (the reason she is partially wet in all these pictures) and the slide. She must have done the slide 20 times. I would help her up the little stairs and she would say, “Go round Mommy! Go round!” so I would go around and catch her at the bottom. She was so happy.
They got to do a little foreign shopping with real items from faraway places.
And they both spent quite a bit of time racing around in the little cars.
And bike riding.
Then we moved on to the art section. Boo made several paintings.
Bug and I made a bunch of paper snowflakes and then she went over and painted them.
They had some fun-house type mirrors that Bug and Noni tried out. It was hilarious. They were laughing so hard they could hardly do it.
We stayed for two hours before heading up to the food court to get some lunch. What a fun celebration!
And we were just invited to a birthday party at this same place in a couple of weeks so we get to go back and have even more fun doing all the neat things with friends! We’re already looking forward to it!
