Christmas Morning

Preparing for Christmas morning this year was so fun!!  This was the first year that Ainsley was able to anticipate Christmas and so that made the excitement in the morning all that much more fun!  Both of them were just so excited that it made me feel like a kid again.  We stayed at our house, which also made things more relaxing.  I loved getting to play Santa on Christmas Eve and set everything up.  George might say that I got a little snippy at times trying to get everything 'just right'... so note to self, next year I need to enjoy a glass of wine.  :)

Our stockings hung on the bookcase in the playroom with care.... We had to move everything out of the living room because our floor flooded, but more on that in another post.  Ainsley has a groovy girl peeking out of her stocking - which is what she asked for from santa - and Bailey has a toy plane.

We opened stockings first and again, I was impressed at how much Bailey enjoyed actually opening the presents.  I was also impressed at how fast he was able to open each one.

Sweet Ainsley was so excited to get this ballerina necklace in her stocking but I don't think it even lasted a week.  The stretchy ones don't seem to last long in our house.  Still, her excited face is priceless.

 

Bailey's favorite present was by far this toy shopping cart.  We didn't wrap it but just put it beside the tree with a bow on the handle and presents in the cart.  Every time he opened something new he would put it in the cart and then wave good-bye to us and wheel the cart out of the room!  Over and over and over again.  It was so funny!

 

Ainsley favorite present were these little princess dolls that come with clothes and accessories.  She has collected several of these but for Christmas she got Belle and Ariel.  It is amazing to me how much time she plays with these little dolls. 

Ainsley was especially appreciative of all of her gifts this year, giving big bear hugs and saying things like "thank you! thank you!  I never knew I was going to get this before!  I love it!!"  And Bailey would stand up and clap and squeal saying "Yay!! Yay!!"  He gave the best smiles but of course was too fast for me to catch.  Still it warmed my heart to hear and see them so excited about their gifts.

Christmas morning snuggles!!!  We love you kids!

Light Show

Mozark's, the coffee place by our house, has an amazing light show every December.  It is awesome to watch on a chilly night with hot chocolate.  When my family was visiting for Christmas we all went one evening.  I loved watching Ainsley and Bailey's awe-struck faces while they were watching the lights flash... and I love that my little brother and Mom got these great pictures of it all.

Sweater Boy

It has been a bit chillier here lately - finally starting to feel like the beginning of winter - so I took the opportunity to dress Bailey in this sweet sweater outfit that I bought him last year.  It was clearly too short but since I never gave him the chance to wear it last year, I had to give it a go this year at least once!  George thinks he looks Norwegian but I think he's as cute as can be!!

Ainsley's Day

Tuesday mornings, Bailey is in school and Ainsley and I get sweet one-on-one time.  Of course some weeks, these mornings get filled up with mommy errands or jobs around the house, but this week was Ainsley's special date day.  We started off the day with donuts at Starbucks.  Happy little one!  I love that scrunchy face smile below!

Then off to a much needed haircut.  The last time I took Bailey to get his haircut, it dawned on me that Ainsley always tags along to his appointments but never actually gets her hair cut.  So it was probably way overdue!  Oops.  Anyway, her request was to keep it long like Rapunzel's, so we only chopped off 2 inches to even it out and keep it healthy.

Then I took her to get her first ever professional manicure/pedicure!  A treat for both of us!  :)  She was so precious and inquisitive about the whole process and chatted with the lady doing her nails the whole time!  She chose aqua sparkles for her fingers and bright orange for her toes!

I cherish days like this where I just get to slow things down and enjoy the little person that Ainsley is.  Days like this make me vow to be more patient and kind all the time.  And they make me feel so, so blessed to have a daughter!!  Bailey and I will have fun date days too, but I doubt they will include getting our nails done!  :)

After nails, we grabbed lunch and went to pick up Bailey from school.  But the fun wasn't over because instead of having quiet room time while Bailey was napping, Ainsley and I snuggled up on the couch and watched a movie and ate apple and orange slices.  Awww!  Such a fun day!!

