Oh-Bla-Di

From our family to yours, with love, Merry Christmas!

We finally got around to meeting Santa this year.  Ava chatted his ear off and Noah sort of just looked at him like he wasn’t sure what was going on.

This Santa was really awesome, so the kiddos got to spend as much time as they wanted talking to him.

Ava asked Santa for a purple present (full of candy) with a bow, this year.  Noah was a bit less specific in his first meeting with the big guy.

By the way, how’s this for a flashback?  Here’s Ava meeting Santa for the first time wearing the same onesie.

But, now, the orders are in, the elves are hard at work, the cookies are ready…

…and it’s time for Christmas finally to arrive!

Out of the blue last week, Ava said she wanted to go ice skating.  Seemed like the perfect time, so we found a place to go.  Surprisingly, for this being a desert, we had several choices!

We showed up at the rink just in time for an open skate, rented our skates, and got ready to go.

The rink was pretty crowded, but we were able to use some of their toddler walkers to help Ava get a good start.

Eventually, though, the walker ended up being more trouble than it was worth, so we moved on to just holding hands and working along the boards.  By the fourth or fifth time around the week, she was really starting to get the hang of it.  Whoozers was even starting to let go of everything and just scoot on around.

Ava had a great time skating and was a huge fan of “going fast” when we would push her around the rink.  She was totally wiped out afterward, but woke up the next morning asking if we were going again.  I think it was a hit!

The kids’ school hosted a Winter Festival earlier this month.  It was a pajama party and had lots of good food, TONS of kids running around like crazy people and a really cute little program.  The kiddos wore matching jammies and Matt & I wore jammies (in spite of his initial reservations), too.  The toddlers and transitions classes film their presentations but the Preschool and Kindergarten classes perform LIVE!!    This was super fun and Ava had a great time singing her class’s song.

I’m a little snowman round and fat,

With an orange nose and a big black hat,

I like to be outside on a snowy day,

Until the sun melts me away.

One of the best winter traditions I gained when Matt and I got married was St. Nicholas day.  My family hadn’t ever celebrated on December 6, but Matt’s family always did, so we started to as well.  It’s kind of a nice tide-you-over celebration after the craziness of Thanksgiving and into the long wait for Christmas.  I’d imagine it’ll become more and more valuable as the kiddos get older and actually know that Christmas is coming soon.  

So, there are our shoes all lined up in front of the tree and St. Nick brought us all a special treat.  Matt got some new slippers, I got the new Twilight movie, Noah got a toy, and Ava got some replacements for her sparkle shoes.  Such a lovely morning surprise!