Our Christmas

Grace and Lydia had been waiting to give each other the gifts that they bought for one another as long as they've had them. Both girls had carefully selected gifts for their sisters, Mom, Dad and Diesel. Although everyone knew what they were getting by Christmas morning, they were thrilled when they opened their gifts! (Really? You don't expect a 2 yr old or a 4 yr old to keep any secret, do you)?

Grace bought Lydia a princess puzzle. Lydia bought Ella a princess puzzle!

See!! Grace looks surprised even though Lydia told her 1o times a day that she bought her a puzzle.
Santa brought the girls a giant inflatable princess castle!
And left even more gifts inside of it.
Ella got her very first princess doll (that Lydia quickly claimed. Ella hasn't seen her since).
We spent the morning opening gifts and playing with the new toys. We all took needed afternoon naps before playing some more and skyping with family.
Merry Christmas (a couple days late)! We hope you had a great Christmas! We are blessed to have so many family and friends to have celebrated the holidays.

Family Game Night and Fondue

We had another December family game night tonight. Grace & Lydia LOVE to play games. Tonight they chose Princess Yahtzee.

Ella plays on the steps while we play games.
After playing a game, we had chocolate fondue for our dessert/snack. We are definitely not going to win any awards for winning healthiest parents of this month. We had marshmallows, graham crackers, cookies, and peanut butter balls to dip in chocolate.
Ella quit playing on the steps when she saw food. She quickly claimed her own big chair too.
Lydia is in heaven with her chocolate dessert. She doesn't skimp on chocolate at all.
Lots of chocolate makes Lydia a happy toddler.
Ella's favorite food by far is peanut butter balls. She manages to shove the entire ball in her mouth every time. Maybe this will be the month that our 15 month old peanut breaks 20 pounds...

Caught Up.. for Now

Since we have a busy day today, and the girls were awake unusually early this morning, we started our advent activity first thing in the morning. Make Hot Cocoa!! How easy is that?! Especially on a cold Wisconsin morning.

Hot cocoa mix, marshmallows and a candy cane stir stick. Yummy!





While we were crossing things off of our list, I decided to have the girls decorate a cookie to go along with their yummy drinks. So they each chose candy cane cookies and decorated them with orange sprinkles.

The cookies looked nearly identical when they were finished. The girls were having one of those mornings where they LOVED each other and wanted to have everything the same.

I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings! The girls and I have a fun morning planned while Paul goes to work for the last time this year (hopefully).

A Bit of Sugar

We are a little over half way done with our crafting, baking and celebrating Christmas with our monthly advent calendar. It is great to see the girls' faces every morning as they find the ornament that matches the day, get their treat and find out what they would get to do that day. As tempted as I have been to change the activities to something easier on some days, I am holding to the original plan.

Today we had a snowman craft day. We busted out the marshmallows and made some snowmen. Here is Grace's project. She started with 3 snowballs.

Unfortunately, the little snowman kept falling over. So she ate a marshmallow. Then gave him a hat, a pair of HUGE blue eyes and arms.
Next came his nose and mouth.
Finally he got his scarf and buttons.
Grace and her snowman, before she ate him.
A look at Lydia's snowman. This is as far as she got before she couldn't hide her hunger pangs any longer.

There goes his scarf... into Lydia's mouth.
Poor snowman!!
The girls loved their snowman craft AND their snowman snack.

Advent Tree - Day 13 Family Game Night

I'm back to blogging myself after having Paul fill in for a couple days.

It was another fun filled day at the Pedersen house. We had a family game night. We started
the night with the girls favorite game, Hungry, Hungry Hippos. Then we played the CandyLand Castle game. Ella loved putting the game pieces back in the castle. Lydia and Grace were not so pleased by her inability to play the game correctly. Lydia and Grace both won plenty of times before we moved on to the next game.

We finished the night with Princess Yahtzee. Lydia quit midway through the game. (Quite impressive considering that we had already played a lot of Hippos & many games of CandyLand already). As soon as we moved onto the next game, Ella decided that the dice were way cooler than the last game and wanted to be right in the middle. She became Paul's lucky shaker (or not so lucky since he lost to his amazing wife and fantastic daughter).

PETA

Paul has been on vacation since 25 Sept. We started the vacation with a long weekend at the Schuh's in Athelstane. Grace (with some minor help from Grandpa Charlie) caught a Bluegill dinner on Friday after Grandpa (with some help from Paul) split nearly 3 cords of firewood. Charlie and Paul couldn't figure out which one of us was the one whipped like a rented mule.

After getting home and taking an easy Sunday, Paul started work on rebuilding the retaining wall between our lot and our southwest-bound neighbors. It looks good now but we'll see if it lasts. The Spring freeze-thaw cycle could push the wall around.

Then we finished vacation with a trip to the Gtown Fireman Safety Fair and a trip to Jim's Pumpkin Patch. The girls watched a home fire demonstration, Grace jumped in giant inflatable, and they checked out all the displays.

At the pumpkin patch, Grace and Lydia stuck their heads through many silhouette cut-outs of witches, ghouls and ghosts. We also found a couple of great pumpkins for our festivity display.

A Few Random Photos from Labor Day

Now that Lydia is finally sitting up by herself she was able to get in the pool with Grace for the first (and probably only) time this summer. Later that same day when I was moving fall and winter clothes into the closets and putting some summer clothes away for a while, Grace found her winter boots and insisted she wear them.

Say No To Melanoma

Grace has definitely learned the importance of putting sunscreen on every morning before we go outside to play.

When I was feeding Lydia breakfast this morning, I noticed that Grace was unusually quiet. As much as I enjoyed not having Grace distract Lydia with her running around I was suspicious. When I went to the dining room I found Grace applying a very healthy amount of sunscreen to her legs.