The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, I am happy to say: It's Christmastime! This is a wonderful time of year for kids and adults alike, and I love it. We really start to get into Christmas mode last night by putting up our Christmas tree. Ryan and I brought the tree up from the basement while Lily and Liz looked on. Lily was so excited! We leave our tree lights up on the tree, but it's been a few years since we had restrung them and you could tell, so we spend a little time taking the lights down. We realized a couple of the strands had a lot of lights out, so Ryan went on a mission to find more lights. Even though she was excited, Lily was ready for bed, so we promised her we would finish during the night and she could see it in the morning. Ryan and I love to decorate our tree. Since we collect ornaments from our travels and many ornaments have been given as gifts, it always brings back so many memories to pull each one out and hang it up. Of course, Christmas music was playing too, and it really sets the Christmas mood for us. You can see a picture of our tree below. Do you like that baby gate wrapped around it? We don't Mia to be anywhere near this tree; it would be toppled over in a heartbeat.
After the tree was decorated, we hung our stockings over the fireplace. However, we realized that Mia can easily climb onto the fireplace and then pull them down. This would be awful because we have very heavy stocking holders up; they are not so heavy that she couldn't pull them over, but they are heavy enough to inflict major pain. So, we decided we would let Lily see the stockings in the morning, but then we pulled them up and they are sitting on top of the fireplace instead of hanging down. Hopefully Santa can figure this out. We also put out our nativity scenes. We have two that we love. One was a Hummel set from Ryan's Grandmama, and the other is a hand-carved set my Meme brought back from her trip to the Holy Land. They are both sitting on our buffet where Mia cannot reach them and Lily has been given very stearn warnings not to climb up there and play with them. To help take away that temptation some, we actually bought the girls their own nativity scene to play with. It's part of the Fisher Price Little People set (both girls love Little People), and it's really cute. Lily especially is having fun with it, and Mia is enjoying some of the pieces too. You can see its picture below.

Saturday kept the Christmas mood going. Lily was thrilled to see the tree, nativity scenes (especially the new one) and the stockings when she got up. We woke Mia up and got her ready too because we had very special plans for the morning...a delicious breakfast at The Georgian Club and then a meeting with Santa! We dressed the girls in matching ice blue smocked dresses, and I have to say they looked adorable. Here's our picture which was taken in front of our tree.

The Georgian Club had a nice breakfast buffet set out for all to enjoy. They had cereals, lots of delicious fruits, eggs, pancakes, waffles (with tons of toppings to choose from), potatoes, grits, sausage, bacon and a big juice bar. Lily was very excited that I gave her a small pancake and a small portion of waffle; she loves breakfast food. I also gave her a few M&M's (a waffle topping); I figured she needed to be in an extra good mood to meet Santa. Here's a picture of us getting ready to enjoy breakfast.

Lily was thrilled that they had Rice Krispies. We usually eat Cheerios or Raisin Bran for cereal at home, so this was a definite treat; she ate two bowls and loved it.

Finally it was time to meet the man himself. Lily has been very excited all week. She was telling me all the things she was going to tell Santa she wanted and things Mia wanted. She has talked about "my friend Santa Claus" coming to our house to bring presents and leaving cookies out for him. She has agreed multiple times that to sit on his lap and tell him these things. Care to take a guess what happened when the time came? Exactly...not going to happen. We decided to take a picture of the four of us with him first, and then try to slip out of the picture. Here is the picture Liz took of us and the Club photographer took one too that we should get soon. Both girls did fine while we were holding them. Then Santa sat down, and I told Lily I wanted her to sit on his lap to which she promptly replied "No." Not really surprised by that, I told her that was fine and said I would like for her to stand next to his chair. At this moment, Ryan put Mia in his lap and she started screaming. Lily again said "No" and had a death grip around my neck which let me know I would not easily get her down, so I said "Okay," and I am going to be very happy with a picture of two calm (though not smiling!) kids with us and Santa.

