Christmas in Roundup

We went to Roundup to have an early Christmas on the 21st. It was good to spend time with family and Eliana had a great time playing with some of her new gifts! Thanks Grammee and Grandad and Grandpa and Gayle and Eric for accommodating our schedule and celebrating early with us this year!

The Little Artist

This summer I got an easel for Eliana at a garage sale. I put it in her room and gave her chalk to use on it. She had fun with it, but it got a little problematic when her friends came over and thought the chalk belonged on the walls instead of the easel. Then Ellie thought the chalk belonged on the wall and we had to put the chalk up!

In a moment of cleaning out her room one day I decided to move the easel downstairs to the craft room since she wasn't really using it in her room. That turned out to be a wonderful thing! Because the craft room is in the unfinished part of our house, I'm not too worried about the concrete walls or carpet remnant flooring. So I let her paint down there. And you know what? SHE LOVES IT! She will paint for an hour! And she tells me in great detail all of the things she's painting. It's great!

Gingerbread Fun!

A couple weeks ago Eliana and I put together a gingerbread kit as part of our December activities. I spread a line of frosting, and Ellie would put the candy on. Well, the candy she hadn't already eaten!

Eventually, we did get the whole house decorated. It was a lot of fun! Ellie was very proud of her decorated house.

Here she's pointing at all the decorations on the house, but when I asked her what it was a picture of, she said, "That's Ellie eating a gumball!" Silly girl!

And, of course, the final project. Before we ate it all, that is. It's long gone now.

I think we'll do this again next year, but we'll get our kit at Costco. Their kits were the same price but had way more stuff in them and looked like they tasted better. =D

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Merry Christmas everyone! We have been busy, busy, busy the past few weeks leading up to Christmas and now it is here! It's Christmas Eve and our cards were mailed today, my parents arrived this evening, and we are just getting ready to head to bed so we can wake up in a few hours for CHRISTMAS! We had our traditional crackers, cheese, and sausage dinner with my parents after they arrived tonight and opened a stocking stuffer. There is about a foot of snow on the ground, making it feel very much like a white Christmas, especially with everyone's Christmas lights reflecting off the pristine snow in the dark. With Christmas music playing in the background it finally feels like Christmas is in the air! And I suppose it's good that the feeling has finally arrived, because Christmas IS INDEED HERE!

I am so excited for Christmas this year. My parents are here for Christmas for the first time, which feels really special to me. Eliana is finally old enough to understand some of what is going on and I'm excited to see it all through her eyes. Children are wonderful that way! And I'm excited because I got Leif a gift I think he'll really like and he has no clue what it is! =D That so very rarely happens and it's been killing me not telling him what I got! So, finally, tomorrow he is going to get to open his gift!

I will share our Christmas letter and picture a little later in the week (once it has a chance to arrive in the mail to everyone, since I didn't get it mailed until today!) but I can't help spreading the cheer today, too! So here are a few of the pictures that didn't get mailed out with our Christmas cards... Enjoy!

BRRRRR!

I woke up this morning to a blizzard! There are inches of snow out there and it's still coming down, blowing sideways past the window. I hope it lets up and they plow the roads soon, because I have places to be this afternoon! We are supposed to go Christmas caroling tomorrow evening, and the forecasted high for tomorrow is -3. Brrrrr!

This is much more like the Montana winters we had when we first moved here, but after this fall it's a bit of a shock to the system!

Christmas Stroll 2008

On Saturday evening Leif took Eliana to the Christmas Stroll in downtown Bozeman. There was a big crowd this year...

... and good food ...

... and good music ...

... and good fun ...

I wasn't feeling well, so I stayed home. But when Eliana came home she was so excited to tell me all about the people playing the violins, "just like this!!"... followed by wild imitations of the violin using one arm as the instrument and one arm as the bow. She was so excited by the violins. It was priceless!

