Dallas Zoo

Shannon and Tom came in town for NYE.  The only pictures I remembered to take were from when we went to the zoo.  It was such a beautiful day to go to the zoo.

Uncle Tom and Daddy

 

They got so close to this giraffe. 

Tiger in the background

It was an exhausting, but fun day!

Christmas Day

Christmas, as always, was so very fun.  Before we got dressed and ready for church, we opened everything from Santa.

New bedspreads for their new bunkbeds!

Beautiful Gianna and Elia necklaces from daddy.

Elia literally snuggled her piggy bank when she opened it.  Wish it was a clearer picture!



Purple CareBear or "Pepel cah beh" as ELia calls it.




Gianna got a bike basket for her bike.

For Christmas Dinner we had Matt and Sarah over.  Probably the most low key Christmas ever!



What Santa Left!

Santa sure was good to us this year. 



Stockings





Presents



Everything!

Curious about the huge box in the corner?  I'll give you a peek!

A box form Tiffany's!!!

Christmas Eve

Gianna asked for Hello Kitty slippers months ago.  So for Christmas eve, along with matching pjs, the girls got slippers too!


They wear them to bed at night sometimes.  SO cute.



Here Elia is opening her gift from Gianna.  In the left corner you can see Elia's santa board.

And of course, gotta include the anual sitting on the fireplace picture.

What a difference a year, or 2 makes!

The Week Before Christmas

 We had so much fun getting ready for Christmas.  We made cookies, did the advent calendar, made crayons for cousins, drove around our neighborhood looking at lights etc. etc.  The Wednesday before Christmas our library had Santa there, so we got our obligatory picture.  Gianna had to be bribed again, but Elia was super excited about it.

On Christmas Eve I took Gianna and Elia out separately to buy gifts for each other.  Gianna picked out some hair clips for Elia and Elia picked out a Snowman tray.  Elia has her own Santa tray, which she called her Santa board and so when she saw the Snowman tray she got really excited that she could give her sister a Snowman board.

All wrapped!





Trying out all the toys first.  She was really excited to bring her own purse with money in it.

 This is what our tree looked like Christmas Eve- this isn't even Santa's gifts!

Elia Builds

Elia loves to line things up.  She will take apart all of her puzzles and line them up.  She calls it making a circle. 

One night, she took all of the board books from the playroom and set them up in her room.  She was hilarious, running back and forth from room to room for each book.  And she was so proud of herself for her creation.  Love that girl.

Haircut

I took the girls (Elia's first time!!) to get their haircut.  They were both champs through the whole thing.  Gianna got a bob and Elia just got all her dead ends cut off.  When I texted pictures to Chris, my caption was, could they get more beautiful?

You'll see the after in the next few posts!

1/2 Days are the best!

Chris took a half day this week so we headed over to the Galleria to see Santa.  All day Gianna insisted she did not want to sit on his lap.  Even after we showed her Santa's picture setup and all the cool decorations, she still said she didn't want to do it.  But Elia really wanted to, so we bribed Gianna with candy.  She did very well, but I didn't want to fork over the $22 for ONE picture, so they just sat on his lap and chatted with him.  He was a great Santa- he asked the girls if they were helping pick up their toys and clothes and if they were being sweet to each other AND he said that if they are extra good he will bring them some surprises.  Gianna has been talking about that part of the visit ever since.  I think next year we will get a real picture.  We probably spent another hour walking around the mall and we took a few pictures in front of the Chrismas trees- where we finally took a decent enough one to send one out in the mail!  Score for us.

When Elia first walked close to the railing, she reached her hand out very cautiously to touch the glass to make sure she wouldnt fall through!  They could have stared at the ice skaters for a VERY long time.

We thought about taking them skating, but decided to wait till next year!

Those little dresses they are wearing are from one of my 2nd grader's moms- made especially for them!  So cute.  As we were leaving the mall, Gianna told us that "this place is awesome."  Haha!

A Quick Christmas Craft

Our computer is officially broken, so I can only blog from Chris' computer.  So blogging will be less than usual, sorry!
Earlier this week, the girls and I made crayons for cousin's Christmas gifts.  I found this idea on pinterest.  I bought a gingerbread mold at walmart and so the girls had fun sorting all of our broken crayons by color.  Taking the papers off the crayons was the most labor intensive part of the process (I suggest having another adult friend to help you.  And use a safety pin or needle to score the paper and then peel.).  It was really fun to take the mold out of the oven and see all of the wax melted together!  Gianna did not want to "give" them up as she wanted to color with them all day long.  I hope that Phoebe, Colin and Austin enjoy!

Getting Ready for Christmas

The tree is up with all the trimmings and it looks FABulous!  

We also took around 100 pictures for our Christmas card and maybe we have one worth sending out.  Here are some of the more hilarious ones!

This one is my fave!

Last year's were equally hilarious!

New Bunk Beds!

After Thanksgiving, Chris and I left the girls in St. Louis for a few days so we could make it to Aaron and Mary's wedding festivities on time.  Then Tuesday I shadowed the teacher I am going to work for in January.  On Wednesday I met my mom in Joplin (a 6 hour drive from Dallas) to pick the girls up.  I was so happy to see them!!  We got back in to Dallas on Thursday.  One thing we did while we were kid-less was set up their new bunk beds.  When we got home on Thursday afternoon, they would not come out of their room they were so excited about them.  And they LOVE to go to bed, which I am sure will wear off soon.