Christmas Day

It was a big day for the girls on Christmas Day. They were exhausted from playing with their cousins on Christmas Eve, so Mommy and Daddy had to wake up Jillian and Bridget from their sound sleep at 7:00 am. It took a while to rouse them, but they eventually staggered out to the tree. Jillian was thrilled to see the new presents, stuffed stockings and missing cookies and milk. Then, she got down to business, opening up a present for Santa and finding a Unicorn DreamLite ... she was beaming and didn't want to put it down. Bridget needed a little help from Mommy to open presents since she was still sleepy, but once she got the Little People Princess Castle, she was also very excited and wanted to play with it right away.

Our next stop was Cindy and Scott's house, for a Christmas Day celebration with the Stephenson and Paul families. Mommy and Daddy filled up on coffee with Bailey's Irish Creme and some breakfast food, while the girls played around with Lindsey and McKenna. During present opening, Jillian would end up getting a Leapster Explorer gamepad from Cindy and Scott that we would soon find out would become her obsession in the days to come ... it rarely left her hands.

The final stop was at Grannie and Papa Woodruff's house for the gathering with cousins Cale, Ty, Brock, Ainsley and Tierney. Jillian and Bridget did a pretty good of handing out presents to everyone, with Daddy helping with the names, though Bridget decided that tossing or dropping presents was good enough. While opening presents, Bridget noticed that Jillian was receiving a couple new babies (Baby Belle and Baby Tiana), at which point she completely lost it, wailing "I want a baby!!!" over and over, with plenty of tears to go along. She got over it eventually, after everyone had a good chuckle watching the drama.

Christmas Eve

It was quite the wild night with all the Peterson cousins on Christmas Eve. We hosted the dinner at our house, and Mommy made a lot of great food. The kids all chowed down quickly so they could get back to playing. After everyone had their fill, we headed for the Christmas Eve service at Grace Lutheran. Jillian and Bridget made it a little while before getting too noisy, and then Daddy had to take them to the nursery ... they were followed close behind by Cousins Andy and Karlie. We did bring them back for the candle lighting, and Jillian was thrilled to have her own candle to hold.

We returned to our house for presents, and the kids were ready to go. It actually seemed a little more subdued compared to last year, but the kids still went through opening presents in record time. Bridget's first present was a Dora doll, and after opening it, we had a hard time getting her to stop playing with it so she could open her other presents. All of the cousins received new pajamas from Auntie Sheryl. This photo shows them posing together on the new sofa.

Christmas Photo

It took many attempts by Daddy and Grannie, but we finally managed to snag the annual Christmas photo of the girls. Jillian and Bridget were all dressed up in their Christmas dresses for Jillian's preschool program, and they did a good job of holding still and smiling for the camera(s).

Christmas Cookies

Mommy has been very busy getting ready for Christmas, and the girls have been right there to help her out. When Mommy spent the evening making Christmas cookies, Jillian and Bridget got up to the counter and gave a hand. Their preferred activity was to put sprinkles on the cookies ... and to eat them after they were baked, of course!

The Christmas Tree

Yes, this is a very late post. Daddy has not been keeping up lately (for the past year or so). And sadly, he also forgot to bring his cameras with him to the tree farm, so there are no photos for our trip to the Miller's this year. Anyways, here are some photos of the girls decorating the Christmas tree.

As is the tradition in our house, Jillian put the star on top of the tree after all of the lights and ornaments had been hung. Jillian knows this is her responsibility, and she always looks forward to it. We got lucky with the height of the tree, since the star barely fit under the ceiling.

Bridget was also a very good helper with the ornaments this year. Only a couple ornaments got broken this time. Bridget stayed busy, putting an ornament on the tree and then going back to Mommy for more. She's actually done pretty good leaving the ornaments on the tree this year. It helps that she has a big sister who is always there to remind her of what to do.

Christmas Program

Today was Jillian's pre-school Christmas program.  They did 4 songs for the audience.  This one was about a candy cane.  Jillian did a super job all during the performance.  It's amazing that they get all those 4 year old children to stand still in front of an audience.  After the program she couldn't wait to see Adam and open the present from the teachers.  Afterwards Adam and Jillian ran all over and enjoyed the cookies they had.