Goofballs

The last time Zoe came over for a playdate I tried to get a picture of the two girls sitting on the chair together. They were playing so nicely and giving each other hugs and I thought it would be a great time to get a sweet picture of the two of the together. Boy was I wrong! I asked them to sit on the chair next to each other and this is what I got:

I asked them to sit next to each other and put their arms around each other and this is what I got:

I asked them to smile and say "cheese!" and this is what I got:

These two are the silliest goofballs I've ever met!! So much for a sweet picture of them sitting together, but I think the silly pictures might even be better. I definitely captured them being themselves! (And the eyes closed look is TOTALLY Eliana's "Cheese!" look. I'll have to gather all the pictures I have of her making this face and post them together. It cracks me up!)

Fun with the pop up train

This train has got to be one of the best garage sale finds ever. For $9 Ellie has had no end to the fun with this thing, and it folds up and stores under the couch when we're not using it. It's pretty much the greatest rainy day toy ever.

Where's the love??

Last night I went into Ellie's room before she fell asleep and kissed her on the head and said, "I love you." She looked back at me and replied, "I like you."

It has started already.

These boots were made for walkin'

One day Ellie swiped my boots (my favorite boots, I might add!) and wore the around the house. They're a little big, but sadly not so big that she couldn't walk around just fine in them! Of course, she wouldn't let me get a picture of her, and here she's shutting the door on her pesky mother to get away from the camera, but I still got a shot in. =D And actually, I think the boots are a cute look for her!

Another weird thing I discovered the other day... If I need to I can wear Eliana's socks in a pinch. It's a little weird if you ask me.

Also, I pulled out my high school cheerleading uniform for Ellie to play dress up in and discovered that it's not as big on her as I might have expected. In fact, if I roll the waistband of the skirt once I don't even need to pin it or put a belt on her to keep it up. It fits her just fine.

Hmm.... She's only two and already the size gap between us is closing.

Daily December

This year I am going to do Daily December activities with Eliana. We're going to spend time doing something for the holidays every day, and I'm going to do my best to take pictures and record what we're doing. I made a little Daily December album last month in which to record these memories so that we can look back on the things we did to celebrate Christmas this year.

And wouldn't you know it, but today is December 3 and I haven't yet recorded what we did on the 1st or the 2nd. The good news is that we DID something those days, though! Here's what we did:

December 1 - Drove around the subdivision looking at Christmas lights. It turns out that Eliana is a big fan of decorated houses and calls the houses with lights on them "castles". As in, "WOW! Look at that big castle over there!" It's cute.

December 2 - Eliana and I bought some Christmas books to read this season (including How the Grinch Stole Christmas and S is for Star) and we put up a new little Christmas tree in her room. It doesn't have any ornaments or a star on it yet, but it does have some red garland on it, which she picked out. I hope to use the Christmas tree this year to talk about the symbolism of the different decorations.

And today? Well, we'll have to see what we do today. She has friends coming over this afternoon, so we might bake cookies (in the shape of ginger bread men!) or we might make salt dough ornaments, or we might make cinnamon hard candy (in the shape of ginger bread men!) or we might play in the snow and learn to make snow angels or we might do something entirely different. We'll just have to see how the day goes. =D

About a month ago....

... we went to Zoe's 3rd birthday party. While there Eliana played with Zoe's doctor set. Doesn't she make a cute little doctor?

Ellie's Little House

To keep Eliana occupied while I prepared food for Thanksgiving, I made her a fort in the living room. She liked it quite well and called it her "little house". She spent a good while in there with Kitty and Little Kitty (we are very creative with names in this house!) and some pillows and her juice. She even pretended to sleep for a while, though she only closed her eyes when she saw me coming over. Then she'd close her eyes and make fake snoring sounds and tell me she was sleeping. Silly girl!

November Hike to the M

A little over a week ago Leif took Eliana hiking up to the M. Though we've had a pretty warm fall this year, it has snowed a couple times, so there was snow on the ground when they went up. The view from the M is always great, but it's particularly beautiful when the valley is covered in snow!