Christmas Crafting

I was pretty busy over the holiday break but I did manage to get a few crafts done. Here are some of the things we did...

I added the girl's names to their stockings.

We made salt dough hand print ornaments.

 

We made reindeer pancakes (and donuts and cookies!).

 

I made two large, hooded towels for the girls.
(the other one is purple)

 

Most of these ideas/tutorials were found on Pinterest.

• This is the video tutorial I used for the stockings.
• I made up the awesome reindeer pancake but we also made these donuts, these donuts and these cookies!
• And, here's the tutorial for the cool hooded towels.

A Very Merry Christmas

We had a great Christmas this year with our two girls! I still don't think Lea completely understands the whole Santa thing but she had a blast, none the less.

Like always, we started on Christmas eve at my in-law's. We watched the five children open their gifts and we snacked on yummy food. Then we headed to a small, local church for a pot-luck dinner with Kevin's dad's side of the family.

The girls with their cousins.

It was a nice, low key Christmas morning at home. We set our alarm to be sure we would be awake & ready before Lea woke up. She came out of her room, looked over the balcony and was so happy to see the train table and train set Santa left her! We took out time opening presents until my parents and grandmother came over for breakfast. The rest of the day was spent hanging around the house, watching our girls play with their new toys.

My beautiful girls, first thing in the morning!

Watching Lea play a new Mobigo game.

My grandma and her great-grand daughters.

Four generations.

Christmas day was so gorgeous and mild outside... Lea got to try out her new ride!

A few days later we headed down to my parent's house for Christmas there. (My brother works in the tv news industry and didn't have Christmas day off, so we gathered when he was able to.) Again, we opened presents and ate a lot of food!

My dad has his OLD Lionel train set (an extensive set) from when he was a little boy. They set it up around their tree every Christmas. When I was growing up, Santa brought it and set it up under our tree for Christmas morning. Since this is such an extensive set, it took "Santa" awhile to put it all together. Luckily, our tree was always in the basement. So, coincidentally, my dad decided to paint the steps leading to the basement every year RIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS. lol Looking back on it now, it amazes me that we never caught on!

Anyway... my dad got out the trains and set up half of it for Lea to play with this year. She loved it!

We enjoyed our vacation and I really liked having Kevin home for two weeks. :)

I helped Emma stand up at the train table.
She loved watching Lea play and Lea pretended
Emma was the "monster" trying to grab the train!