Christmas Day and the Day After at our house ....

.... was all about opening gifts that included fairies .....

.... and Go Go Walking Pups ....

.... and experiencing first hand that Christmas Wishes ....

.... DO come true!!!

The Christmas weekend was all about spending time with the McLain side of our family .....

.... and with the Rupprecht side of our family.

And even though I didn't get any photos of the girls with their Grandpa or their Grandmas (I'm really bummed about that), I did take some pictures of the SUPER CUTE owl bags from Grandma Della (love love LOVE these) ....

.... of the darling handmade finger puppets that happily keep 10 little fingers very busy ....

..... and of these characters, Sing-A-Ma-Jings, that make noises that are even funnier than how they look, and even harmonize when played together!!

It was a great Christmas; and now the cleaning, sorting and organizing has begun (does that really ever end?) ..... as well as preparations for New Years Eve!!

Christmas Eve at our house ....

..... was all about watching video messages from Santa .....

.... rudolph art....

..... big smiles ....

..... opening gifts .....

..... leapsters .....

.... zhu zhu stuff ....

.... lite brites .....

..... and sprinkling Magic Reindeer Food for Santa's reindeer on the snow around our house!!

It was a great night and the start to a super fun holiday weekend .....

Merry Christmas!!

Hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday weekend!!

We sure are : )

Jeremi

We are feeling the holiday spirit ....

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Tree By Two Four-Year Olds ~

The first week Ella and Zoe redecorated our tree many, many times.

The second week they created homemade paper ornaments with crayons -- and hung them all at their level.

Then they added 2 pink ribbon and a half-finished

My Little Pony color sheet.

The jumbo-size glittery ornaments they made at preschool have been awesome, they totally hide the thinning parts of our tree where the needles are starting to fall off.

My favorite is the hand-drawn cat with a red Rudolph nose --

it just keeps getting more festive!!!

I never know what new surprises might be hiding in the tree or under it ....

The only thing that has stayed consistent is the tree's name --

it still is Lily.

I love it all. I have had no pressure with decorating this year and getting everything just right. It really is the best.

Tree By Two Four-Year Olds -- Love it!!

I knew ....

.... Mary and Baby Jesus were the starring roles ....

.... and of course the Angel was too.

But I had no idea how important the sheep were ....

.... until Ella and Zoe performed

in their first Christmas Pageant this past Sunday.

I also did not know Ella was disappointed in the sheep costume until she told me she thought it would be more 'fluffy', and that she thought she'd have hooves.

But I did know Zoe LOVED wearing her sheep costume so much that she wore it all evening after the dress-rehearsal last Friday.

I also did not know how tight the sheep ears headband was until Zoe said to me (two hours into wearing the ears) 'mommy, it hurts to be a sheep.'.

And I did not know Ella really, really wanted to be an angel until she told me; but was thankful she was okay with my explanation that the angels were played by older girls.

I also did not know that one of the angels was the girls' age until the morning of the program. It took a while for Ella to move on from that.

But having Grama Dianne, Grampa Lindy and Auntie Jen over ....

..... totally made everything 100% happy.

So happy that Zoe wanted her own picture of herself with Grampa and her little blue seal ....

.... and I loved spending extra time with my sister : )

And this just makes me laugh:

Since being in the program the girls have been acting out the Baby Jesus story a lot. This is what I overheard Ella say to Zoe yesterday: 'But Zoe, I don't want to be Joseph again. He doesn't do anything.'.