Big Girl

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. We had a great day, I am trying to reclaim my house from the Christmas clutter. :-)
Lucy decided to take her first step yesterday on Christmas day! It was just like her other firsts, she felt like we could handle it so she showed us her new trick laughing and clapping to let us know she was completely in control. She's adorable. :-)

On Christmas Eve we took the girls to the Christmas Eve service at church. They just wanted to get to the part where they got to hold a candle and tried to wait as patiently as they could until then. When I finally gave them each a candle, I decided that was the first time Amy has been that close to a candle or fire before. She didn't have it very long before it was time to light it but she had already broke the candle stick and put it upside down in the candle holder. I lit mine and gave it to her. She tried to take it from me by grabbing the fire! I yanked it back from her and put her hand under the the cup safe from the dripping wax, even though my hand was covered by wax by then. I kept a close watch on her while we had our candles lit. When it was time to blow them out I leaned over and took a breath and opened my mouth and she said (very Loudly) "don't eat it Momma!" Kinda broke the solemness of the occasion for the others around us. :-)

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from the Peaks

Karianne is actually holding mistletoe but she is waving it so enthusiastically you can't see it. :-)

Gingerbread houses

No I am not brave enough to make Gingerbread houses with 3 little girls. However, their teachers at church are brave enough to help 10 toddlers make gingerbread houses together! Kuddos!

They turned out so sweet and we have awesome teachers for our girls!

Tree trimming

we finally put up the Christmas tree today. Lucy helped.

The girls were so helpful, like entertaining themselves in the box that I took the tree out of while I set up the tree.

Cookies

So here is Karianne baking cookies. She did it while her sisters took a nap. Funny story that goes with the cookies.

Karianne and I were supposed to make a couple batches because I needed some cookies for a skit in Boost tonight. Turns out I only had enough vanilla for one cookie batch and I didn't have other ingredients for any other kind of cookie. Can you tell I am not a baker? Anyway, I had to take Karianne's cookies to church tonight. I didn't tell her and I told everyone in the skit they COULD NOT eat the cookies, they were Karianne's and she hadn't even showed them to her daddy yet.

When the cookies came out on the stage Karianne said, "Momma those are MY cookies!" She seemed pleased that they were being featured. Amy didn't really care. Angie was NOT happy. She said loudly, "those are OUR cookies!" And she came over to me and repeated it. I said, "I know sweetie, it's ok, we'll get them back, they are just borrowing them". She glared at everyone on the stage and kept her eyes on the cookies at the same time. At one point presents covered the table the cookies were on and She said, "I can't see our cookies anymore!!" I assured her they were still there. At the end of the skit everyone walked off the stage and a man that was not let in on the special-ness of the cookies grabbed a cookie and popped it in his mouth. Angie yelled, "HEY!" and kept telling me he ate one of our cookies. Ok, the weird thing was that she had a cookie that afternoon and didn't even like it, and left it on the table!

Off topic, the girls like looking at the Christmas lights on the way to church and back tonight. The really special ones that had a whole bunch of lights got the ultimate from Karianne. She's tell her sisters, "look that's where Jesus was born!"
The church has a manger and a stable on the main stage. I had to stay home from church on sunday with Lucy so Karianne wanted to show it to me. She took me to it and with a sweeping motion of her hand she said, "look momma, this is Heaven! This is were Jesus was born!"
Very impressive!

O Christmas Tree

This will probably be a regular feature during the Christmas season. I set out a Nativity set that the girls can play with. I had them set it up and they had definate ideas on how it should look so they had to take turns setting it how they thought is should be. Angie went first and Karianne got very upset because she didn't think it should look that way and she told her, "Angie when it is my turn I am going to FIX it!"

Anyway, I walked by tonight and this is what our Nativity set looked like. No comment, I'm sure you have plenty of your own. :-)

Getting ready for Christmas

The girls have been helping me decorate for Christmas this weekend. It's been sweet watching Amy try to figure out what Christmas is. I asked her last week what Christmas was and she said, "pretty trees"- That's about all we see in stores. After Thanksgiving of course the Christmas Season is out everywhere. We were in Walmart on Saturday and we saw Santa Claus in the toy aisle. Karianne and Angie said, "Hi Santa Claus!" and Amy said, "Hi Christmas Tree!"
They heard Jingle Bells playing and Karianne and Angie started singing along. Amy listened for a minute and then joined in with a similar tune but sang the words to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. :-)