New Year's Eve 2012

We spent New Year's Eve in Weston, MO at the Benner House Bed & Breakfast.  The girls rang in the new year with Granny and Papa in Chula, MO.  It was a beautiful outside with big snowflakes falling all day long.  We were there with the Baileys, Vroomans, and Walter.  We had a great time doing a white elephant gift exchange and sharing memories of past New Year's Eves.  We've spent a lot of them together.  I should really make a list sometime.  I probably couldn't remember all of them, but the blog keeps track of the last few for me: 2011, 2010, and 2009.

 

The guys: leprechaun, normal, cowboy, and wolfman.  Wolfman got his shirt because of some Amazon reviews.

Some unfortunate headgear at O'Malleys.

Someone stole my camera and took pictures of random things around the B&B.  He didn't know he would leave behind evidence.  Caught!

Christmas in Jeff City

We went to Jeff City the weekend after Christmas to open presents with Steve's side of the family.  Hannah was very excited to give her cousin Ainslyn presents...and couldn't wait to help her open them and play with them!  Olive also joined in coloring on Ainslyn's new princess ColorWonder sheets.

  

One of Hannah's favorite presents from Ainslyn was a Hungry Doggies game.


The girls got so many presents from Santa, grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts/uncles, and extended family that it took us quite a while to find a place for everything!  We have very generous families and they got some really cool toys.   Thank you!!

Parent/Teacher Conferences

I finally got to be the parent at parent/teacher conferences!  Preschool conferences were before winter break.  It was so much fun to hear about the girls through their teachers' eyes.  Hannah's teacher said she is a role model student, always follows directions, and is interested in everything that they do at school.  Olive's teacher said she is the most verbal one in the class, volunteers and wants to go first for everything, and she's the class leader.  Besides evaluating language, gross motor, fine motor, and social skills, their teachers also wrote down some favorites.

Hannah

• favorite time of the day: recess
• outside I like to: "Play with toys.  I like the dump truck toys."
• one of my favorite projects was: making Christmas trees
• favorite work space: house area
• favorite special: chapel, Spanish
• what I like best about circle time: "I like reading books"

Olive

• favorite time of the day: group times- songs, teacher directed activities
• outside I like to: do the slide and playhouse
• one of my favorite projects was: paper bag owl, felt board activities
• favorite work space: kitchen, dress-up area
• favorite special: music

Christmas Eve and Morning

This was the first Christmas Eve and Christmas Day that we were not in Chillicothe.  It was fun to do some new traditions with just our little family.  The girls went to their first Christmas Eve service...  and no one got burned on the candles! :)  However right after everyone finished singing Silent Night, Olive shouted, "Belly B!"  She is obsessed with belly buttons.  It was a little longer service than I expected, but very kid-friendly.  They passed out coloring sheets and crayons at the door and there was a craft time and hot cocoa afterwards.  At the end of the service they called the kids onstage to ring bells.  Steve and I are on the shy side, so we are always amazed when Hannah is outgoing and fearless.  Hannah marched right up on stage and took her bell-ringing responsibilities very seriously. 

 

Christmas morning everyone slept-in.  Except me- I was the first one up.  When we finally went downstairs, Hannah was very methodical about opening up presents.  She would carefully unwrap each gift and then play with it for five minutes before moving on to the next present.  It was very different from last year.  I was afraid Santa didn't have that many presents, but the way she did unwrapped it took over an hour!  All of the presents were for both girls to share, so Hannah just opened them all.  Olive mostly played off to the side with the pretend kitchen and only joined us when something interested her.  Her favorite gifts were sparkly silver Puma sneakers and some Tinkerbell lip gloss.  

 

It took awhile to convince Hannah to open up more presents after these monster feet:

 

Hannah's favorite presents were the stomp rocket, monster feet, and remote control helicopter.  We had chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast and then I remembered the stockings!

Despite my sinus infection, it was a great Christmas.  The aftermath:
 

Christmas in Chillicothe

The girls didn't have preschool on the Friday before Christmas, but Steve and I both had to work.  Grandma and Grandpa braved the snow on Thursday night to pick up the girls and take them to Chillicothe.  Grandma went craft-crazy and did about 10 Pinterest projects with the girls on Friday.  One of their favorites was making hand lotion, that they gave to their great-grandmas.  Their other grandma/great-grandma gift was snowflake ornaments.  Olive stuck on a few decorations, but Hannah mainly did them all.  She loves crafts! 

