Christmas morning at the our house

This horse set only took me about 2 hours to put together. Probably only takes 1 hours if you have 1 kid.

This is the front of the Steelers quilt I made for Ty.

I made both kids & Ty large floor pillows. Zoie got Fancy Nancy, Ty got Steelers, and Vance got a bowling pillow.

My mom made this cool sweatshirt.

Both kids got these Vsmile game consoles. They love them and share the games in the evenings. They will be great in the car when we travel back to Casper WY in May.

Zoie's Winter Dance Demonstration

In both December and June, the dance studio does a demostration for families of the students' skills. Last year the December show was cancelled due to snow. It was 1 1/2 hours of ballet, tap, and jazz with about 15 4 and 5 year olds. Vance was along with me and my mom. He got squirmy but took pictures and videos of the girls. Zoie greatly enjoys dance and always practices her techniques at home and describe the steps to us. Since I took dance during the summer, I am able to communicate with her and help her with the steps.

Zoie's Strange Situation

As I am rocking Arya to sleep, I hear footsteps . . .

"What Zoie?"
"Ummm. . . my warm blankets are cold. I don't know what happened, but my warm blankets on my bed are cold."
"Zoie come over here" I whisper. One -- I have no glasses on so I can not see her. Two -- Arya is asleep. "So what do you want me to do?"
"Ummm . . .I could move into your bed" she says with a huge grin, ear to ear.
All I could do was smile and try not to laugh.
"Well, I could wait in my bed for you and then move in there."
And away she went. . . .

I antipicate I will have at least one extra body in my bed tonight.

Silly Zoie.

Arya

Zoie found a great way to entertain Arya -- pull her by her feet around the kitchen and the living room. Both girls had a GREAT time.
Arya loves to hear "Bath time" and see the water run.

And believe it or not, she sometimes is mad.

SNOW!!!

As I slept in bed, I soon heard my 2 kids come in . . "Mom, look outside. It is snowing" Yeah! They were so excited to go outside and play. It was an ordeal to get 2 kids dressed for the snow. It will be a challenge with 3 next year. Vance totally understands the concepts of snow and snowballs, as you can see in the first picture. After Zoie was done in the snow, I pulled Vance around the yard in the wagon and we played together.

Nutcraker Performance -- Sat. night

Saturday night both my mom and I helped backstage with the Nutcraker performance.

Here is Zoie's friend Victoria. As soon as she arrived in the dressing room, Zoie says "Victoria, do you want to play with me?"
All the "children".

Silly faces.

Zoie sits patiently on the stage with the "parents" dance.

A proud gramma.

Nutcraker Performance 12/11

Nutcraker Performance -- Dress Rehearsal 12/11

I apologize for these not being order. Here is a variety of pictures taken on Friday, December 11 at the Nutcraker Rehearsal. Zoie was a child in the Act I of the show.

Backstage snack -- cookies!

Hanging out backstage in the dressing room.

Wake up Zoie -- it is 6:30am and it is time to eat breakfast and get ready for rehearsal and a show.

Fake Hair!

Zoie's Gingerbread Person Project

Zoie's family homework was to decorate the plain gingerbread person. Here is what we made.

Trying to Decorate with 3 kids

I did not think this one through first . . . we brought in the tree and the holiday decorations up from the basement. As soon as the boxes were open, Zoie have everything out and kept asking "Can I put this here? And there?" Ugh! I didn't even know what was in the boxes. Vance was not interested till I started to decorate the tree. They were taking ornaments out of the boxes faster than I could look up. Like a typical kid tree, there are many ornaments clumped together. Oh well. I just hope Arya doesn't grab for them or we will have to move some.

About Santa -- Zoie told me tonight that we will have to remove the glass panel from our new fireplace cause Santa won't be able to get through. And that we will need to turn off the fire. I said, "Can't he just use the front door?" "I will write him a note". Ha ha!