Thursday, December 22, 2011

Gingerbread House Night

Another one of our 25 days of Christmas Activities was to make a Gingerbread House! I decided to take the easy route and bought one of the pre-made kits for the whole family to decorate. Chloe loves loves loves candy so this was pretty close to heaven for her! And Eliza loved decorating and making it pretty. The frosting didn't hold up very well so our house fell apart pretty quickly and I just let the kids go to town eating the candy on it and threw it out the next day. Neither one of the girls said anything since they are obviously used to me throwing things away!











Polar Express Night at Chick-fil-a

It's no secret that we love Chick-fil-a and love their special nights that they do to! Last weekend they had a Polar Express Night - complete with free hot cocoa and toppings, the Santa Cow and Cow Elves, a reading of the Polar Express with train whistles and ringing of bells, coloring sheets, Christmas crafts, games, etc.

Unfortunately Chloe is currently terrified of Santa Claus and the Chick-fil-a cows so the combination of a cow dressed like Santa was not a good one for her! She had a hard time focusing and kept looking around for the Santa Cow and when we were walking to pick up a craft project - she saw him and went screaming in the other direction. Kind of funny for Rob and I to witness!





Sunday, December 18, 2011

The Favorite Part of the Grocery Store

Our local King Soopers store (Kroger chain here in Colorado)is where I do most of my grocery shopping. They have the grocery carts that my kids like but the best part is at the end of our grocery shopping trips. They have 1 cent pony rides! I save all my pennies so my girls can enjoy a little ride at the end of our grocery trips if they are behaving. Genius idea I tell you - it makes grocery shopping more bearable since it's something I obviously can't avoid for too long.



Christmas Pajamas

My parents started the tradition of giving us new pajamas every year for Christmas. I know this is a tradition that many people have - but we have a little twist on our tradition! We get the pajamas at the start of the month of December so we can wear them all month long and not have to wait until Christmas Eve. This year we went with the red pajamas from Carter's with reindeer on them (including on the feet). The girls love them!


Cheyenne Mountain Zoo Electric Safari aka Zoo Lights

We met up with our friends - Heather, Bob, Jack and Sam - the other night on a cold night at the zoo to see the Electric Safari and all the lights and animals around the zoo. By the time we were able to meet up and Rob done with work - we only had the last hour left of the night. But it proved to be the perfect amount of time! We raced through the zoo and managed to get to the Mountain Lions just in time to see them being fed and learn about them. Chloe kept wanting to pet the kitties - she doesn't understand the danger of animals yet obviously!





We saw the giraffes inside this time since it was too cold for them to be outside:



We were lucky enough to run into Santa Claus right as he was heading out for the night. He was the sweetest and came back just to talk to the kids and give them a candy cane. Chloe wanted NOTHING to do with Santa but then Santa gave her a candy cane and talked to her a little bit on her level and she actually said goodbye to him - progress!



Such a fun night at the zoo! Just made me fall in love with our local zoo even more. It's built into the mountain and the perfect size. And it's never been too crowded there. I remember going to Phoenix Zoo Lights and hardly being able to walk through anything or see anything! Although it was quite cold here - being dressed warmly helped and we cruised through everything and we were able to get back into our warm car at the end of the night.

Preschool Christmas Party

Eliza attends a Christian Preschool and they have a cute little Christmas program last week that was full of some very spirited Christmas songs by the kids and then a birthday party for Jesus afterwards in the classroom. Eliza was VERY excited about the program and the kids were so cute singing their songs in front of everyone. Rob was able to attend the music part but had to leave before the "birthday party" in the classroom. I have some video of the singing that I will need to figure out how to upload at some point!






Chloe enjoyed the cupcakes in the classroom as well as Ellie.







Eliza with her wonderful teachers Mrs. Shade and Mrs. Roth.

Sugar Cookie Party

We were given this Santa advent calendar by Rob's grandma a couple of years ago and this year instead of putting in the little ornaments and candies - I decided to do an activity for each of the days up until Christmas. We have had been having lots of fun with the different activities and Eliza looks forward to pulling out a new slip of paper each day! Well one of the activities was to make sugar cookies. And I remembered why I don't make sugar cookies very often! They are messy - especially with two kids helping. And they seem to take hours to make from the cutting out the dough to baking and then frosting and decorating! But the kids sure loved it and it was a fun afternoon.







Soccer Buddies - Fall 2011

This fall we skipped dance and gymnastic lessons and decided to try out the local Soccer Buddies program. It was perfect because they had a class for Eliza to go at the same time as the class I could go to with Chloe and it was all indoors! Both of the girls loved it! It was mainly a lot of games that helped them learn basic soccer skills and for the mom/toddler class - a lot of running around (which Chloe is REALLY good at!).