Christmas Day

 Christmas day started with Matt and I waking the girls up to tell them St. Nick had brought some gifts to celebrate Baby Jesus' birthday.  We don't make a big deal out of this, just waking them up about 20 minutes early for Mass and letting them check out their stuff and then continuing on with the day.  We've decided to only give three gifts to each child to tie in with the three gifts brought to the baby Jesus by the wise men, plus some sort of candy.  There's plenty of other gift giving going on with all the family members, so we definitely don't need to add any more to it!

 This years three gifts were new bedding for the girls (since they're sharing a room now I thought matching bedding would be nice), a book for each of them, new slippers and they each got a box of gummy bears as their candy.

 Just like last year Melanie just sat there for a while, taking it all in.  As is quite often the case, Claire just followed Melanie's lead.

 Excited to have another new book!

After checking out what St. Nick brought we went to Mass and then to my Grandma and Grandpa Greenlee's house to open gifts with the rest of the extended family.

 It took quite a bit of convincing to get the girls to start opening their gifts since we had once again just talked about giving a gift to Great Grandma and Great Grandpa and didn't mention the receiving end of things. 

 Jamming on Claire's new keyboard

I've resisted allowing one of these in our house for quite some time, but Claire enjoys music so much I just couldn't think of anything she would enjoy more than one of these, and she proved me right.

 Best gift of Christmas?  Play time with dad!

 And Grandpa!

 With Great Grandpa and Great Grandma

After gifts and donuts at my grandparents house we headed over to Matt's Grandma's house for finger foods and some family time.  Once again we were slackers in the photo department, but Melanie really had fun playing with their second cousins and Claire chowed down on Grandma's chex mix and thoroughly enjoyed some summer sausage, cheese and crackers.

I did manage to snap a picture of Claire with her godmother Aunt Katie, and I think it turned out really sweet.

From there we headed to my parents house for Christmas dinner with mom's side of the family.  No pictures were taken whatsoever, but there was lots of good food and family conversation, and the girls of course enjoyed having so many teenagers and adults to play with them.  Overall I'd say we had a very blessed, family and fun filled Christmas.  

And to top it all off, I blogged about it before the new year! 
(Thanks to Matt and Claire taking a nice long nap and Melanie being content with serving me imaginary tea while I sat at the computer typing.  I would insert something here about an imaginary victory dance, but then I'd have to mock myself and my poor dancing skills since I don't dance, and in my occasionally hormonal pregnant state that would be a bit of a buzz kill, so I'll just give myself a virtual pat on the back.)

Merry Christmas everyone! 

See you in the new year!

Christmas with the Stockemer's

 For round two of the Christmas festivities we had Christmas Eve dinner with Matt's family at his parent's house.  Stacey always does a beautiful job of decorating her house and making a delicious meal for the family to enjoy together.  We weren't very on the ball about taking pictures on Christmas Eve, but I'll share a few of the ones we did manage to take.

 Very picturesque, isn't it?

 Melanie wearing the dancing/musical elf hat that was to be worn by the person distributing the gifts.

 Before leaving we didn't talk to the girls at all about getting gifts that night, they just knew we were giving gifts to our family members and they were very excited about that.  I had let Melanie help me wrap gifts (pick out what paper to wrap a gift with, choose the ribbon/bow, hold her finger so I could tie the ribbons, etc.) and she remembered which gift went to which family member based on this and was quite excited to help them unwrap their gifts,

that is until she realized there were gifts there for her and then she quickly changed gears.  

Oh well.  It was nice while it lasted.

 As is typical with our girls, everything comes to a standstill when they get a new book.

As many of you know, Matt and I really enjoy cooking, and Alton Brown's show Good Eats is a show we enjoy watching on YouTube from time to time (since we don't have cable).  Matt's sister Katie got him the books of the early and middle years of the show and I think he was pretty excited about them.  They're huge books, like text books really.  And to up the coolness quotient even more, the dust jacket folds out into a poster.  Score!  

(My wonderful husband acquiesced to my request that he pose for a picture with the poster.  He's pretty great in my opinion.)

Christmas with the Greenlee's

 Like we did last year, we split our Christmas festivities up over three days to allow for more quality time with each family and to avoid major meltdowns for the kids (and a certain pregnant momma who will remain nameless), which are no fun for anyone when they happen.

We started off by having my family over for dinner on Thursday night.  We kept it simple, with mom and dad bringing a couple take-and-bake pizzas from Papa Murphy's and me making a couple of the deep dish pizzas I've posted about before.  I made a couple pies for dessert and had the regular holiday candies I make each year available and called it good.  The girls were able to spend time playing with family and I wasn't cooped up in the kitchen trying to get things ready, so it was a good arrangement all around.  Here are some pictures from the evening.

 Claire and Aunt Amber getting started on the gift opening

 Grandpa being silly for the benefit of the girls

(as if he needs an excuse for that)

 Aunt Amber loving on her coffee maker

Amber moved into her first apartment right around Thanksgiving and was under strict instructions not to buy certain things for herself since they were already claimed as Christmas gifts, one of which was a coffee maker that I had bought for her many months ago in preparation for her moving out.  She had been suffering through instant coffee each morning as she awaited the arrival of her coffee maker.  Needless to say she was very excited to finally get it!

 Claire modeling a pair of the dress-up shoes each of the girls received.  They've been clomping around in those things ever since they got them!

The plasma car!

