Getting ready for Christmas

We had lots of fun activities leading up to Christmas this year. Here are a few snapshots.

So, as I was decorating the tree, and busy trying to get the mesh right, Olivia thought she'd help out and hang our paper mache Santa (NOT an ornament in case you can't tell from the pics). She really gave it a good effort before I caught her on the step stool.

Not a Santa fan...but neither was most of the class. Poor Santa really probably had his feelings hurt when he visited these kiddos!

Cupcakes make everything better!

These are of O playing in the leaves at the new house. During the few months that we were still living at our other house and having work done on this one, we visited quite a bit and let her play there as much as possible. It was really a seamless transition when we finally moved the week after Christmas. In fact, when we went back to check on things one day a month later, she CRIED when I pulled into the driveway and said "Noooooo! I want to go to NEEEEEW house!" I thought "Geesh, who knew her first couple of years in our first home were so awful for her?!"

Showing off her reindeer dress.

Slightly off topic-- our new house has a little family of deer that roam the neighborhood. We probably see them at least 5 times a week. She gets so excited, points and says "Reeeeiiiindeeers!" She's also done this when she's seen a deer mounted on someone's wall. Kind of sad to me, but she doesn't seem to mind.

Ready for her school Christmas pageant. I had a hard time getting any good pictures, but she was a ballerina in their modern take on 12 days of Christmas. It was super cute.

One more Christmastime story I'll squeeze in since I don't have any pictures that relate. Olivia was totally into Elf on the Shelf this year. Ours is called Adam Elf (see last year's commentary on his name), and she was so excited to find him every single day. She was a little mixed up on Adam's role in Christmas versus Santa Claus's, and would say "Tell Adam I good!" For almost a month after Christmas she was still talking a lot about Adam and asking "Where Adam go?" I think she finally mostly understood that he's at the North Pole 'til next year.