First Family Snowshoe

On Presidents' Day we went for a little family snowshoe, our first time snowshoeing all together! We bought Eliana some used children's snowshoes and have been looking forward to teaching her how to use them and getting out into the snow as a family. She wasn't sure about walking in the deep snow at first, but we let her walk along a packed down trail and she was much more excited about it then. She did a great job!

Along our walk, Eliana was very excited to find a bug in the snow and she wanted it to play with her. We tried to convince her that bugs don't really like to play with people, but she wouldn't hear of it and carried the poor thing around for a while! We finally convinced her to put it back in the snow and let it go find some food and shelter.

Houseguests

We have 3 new guests staying at our house these days:

They don't require much from us and are happy to stay outdoors. =D Leif and Ellie had a great time building them on Monday, his first day of vacation from work! We're glad to have him home!

Playing with sharp objects...

I don't know why icecicles are co cool, but they are! Even Ellie thinks so...

Snowball!

A little Ellie fix for all of you who have neither her nor snow at your house. =D

Sledding...

As usual, the Christmas decorations went up the day after Thanksgiving. Our house is now full of Christmas cheer! Eliana was SO excited about decorating the tree that she could barely wait for me to assemble it. Yes, we are firm believers in the fake tree, so there is some assembly required.

To help Ellie pass the time until she could help with the decorating, (or to get her out of my hair, I'm not sure which) Leif took Ellie to the hill in the subdivision to go sledding. I already posted pictures of her little look of terror (which crack me up every time I see them!), so I figured I ought to do a post with all the cute pictures from their sledding fun as well...

It gets dark pretty early here these days, so they didn't have much time to sled before the sun went down, but they had a great time all the same!! As they drove past the house, Ellie spotted the bare, lit Christmas tree in the window and declared with a sigh, "Wow! Mommy made it so beautiful!" That was pretty sweet to hear. =D