Christmas!

We had a wonderful Christmas! It seems to just get better every year! On Christmas Eve, we had Danielle, Jeff and all 3 Grandparents over for a little get together. Nothing fancy. We made gingerbread houses (I found a recipe for gingerbread cookies that works great for houses and smells great, but tastes like cardboard! We had a lot of fun decorating the houses. Beth tried to make her roof a bit too heavy, so we ended up having to support it with toothpicks. Nora was really interested in it this year. She had more plans than just sticking candy onto the house. She wanted to make windows, doors and walkways.

Here is my gingerbread house. Since Andy was helping Nora and Danielle was helping Beth, I had the opportunity to take my time and have some fun! 

Once the houses were made, we started opening gifts. This was, of course, a favorite part of the kids day. As always, our family was very generous! The girls got some dress up clothes - a doctor set and a hairdresser set. it was pretty funny to watch them swap costumes over and over again and play!

 

 They also got an amazing wooden dollhouse. The kids love coming up with stories and playing with the dollhouse, and I'm sure it will get plenty of use over the years!

Once the kids were in bed, Andy and I brought all the gifts we got them upstairs! Then, it was off to bed for us to hopefully get some sleep before the kids woke in the morning!

 I ended up waking up before the kids, which was really nice and will likely be the last year for the "late" morning. I was able to drink a cup of tea and get some cinnamon rolls into the oven before the girls woke up. They were kinda groggy coming out, but it didn't take long for them to become more excited!

The big gift to the girls from us was a trampoline. We didn't want to bring it upstairs and potentially damage the floor, so we put a big bow on it and had the kids go downstairs to find it after they had opened the rest of their gifts. Both girls were excited to have a trampoline at home, showing off their bouncing skills immediately (and hanging upside down on it!).


 

We got the girls both a fairy dress. dress, wings and wand. They are really cute and the girls put them on and run around pretending they are superheros, fairies, butterflies, wizards or princesses.