Christmas just gets better each year! The girls were into the season so much more than last year. Right after Thanksgiving, Santa sent one of his elves to our house to keep an eye on the kiddos and then fly back to the North Pole every night and report back to Santa on the things that went on in our house that day. The girls named him Jingles and every morning, we had a great time trying the find the new spot that Jingles was in after his rendevouz with Santa. Brooklyn had her party at school as well as her Christmas performance. She did a great job and was so cute to watch all animated singing her songs. It's still so hard to believe how big she is getting. Sometimes when she's dressed up, I swear I can see what she'll look like as a teenager...how scary that is!!! Kendall also had her preschool party and wanted to get all dressed up like Brooklyn and look like a princess. I was lucky to be able to volunteer at both of their Christmas parties this year...along with Gracie's help, ofcourse! We had our "new" ward's Christmas party and that's where the girls got to sit on Santa's lap. Boy, Brookie was pretending to be all brave beforehand, and I must say, she did pretty well this year. You can tell in the pics how awkward she is but I was proud of her. Kendall on the other hand, wanted nothing to do him. Oh well, there's always next year! Gracie was fine with him as she doesn't know any better and I think she was even trying to get a hold of his beard to chew on!
I love the spirit of the Christmas season! Brooklyn had to do a service project for school this year and decided to go through all of her toys and donate them to the toy exchange. I can't tell you how proud I was of her. She was so thoughtful of the children she was donating her toys to and she gave up several of her favorite toys. In the end, she was getting so into the spirit of her project that she was giving away even Kendall's toys (to which Kendall threw a monster fit!)...no worries, we saved Kendall's toys, she's not quite ready for this lesson in charity yet! I love to see her growing into a wonderful and thoughtful child. I remember us trying to do this with her last year and she was a blubbering mess and we literally had to do it ourselves because she didn't want to give a single toy away!
Christmas day was the miracle that it always is and should be! Santa was a hero having pulled through with the coveted and extremely sought after pillow pets! Brookie wanted the purple unicorn and Kendall, (can you guess?) wanted the green frog! They have adored those pillow pets and we have experienced a few melt downs if anything gets on them! They spent all day playing with the toys they got and we had a great time watching them play together and share their toys with each other. We had a delicious Christmas dinner as a family and it was such an enjoyable day! The only thing we missed, was you, our family! We are so grateful for all the Christmas cards from you all and the Christmas gifts from the grandparents! I will post a ton of pics from each of these occassions so you can see how our wonderful season was! We love you all and hope you all had a wonderful holiday as well!