Some of the decorations ended up on her face, too.  She spent most of the weekend pretending she was Rudolph.

 

 We went to Great-grandpa's house for Meneely Christmas.  Here is Olive with her Great-aunt Sarah.

And here are both girls playing with Great-grandpa.  We had an epic game of Diminishing Words with all the cousins and even Aunt Sarah and Uncle Dennis.  I love playing any game, but especially any game with Uncle Dennis. 

Sunday morning we opened gifts at my parents' house.  It started with Hannah giving Grandma our present and saying, "Open up your present, Grandma.  It's a Garmin!"  That girl can not keep a secret.  This is probably the only present that Olive unwrapped.  She was more interested in chasing Stan the Cat around and yelling "Mao!  Mao!" in his face.  She has a thing for Communist China.

 And then I pretty much stopped taking pictures.  Sunday evening we visited Steve's uncle/aunt/cousins since we were going to miss the official Kerr Christmas on December 26th.  Steve is out of vacation time since it is a new job and he has taken so many days already with the Maine trip, MR 340, and Colorado trip.  We had another great family game at his aunt and uncle's house- this time it was Wits and Wagers.  We spent the night at Steve's parents because they were taking care of Ainslyn for the weekend.  The girls got some fun cousin time and we saw Great-grandma Alice on Monday.  With the back of the car loaded completely loaded to the ceiling, we headed home on Christmas Eve.

Christmas Decorations

Last year I made the mistake of not taking a picture of Hannah's tree...not this year!  She picked out the ornaments at Target and decorated it all herself.  Love it.

 

Olive uses this as her tree/nightlight.  She wasn't really into decorating a tree, but next year I think she'll want one like Hannah's.

One of the best parts about preschool- crafts!  The girls made several Christmas ornaments and pictures for us.  Here are two of my favorites.  This is Olive's reindeer.
 

This is Hannah and Nature Santa (frame designed by Hannah).  He came to preschool as an in-house field trip from a nature center.  She is holding a bird feeder (cheerios on a string) that she made with Santa.  She was very excited about meeting him and talked about it the whole week before he visited.  So sweet.
 

Gingerbread Houses

Christmas crafts!  I picked up these gingerbread kits because the girls love stickers.  Holiday-themed crafts are right up Hannah's alley.  I wasn't sure about Olive.  I had to peel the back off for her, but she liked sticking them on.  They were both were very focused crafters.

the finished products:

Even better than foam gingerbread houses are real ones!  No way would I attempt making them on my own.  We got lucky and the girls' preschool hosted a gingerbread-house-making party.  This was one of three tables set up with goodies.

 

Even with pre-cut house pieces, it was a little daunting.  Our houses looked pretty terrible and constantly fell apart, but we had a great time!  There was Christmas music playing, the girls were eating candy and saying hi to their friends and teachers.  I overhead one of the teachers saying "It doesn't get any better than this- seeing kids and their parents working on something together and having fun."  I agree.  Awesome Christmas memory.  And I should have taken pictures of some of the other houses because they were amazing!  

 

 

Olive the Other Reindeer

On "Reindeer Day" at preschool this year:
 

Last year:


When did Baby O turn into little girl Olive?

Snow Day!

Yesterday was our first snowfall of the season and also our first snow day from school!  We found out at 6:50 that school was canceled and at 6:51 Hannah was begging to go out and play in the snow.  It was still dark!  I held her off until after breakfast.  She couldn't wait to get on all her gear that we didn't use much last year.  She put it all on herself.  Olive was another story.  She was eager to put on her snow clothes because that's what Hannah was doing.  When it came to actually being outside, she wasn't pleased.

Olive (immediately after walking outside):  Up!

me (picking her up):  Do you want to sit on the sled and I pull you?

Olive: No.

me: Do you want to play on the deck?

Olive: No.

me: Look at Hannah playing!  Do you want to get down and play with Hannah?

Olive: No.

Olive did stand in snow for a little bit.  She liked batting the snow off the bushes, and she finally walked around a little on the driveway where the snow wasn't as deep.  It was very different than Hannah at her age.  Maybe she'll grow into a snow-lover!

 

 

 

 

Christmas Cookies

I'm not much of a dessert person.  I don't hate them or anything.  But if I had to choose between chocolate or pasta, I'd choose pasta.  However, my girls (and Steve) love sweet treats, so I bravely tried to make Christmas sugar cookies.  Have I mentioned I also don't bake?  They didn't seem to mind my lack of experience.  They were in love with the rolling pin and the sprinkles.