I'm glad we had a couple nice days this past week where the girls were able to go outside and burn off some energy, and the addition of the plasma car to the outdoor toy stash has been a huge hit.

 It can support 200+ lbs. and even Claire can maneuver it, although she preferred scooting it around with her feet while wearing her shoes.  She's learning at an early age that driving in heels is hard!

 Pa reading Melanie one of her new books

 Claire trying to snag some candy

 Go away Melanie!  You're blowing my cover!

In Claire's defense, I had made the candies the week before and up to that evening she and Melanie had each only been allowed one white chocolate pretzel and none of the other candies.  The sugar was really calling to her by this point!

One day down, two to go!

I Don't Wanna Get Up!

 "Mel-nee!  Up!" exclaims Claire

"Go church!"

*maybe if I hide under my pillow they'll forget I'm here and let me go back to sleep*

Nice try, but unfortunately it didn't work out that way.  Better luck next time :)

The girls were just so proud of their beautiful outfits, how could I not take a picture?

Odds and Ends

Melanie went to her first WSU basketball game with Matt earlier in the month and seemed to enjoy herself, staying for the whole game even though Matt went in to the night expecting to leave early.  She fell asleep on the ride home and was pretty groggy when Matt was carrying her inside.  I asked her what she thought of the game and she started talking about dogs being there catching Frisbees, so I just assumed she was really out of it.  Nope.  Apparently the halftime entertainment was a guy with his performing dogs.  Even if she doesn't remember much about the game itself at least the halftime show made her first sporting event experience a positive one!

 This just made me laugh.  I appreciate the effort the UPS delivery man put into concealing the package he delivered, but I'm pretty sure going to the effort of carrying a bag of mulch from the other end of the porch to help hide the box along with the propped up door mat just drew more attention than if he had just left the box there on its own.
  It's the thought that counts, I guess.

 When I take my showers in the morning after feeding the girls breakfast I bring them upstairs with me and close the gate so I know what part of the house they're in and let them play while I get all nice and clean.  When I'm done I routinely come upon a scene similar to this.  Melanie and Claire have gone "shopping" with the laundry baskets as Melanie calls it and collected various things to have a "slumber party", usually in my room.  Everything is unloaded from the baskets and set up just so, then the baskets are turned over and become the upstairs to the house for their slumber party.  The girls have recently added playing school to their shower time activities, or at least that's what Melanie is playing and Claire is just following her big sister's lead.  As long as they put it all back when they're done (with some prompting from me, of course) then I'm fine with it if it means I don't have to become smelly mommy due to lack of bathing.

 I made this chicken artichoke cheese spread gift box for an open house my mother-in-law was hostessing and I was very pleased with how it turned out so I just wanted to share.  I've been told the cheese spread is very good, but I haven't actually tried it myself yet.  I just think the presentation is cute.  The first time I made this (which incidentally I wrote about in my first ever blog post)  I couldn't find the red pepper they use in the recipe for the "bow" on the present so I used a few radishes to come up with a suitable substitute, and I actually like how the radishes look better.

 Miss Melanie being all prim and proper while reading after mass last Sunday

Nap time is just better when dad's around.

Pantries Are Fun!

While unloading groceries I left one of the pantry doors open, which is just an open invitation in Claire's eyes to start rummaging. 

I soon found these two partners in crime hiding with their stolen goods.

 It was keeping them occupied and they were happy with the distraction they had discovered, so I didn't stop the unloading of the pantry.  Plus it provided an opportunity for the girls to practice their helping and cleaning skills when it's time to put everything away again.

Apparently Claire was just aiming to create enough room for herself in there all along.

Employee Christmas Party

A few weeks ago the company Matt works for threw their annual Christmas party.  It's geared towards families and Matt mentioned it but didn't seem too interested in going, so I didn't think much of it.  Well apparently Matt didn't realize how big of a production the party is until he saw all the semi trailers unloading stuff into one of the hangars the day before the party.  We ended up taking the girls to see what it was all about, and let me tell you, it was quite the setup!

Admission was either a donated toy or canned food item, there were various large prize packages up for raffle and a slew of free activities, including a merry-go-round among other carnival style rides, fairway games, snacks (popcorn, cotton candy, sno cones and something else I can't think of right now) as well as dinner (hot dogs, chips, cookies and various soft drinks - this was obviously a health-conscious event ;) ).  Troubles the Clown was there making balloon animals, the Bubble Man doing his thing, the police department there with the Ident-a-kid program making free information profile CDs of the kids and Santa even showed up for gift requests and photos, arriving on a jet plane.  I'm not even kidding about that.  They opened the hangar up and rolled a jet right up to the opening and he walked off the plane.  It was quite the spectacle!  Fortunately our girls were still mesmerized by all the rides and lights, so Santa was a non-issue.  And apparently this year's festivities were toned down a bit from previous years!  Needless to say the girls had a lot of fun, even though they were too short for most of the rides. I'd say we'll likely be returning again next year for another free night of family fun :)

 One of the rides Claire was too small for, but we put her on it anyway.  We're such rebels/negligent parents (depending on your viewpoint)

 Fairway games are a lot more fun when they're free!

 Melanie and Claire helping dad blast some bugs

 They even won the bug blasting game and got a prize!

Several people said they were glad the girls won, even joking that Matt won due to having the youngest kids playing that round with him (since we all know these games are rigged anyway)

 Melanie in a bubble

Claire was not interested.  Maybe next year.

 Pop!