Mount Vernon

We went to Mount Vernon with the Rosenlunds during Christmas break. It was a beautiful day for this time of year.

There was camel named Aladdin, and the presidential pardoned turkey was there too.

Clay had fun pushing all the kids around on the stroller. Evan and Rebekah enjoyed hitching a ride with Juliette and Hallie. Emma and Spencer are buddies.

A neat addition was the gingerbread version of Mount Vernon. Check out the detail on the camel and the store house.

Merry Christmas!

You only see this kind of love on Christmas morning. Here are the girls with their gifts from Santa.

Place mats from Gma Murray, magazine and tea set from Aunt Donese, Enchanted game from Aunt Kerry, name plaques from Aunt Allison, purse and bracelets from Uncle Mike & Aunt Heather, chess and matching doll clothes from Grandad & Gma Kris

Christmas Eve

We had a big Christmas Eve dinner by ourselves. Honey-baked ham, divine potatoes, whole wheat rolls, salad, broccoli, and Welch's sparkling grape juice. Everything turned out great. And the best part is that we will have leftovers for a few days so I too can take a break from cooking.

After dinner we made hot cocoa with marshmallows and whip cream and watched The Polar Express before putting the girls to bed. Hot chocolate really makes me sleepy. It works great on the girls too. Straight to bed with no complaining, and they fall asleep quickly.

Lights at the Temple

Clay came home early from work today to clean the carpets. Yay!! With the carpets wet we didn't want the girls running around on it. We thought it would be a great evening to pick up some dinner and drive out to the Washington DC Temple to see all the Christmas Lights. Apparently, so did half our congregation! It was a very crowded, but still worth it.

As we walked around Emma spotted a purple tree. We decided to take everyone's picture infront of their favorite tree.

And then Rebekah picked a new favorite...

Inside the visitors' center was an international Nativity display. I took pictures of some of our favorite ones.

Rebekah fell asleep on the way home, with her gloves Velcro-ed to her hat. Strange. She kind of reminded me of that guy from Fat Albert.

Santa Claus is coming to town...

Santa came to preschool today. He came in shouting "ho, ho, ho" and ringing his bells, sat down on the chair and asked who wanted to come up first. All the kids sat there awe-struck at Santa. But not Rebekah. She raised her hand, jumped up and climbed right in his lap.

Santa asked her name and then handed her one of those plastic candy canes filled with candy cane Hershey kisses. She was SO EXCITED. Soon I saw the other kids were getting very large Santa sugar cookies. Her preschool teacher then told me that they had that candy cane just for her since it was egg-free. I love that they thought of her and did that.

Glamor Shot

Emma and her friend Luci set up a beauty salon in our bathroom. Their first (and only) customer was Rebekah. Here is the finished product. Notice the *bright* pink fingernails?

Publish Post

Gingerbread house

We were invited to a wonderful, chaotic, gingerbread house decorating party at the Weidenhamer's. There were about 5 or 6 families there which adds up to a LOT of kids. It was tons of fun for the girls. Here is the house they created.

Christmas lights

I had heard about a really neat house in our neighborhood. Several people had told me about it. I decided to take the girls over and check it out.

Wow. They have the lights synchronized with their own broadcast radio station. How cool is that? These guys would give my brother, Mitch, a run for his money!

DAR Open House

The DAR Open House is a real treat. It was a cold and rainy night, and traffic was pretty bad. We finally made it about an hour after we had planned. On the way, Rebekah had fallen asleep. Looked like she was doing some dance move...

Our first stop was to visit Santa. There was no line. The girls were a little hesitant, mainly because they had just woken up. Santa invited them over and started talking to them about what they had been up to this year. He was great! They also got a large gift bag with coloring books, candy, and a slinky.

They had many beautifully decorated Christmas Trees. Free hot chocolate, hot cider, and cookies for everyone! They also had door prizes. Rebekah and I both won! We both got a Wedgwood ornament and some fun DAR logo items. I won last year too.

Upstairs they have a cool hands-on area for the kids filled with colonial era toys and things.

It is such a cool building. The girls love to go and sit in these "opera seats" and watch the people milling about the library or listening to the singers. It was a great evening.

Rapunzel strikes again

Grandma Kris and Granddad sent some great gifts for Rebekah. She had so much fun putting on all the jewelry and brushing her long golden hair. :)

Happy Birthday Rebekah

Today is the day. Rebekah's first real birthday party. I thought a Rapunzel party would be perfect for her. The movie came out just days before her birthday last year. We saw it and we all fell in love with the movie. Soon after Rebekah decided to change her name to Rapunzel as seen here and here. She is back to Rebekah now, but still loves Rapunzel.

I had about 3 hours to decorate while Rebekah was at preschool. I got most of my ideas here and here. I braided a yarn for the door and Emma had drawn a welcome sign (notice the magic sun-flower).

I printed out these sun_buntings and ran it through the sewing machine (a great way to attach them together for hanging. I also added these golden stars from my Christmas decorations.

I found these cute paper lantern lights at Five Below and decorated with lots of purple and yellow balloons. There's another magic sun-flower on the table (just a golden poinsettia). I had hoped to do some sidewalk chalk drawing for decoration and for an activity, but it turned out to be a cold and rainy day. Oh well.

As the kids arrived I had coloring_pages set up. I also had music playing from the movie and some of the kids couldn't help but dancing.

After everyone arrived we made these cute Pascal_blowers. The kids loved it!! We followed that by a fun game of "pin the frying_pan on Flynn Rider".

After the games we took a trip to the "Snugly Duckling" for some snacks. Like the frying pans? I included apples for Maximus. I loved the idea of braided_bread for Rapunzel's hair, but decided to do it much simpler. I bought 2 cans of Pillsbury french bread, cut each into 5 parts, then each of those into 3 parts to braid together. They were a big hit.

At last it was time for the cake. It took me a few long nights to create it. And the tower started collapsing in on itself (it was a little taller). However it is all cake (with a ice cream cone on top) and completely egg free. It would have held together better with some royal icing, but we wouldn't want the birthday girl to go to the hospital on her birthday.

After opening presents it was time to hand out the goody bags. I used the same sun buntings to label the bags. I made these cute bookmarks and loved the idea of including "Rapunzel's Paints" in each bag (found at the dollar store).

After all that partying I was too pooped to make dinner. We went out to Red Robin for Rebekah's free birthday meal followed by a very large ice cream sundae. Happy Birthday sweetie!