Christmas with the Critters

On Christmas Eve eve, the girls and I went to the zoo for their special holiday opening. A lot of the animals were not out on display due to the season, but most of the large animals were out. Rachael, as always, made friends with one of the peacocks. Then we got to see the otters. They were extremely playful and curious which really made our visit. It was interesting to see the enrichment items in with the animals. Rachael and Anna were excited that they looked like Christmas presents. 

Gingerbread Houses

For our Family Home Evening, we made faux gingerbread houses. I made real royal icing for the first time. It didn't taste very good, but it definitely held everything together. Rachael was really proud of her house. Anna had hers half eaten before she even finished making it. Patrick got quite into the construction and ended up with a shop sign and a small shed. We had a lot of fun together.

Princess Hair

Rachael loves "Elsa" hair. This one turned out pretty cute with the rainbow hair bands. Anna's hair took a lot of time, but amazingly she sat still for it. She's been wearing the pink princess dress almost every day lately. Rachael has also been in love with buns, so we tried a sock bun to her delight. She also specifically requested having some hair loose above the ears.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like...

This year I learned about a small tree farm just outside of town. We were able to get one of the last trees available. We went to the farm as soon as Patrick was able to get off work. We didn't realize that we would be trekking through a good bit of mud. There was also a lot of dead grass grown up around the bottom of the trees.

The girls were excited to explore while we picked out our tree. Most of the ones there were quite a bit taller. Even the one we picked was too tall to fit in our front window. There was someone there to cut it down for us and strap it on top of our car. 

We took the whole next evening to decorate the tree. We used a lot of our special family ornaments and the girls got to place their own special ones also. Last year's ornaments were two felted angels cradling babies. I got the girls some glass ornaments from the Museum of Glass in Tacoma on our vacation this summer. I also got myself a very pretty blown glass one.

Special Delivery

December 1st we made our trip to Santa's mailbox. The girls couldn't wait any longer to let Santa know what they wanted. Rachael asked for an American Girl doll. We somehow were sent an AG catalog that she had been avidly inspecting for a week or two prior. Anna asked for ABC's. I wasn't sure what Santa was going to do about that request.