Close to Christmas

Jillian has been talking about making a gingerbread house since they made a little one in pre-school.  She was thrilled to make this one.  She let me decorate one side of the roof but she wanted to do the rest.  At first she was putting the candies on in neat rows but that took too long so it was handfuls later.  She handled the icing pretty well too.  I did add the icicles.


Then after naps it was on to the girls basketball game.  It was great as Rielee was there.  They all played with dolls most of the time.  After the game Jillian and Bridget got to run the floor with Rielee which is great exercise before the car ride home.  They are getting so excited for Christmas.

Christmas pictures

All I wanted was a cute picture of Bridget in a Santa hat.  And this is the drama from a 2 year old.  First she didn't want to put on the hat.  I did finally get a picture but it wasn't easy.  Jillian was much easier!



Tree Farm

The girls got to go to the Christmas Tree Farm to help us pick out a Christmas tree.  Jillian didn't seem to like any I found but we finally settled on a good tree.  (That's Jillian's stuffed dog peeking out from her coat. It needed to keep warm.)

Jillian's job was to push the tree over to help Papa.  Then after Papa got the tree set up at home, Bridget and mostly Jillian helped decorate the tree.  Jillian was delighted to unwrap each ornament to see what it was and I tried to tell her the story behind each one.  Many of the ornaments were from my former students and Jillian still doesn't seem to make that association.  Bridget would carry around one ornament for a long time, play with it, and finally put it on the tree.

They didn't have naps so they slept the whole way to White Salmon for the boys basketball game-boys won.  I set up a blanket in the corner and corralled them there, so they played with toys the whole time.  It worked better than the bleachers.



Beach Trip

We headed to Ilwaco Thursday for the girls basketball game.  Rielee was there so they had a lot of fun playing.  Every toy managed to fall below the bleachers so they had fun running underneath to retrieve them.  Then it was on to the cabin in Ocean Park.  It was late, so after snacks the girls crashed.  They slept in a little and upon awakening it was on to playing with the toys.  First Jillian put together a puzzle.  Then Bridget did her best to put it together too.

It was funny because they played a lot with the trucks, scooping up the poker chips and moving them around.  Then they explored all over, going upstairs and making beds in the closet, and of course, jumping from bed to bed.  There are 4 twin beds lined up on one wall.  Just keeping up with their boy cousins who did that every time.

Jillian insisted that she did not like blueberry pancakes which are a tradition at the beach.  But I made blueberry pancakes for breakfast and she ate them and said they were good???
For lunch we went to the Full Circle Cafe.  They were both very good but Bridget wouldn't stop talking or singing and she has a loud voice.  Then when she had food it was much better.
After a long nap it was time to head to another basketball game-the boys game.  We stopped at McDonald's for dinner and they had a big play area.  Jillian was a little apprehensive at first, telling me to watch for her in the windows in case she couldn't find her way out.  She only went a little way at first but then got braver and went to the top and came down the long slide.
They were good at the game but no Rielee.  They again kept dropping toys and the JV boys would go under the bleachers and pick them up and I think they thought that was the game.  We took home some tired girls.


Christmas Parade

We picked up Jillian, since Bridget was napping, and headed for the Christmas Parade in Longview.  We saw Auna and Aunt Laury there so watched with them.  It was a little rainy so Auna held the umbrella for Jillian for awhile until they started throwing candy from the parade and Jillian moved closer to the action.  At first she was bringing the candy to me to put in my pocket.  Then a nice lady gave her a plastic sack to use, and she was thrilled whenever someone came along and dropped candy in her sack.  We watched for a long time before the Castle Rock float came by with the Castle Rock volleyball team on it.  It was a really long parade and finally Jillian said she was cold and wanted to go home.  That was fine because we couldn't even see the end of the parade down the street so she missed Santa.  She even got two stuffed animals and I think she wanted to take her loot home.  She was excited when she got home and saw that Mommy and Daddy had put up the Christmas tree, so she was eager to start decorating.