Christmas Fun!

 

We have been having lots of fun preparing for Christmas this year, but so far I have spent very little time blogging about our festivities and am feeling the need to do a little catching up.  I know that I probably say this every year, but Christmas is my absolute favorite holiday!  There is no doubt that this time of year is magic and I feel so incredibly blessed to have now have 2 little girls to share in all of the merriness! 

While this is not technically this is Piper's 2nd Christmas, it feels so much like her first...I have to keep reminding myself that she was with us last year at this time...just nestled in a warm pair of arms and snoozing through the whole thing.  But this year our little miss has her eyes wide open and to say that she is amazed by all the things that she is seeing for the very first time would probably be an understatement.  Her whole body starts to quiver at the sight of Santa, the sparkly lights and all of the glitter! 

Since I wasn't 9 months pregnant this year, we were able to resume our annual trek up to Fraser to find our perfect Christmas tree.  We all love this tradition and we were so excited for Piper's first tree hunt and also pretty happy to have Bunky Ry and Auntie Kelly back with us this year.  The only thing missing was the snow!  There is usually a ton of snow by this time and this year we have had hardly any, it's pretty scary how dry our mountains are right now.  But we had a great time as usual and for me it was a hard to tell the difference between this year and last since I hiked up and back with Miss Piper strapped to me.  This was the first time that she had been out in the snow and she absolutely loved it!

 

A favorite tradition, our advent calendar, took on a new twist this year.  I was trying to find a way to make this daily countdown something that our whole family could be a part of instead of a 24 day mini-present fest that Riley.  Not to say that she doesn't enjoy that, but I'm just thinking that Piper might like to get in on some of the fun too, not to mention my struggle to find interesting things in miniature that are not c-a-n-d-y.  Each day Riley got to open a new surprise, some of the highlights have been decorating a gingerbread house, watching a new Christmas movie as a family, Zoo Lights with her cousin Reece, ice skating with our friends the Nichols, a Christmas puzzle.

 

 

 

A couple of other traditions we always enjoy...our elf Rudolph made his annual appearance with plenty of silliness up his sleeve. I think that Riley's favorite thing was finding him sipping syrup through a straw with Barbie.  I absolutely love baking and for me there is no better time than Christmas to completely indulge as much treat making as I can handle.  I have been so looking forward to a time when Riley can share in this special holiday tradition with me and this year she was such a great helper!  Her cookie icing and decorating skills are pretty impressive and she did an awesome job creating her gingerbread house. 

Another reason to love this time of year is for the extra time that we get to spend with family and friends.  Our Oklahoma family makes a trip up here every year and this year their visit was early so we got to do some fun Christmasy things with them before the holiday.  Riley adores her cousin Reece and the two of them were inseparable the entire time that they were here.  Snow is hard to come by in Colorado this year, so we drove them up to Eldora where lucky for us they had some that our girls could play in.  Riley also loved getting to take Reece to on of our favorite light displays, Zoo Lights, and the rest of them time they just had fun hanging out and playing princesses together.  Reece and Riley were spoiled with matching princess Merida dresses and new sparkly tiaras, gloves and necklaces by their Great Aunts and Uncles, it was pretty perfect to have to matching princess outfits!