Grammy/Harold Christmas

The week before Christmas, George's mom and Harold came and stayed with us for a few days.  It was such a treat and we soaked up every minute with them that we could!  As a special surprise, Pam gave George a scrapbook that she had been working on for the past several months.  It contained all the pictures, newspaper clips, letters, and mementos that she had collected during his high school glory days.  It was awesome!!  I was so impressed at all the things that Pam had saved from back then and that she had taken the time to arrange it all in such a special, meaningful way.  It was neat to watch them reliving moments while going through the book together and to see how proud Pam is of all George's accomplishments.  I know this is going to be something that George and I treasure and I hope that someday I am able to do something just as special for our kiddos.

Then the next morning, we woke up and had Christmas morning with Gammy and Harold.  Bailey surprised and cracked us all up with how much he enjoyed opening presents.  He was the first one to spot them all on the table in the morning and just stood there saying "wow, whoa, whoa!"  Then when we started opening things, his reactions were priceless!  He got so over-the-top excited about everything, including socks!  It was hilarious and even prompted me to buy him a few extra little things to open Christmas morning.  I wasn't planning on him enjoying the process so much but I loved watching him delight in every moment.  His favorite was this little car that plays music and makes noise.

Ainsley was also excited about the gifts but in a more subdued, I've-been-through-all-this-before sort of way.  She loved her baby doll and dolls that you can change their clothes.  This girl is SO into fashion, which makes me a little nervous, esp. since this mom is not very stylish.

And sadly, like always, there were so many sweet moments and activities during this visit that I just failed to get on camera.  One of the sweetest was Pam making a doll house for Ainsley's new doll out of a cardboard box and a bunch of random craft supplies.  Ainsley was enamored with the whole process of construction and Pam was awesome at adding in all of Ainsley's requests.... like, wanting the dollhouse to have a door that was big enough for her and one for her doll, and making an attic for all the clothes to go in, and wanting stairs instead of a ladder for the upstairs bedroom.  Pam is a wizard and so creative and although she didn't get quite finished, Ainsley is still playing with her sweet cardboard doll house, several weeks later!

Snuggle Bug

When he wants to be, Bailey can be so sweet and snuggly.  George and I just eat these moments up because they never last long enough!

"Jesus" Tree

 In an effort to teach Ainsley (and refocus all of us) that Christmas is really about the celebration of the birth of Jesus, we started the tradition of the Jesse Tree (or Jesus Tree, as she called it) this year.  The Jesse Tree traces the spiritual family tree of Jesus Christ and each night during December we read a different bible story, each of which lead up to Christ's birth.  The idea of the Jesse Tree comes from Isaiah 11: "There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots."  Jesse was the father of David, who became a great King and it was in his line that Jesus was born thousands of years later fulfilling God's prophecies.  We added an ornament symbol of each story on the tree every night after the bible reading.  This year we used Ainsley's Jesus Storybook bible so that the stories were more on her level but I'm hopeful in future years this tradition transitions and grows as our family matures.

In preparing these ornaments, I had grand visions of all the quality family time that was going to take place as a result of this... but once we started I had to quickly lower my expectations to more realistic levels.  We tried to get through the story as a family the first night but Bailey's attention span wasn't long enough and ended up causing more trouble than good, so we ended up just reading the stories with Ainsley after Bailey was in bed.  This worked well and I was proud of how thoughtful and inquisitive Ainsley was about most of the stories.  I was also proud that we we able to keep it up the whole month, only skipping and having to double up a few times.

So as not to misled anyone into thinking that "we've got it all together", I will admit that after going over and over the story of Jesus' birth in numerous forms (Jesse Tree readings, Christmas story books, advent calendar, songs, plays, nativities, coloring pages, and on and on) I caught Ainsley playing with the nativity set saying, "Here's where the wise men and the shepherds go and they are coming to visit baby Jesus and Joseph and Mary-Weather."  What?!  Oh, you mean Merryweather, the fairy from Sleeping Beauty!  Ha!  Made me laugh so hard.  Then we worked the rest of the month to correct her. Sigh.  What can you do.