After our meeting with Santa we went back to our table, so Lily could finish her Rice Krispies and Santa had magically placed a gift on our table to the girls. We let Lily open it since Mia really doesn't care about gifts. She was very excited to see a new Cedermont Kids DVD with "Christmas Favorites" on it. She had several times during breakfast to go to the museum after breakfast, but as soon as she opened this DVD, she asked if we could home so we could watch it. That was a fun little treat for her. After we had all finished eating, we walked down the hall and stopped to take this picture of Bama with the girls. You can see Mia was not very happy. By this point, she was so tired because it was coming up on her regular nap time, and we had woken her up early.

We still didn't leave right away though. In one of the side rooms, they had a great craft room for the kids. They had several stations set up to participate in...frost and decorate cookies, making candy cane ornaments (stringing beads), Rudolph ornaments (glue and art supplies) or Christmas tree ornaments (stickers). Surprising to me, Lily didn't want to frost and eat the cookie; it's probably because several kids were already there. She is really getting into making art projects these days though, so she was very excited to make a Rudolph ornament and a Christmas tree ornament. Here's a picture of her holding up the tree she made to Daddy. She put a couple of ornaments on it and wrote her name at the bottom. She then asked me to write Mia across the top (since Mia couldn't write it herself but the ornament was for them to share according to Lily) and then write Mommy, Daddy and Bama on the back (since we were also there).

Bama made tree ornaments for each girl too. Aren't they cute?

Here's a picture of Lily getting ready to help me glue eyes onto Rudolph's Popsicle stick body. She was very excited about using the glue!

Putting the final touches on Rudolph.

When we got home, we took Liz's idea to get the girls their own little tree where they could play with the ornaments. While Mia napped, Ryan took Lily to a few stores to pick a tree and ornaments. On a quick side note, when Mia woke up, she and I had a great time playing together. It's amazing how much easier it is to just watch one child! Anyway, when Lily and Ryan got home, Lily couldn't wait to tell me about their trip, the tree and all the ornaments; she was SO EXCITED. Ryan brought in the little tree and put it up near ours. Lily then told me about the different ornaments that she picked out all by herself (all of which Ryan made certain where non-breakable)...candy canes, green and red jingle bells, clay figures (Santa, Rudolph, snowman and teddy bear) and little bity presents in an array of colors. They were all very cute, and of course, we have the ornaments made earlier in the day too. Here's a picture of Lily decorating the girls' tree. Ryan and I helped her get ornaments at the top too since she can't reach that high. It takes everything in me to not "straighten out" her tree and just let her hang them wherever she wants!

Ryan also bought a few red bows that we tied onto the baby gate to make it look a little more festive. We had one extra so he put that at the top of Lily's tree since it didn't have any kind of a topper. It's really pretty cute. By this point we were up to the girls' naps, so they went down while Ryan and I cleaned up and made some individual white chocolate blueberry cheesecakes; yum! When Mia woke up, she came out and was playing happily until she noticed the little tree. She immediately started pulling off the ornaments. This is when we realized that ornaments from The Dollar Tree aren't the most sturdy. The little presents unwrap pretty easily. It took some effort to distract her so she didn't take the whole tree apart while Lily slept! When Lily came out she went to her tree too; she also started taking the ornaments down and giving them to me, Ryan and Mia. She would give them all out then collect them back and put them up again. She did this many times for the rest of the evening; I guess she found it fun to decorate the tree again and again! By the end of the evening, 11 of the 12 little presents had been open and subsequently thrown away as they couldn't be rewrapped. Lily didn't mind though; she is thrilled with her tree. The last time she decorated it, I told her it was beautiful. She smiled and said "Yeah it is" with such pride in her voice. She's loving it.

So we entered the Christmas season last night and today with a full plate of Christmas trees, decorating, good food, meeting Santa, art projects and seeing out-of-town family. It's going to be a wonderful season!