Christmas Activities: Part 1

I actually did a better job of posting about this year's Christmas-related activities than I thought I did…I blame the pregnancy brain for the forgetfulness, because y'all were about to get a post with a bunch of repeats.  Good thing I looked back!  

I have SO many pictures from all of this year's Christmas-related activities that I am going to break it up into a few posts to make it easier on myself.  I already blogged about choosing and decorating our enormous Christmas tree and An Evening With Elves at Marbles, so I think the next activity on the list was the Holiday Express at Pullen.  I already blogged about part of that trip (our visit with Santa), but there were a few more photos that I haven't posted yet that warrant some blog space.  After our visits with Santa, we went outside for a bit to listen to the music, and Lilly and Hadley had the BEST time dancing together.  Jon took a hysterical video of it, but all I have are a few photos:

I may be biased but aren't they the cutest besties you ever saw?!

Lilly: cheeeeeeese/I'm over it.

I thought I got some photos of our family with the Aldridge family, but those must have been on Steph's camera (or possibly I am crazy and dreamed the whole thing).  I for sure did not take NEARLY as many photos of this year's Pullen adventure, probably because I was pretty sure we were all going to die of frostbite…it was SO COLD.  Not as cold as it is this week, but the coldest day we'd had before now.

I also continued the tradition of having L make an ornament, thanks to Steph's MOPS group again this year for the idea (I stole their idea for last year's ornament as well, I hope when they move next year she finds a MOPS group with just as many great ideas for me to steal HA!).  We turned a thumb print into a sweet little reindeer! I am not sure why I don't have a photo of the finished product, but picture it tied with a pretty glittery red and green ribbon at the top and on the back I wrote "Lilly, Christmas 2013."  We made 12 of these total and gave them to teachers, Carney, grandparents, family, etc. and they were a huge hit!

This year, Lilly participated in her first Christmas program at school!  Boy, was it cute.  I thought we had good seats, but they turned out to be terrible and I was unable to get any good photos or video.  Basically, her class and the other toddler class kicked off the program by processing in and singing a few songs, one of them being "Twinkle Twinkle Christmas Star" (to the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star").  I swear if we'd been able to get a good video you would have melted from the cuteness.  I wondered how Lilly would do in front of so many people, but she was right at home and put on quite the performance.

The toddlers.  You can't see Lilly because she was standing up dancing around with her Christmas star.  Typical.

 After they sang, the toddlers came to sit with their parents and watched the "big kids" performance.  Amazingly, Lilly sat in my lap and watched the entire thing with relatively no squirming.  I was impressed.  Seemingly every time there was a break in song, though, she would start clapping and say (loudly), "YAYYYYYY, BIG KIDS SINGING!"  Of course she was encouraged by the laughter of the other parents.  My little ham.

LOVE this little dress and that sweet face, even if she is cheesing!

Watching the big kids...

...and eating the Christmas star???

Another thing we did again this year was to take Lilly to see Christmas lights.  We went to a house last year with the besties where we could walk the girls around and they liked it fine, but Lilly was REALLY into the lights this year.  We took her out one night after dinner to a few houses that were close-by and did a drive-by, and she was enthralled.

Sooooo excited to see the lights!

The remaining photos I have are of our family Christmas celebrations with the Baums and the Eakers (my family), and there are a TON of photos from all of that so I'll save those for another post (hopefully tomorrow night since I'd like to be done with Christmas posts after this week!).  I'll leave you with some fun pictures of us decorating the Christmas cookies that we baked for Santa!  We baked our cookies at home but between last-minute preparations and packing, Mama did not have the energy to decorate before we left to go to Grandma Susie and Papa's house, so we took our decorating supplies with us.  I'm glad we did because everyone had a good time decorating, especially Lilly but I think it's because she consumed at least her weight in sprinkles in the process, ha!

Concentrating hard.

The taste tester!

Aunt Meredith is the best cookie decorator ever.

Aunt Meredith is also hilarious.

Seriously.

The finished product!

Santa must have thoroughly enjoyed his cookies, because he did not leave too many crumbs!  I need to note that Mommy thoroughly enjoyed them as well and I happen to be really glad they're gone because I'm pretty sure baby and I ate at least one entire tray full.  They were REALLY good, if I do say so myself.

Hopefully I can finish up the Christmas posts tomorrow, so stay tuned!

Sarah