The day after Thanksgiving while all the other people are out shopping our family tradition is to break out all the Christmas decorations. We put up the tree (we have to have artificial because Brian is allergic to the real ones.) and put of the Dept. 56 village and hang the stockings and Gigi's Santas. The girls are both old enough to help decorate the tree this year and they both loved hanging the ornaments on the tree. At first Ellie wanted to take them off and put them back on over and over, but eventually she got the idea. Josie is a pro at this by now and she likes to see all the ornaments and likes to find special places for the ones that are hers. Here's Josie showing Ellie the ropes: The other traditon that we started last year was letting Josie put the star on the top of the tree. She loves that this is her special job, but once Daddy lifts her up over his head she has a hard time getting the giggles under control to actually get the star on the top of the tree. I suspect that by next year there will have to be a conversation about who gets to put the star up, but we will either take turns every year or maybe the star will have to go up twice! After a long mornings work the tree was beautiful and the girls were very proud of their masterpiece. The tree is my favorite thing at Christmas time. I love to turn on the lights and turn off every other light in the house and just sit in the room with the tree. Josie and Ellie love this becasue we have a button to push to light the tree instead of having to plug it in. They both learned very quickly how to turn the tree on and off and they love to turn it on every morning.
Ever since we moved to Arizona we have always had Thanksgiving here. Last year was the first time that we decided to host Thanksgiving and things went so great that we had an even bigger gathering of our Arizona family this year. The total guest list topped out around 20! We are lucky to get to share this special time with Gigi (Great-Grandma Grant) since she lives here 6 months of the year. We also have Grandma's good friend Dorothy who is like an adopted grandma to my girls, I am a firm believer that you can't have too many grandparents! We also had 3 families of the Mortenson family join us and it was a wonderful day. The kids played outside, the boys fried about everything they could think of in the turkey fryer: funnel cakes, snickers, reeses peanut butter cups, and donuts (AKA tubby toast). All the girls shared their favorite Thanksgiving recipes and nobody went home hungry!
One of our family traditions at holidays is to make bread from scratch. My mom learned from her mom, my mom taught me and now Josie has become quite a good helper. She helps knead the bread and she has become very good at it. So much so that I don't really have to take over when she's done. She is building up her muscles and she doesn't ever seem to get tired! She pulls and pushes and pulls and pushes until I tell her to stop. Ellie is thinking that maybe next year she will have to get in on this action too. Lucky for me, we have always had to make 2 batches so there can be a bowl for each of them next year and we won't have to fight. One of Josie's favorite parts of making bread is to watch it rise. Here she is with her bowl over flowing! She asks about every 10 minutes to check on the bread to see if it is getting bigger. I keep trying to tell her that if she waits a little longer she may be able to actually tell the difference in size! Josie loves helping in the kitchen no matter what I am doing. I am so glad that she has really taken to making bread because it was one of my favorite things to do with my mom at the holidays and now it becoming one of her favorite things too. Hopefully one day she can share this tradition with her kids.
Ellie has had to tag along to Josie's swimming lessons all of her life and she is always wanting to get in the pool too. So we decided it was time Ellie finally got to get into the pool and learn to swim like her big sister.
If you know Ellie you know that she is a little on the shy side. It takes her a while to warm up to people and some people, try as they may just can't win her over. Her Daddy is her favorite guy and no other guy has quite measured up yet. (This makes Daddy VERY happy and he hopes it continues well into her teenage years!) So when I found out her teacher was a guy, I was a little skeptical about how well this could possibly go.
It turns out that being in the pool far out weighed the fact that her teacher is a guy. And eventually she really grew to like Jon and now refuses to swim for any other teacher! I guess this is an obstacle that will be tackled later!! Ellie is doing excellent in her swimming lessons and I think we might have another little swimmer on our hands. She has to take a break from swimming because she has accomplished all of the requirement for her level 2 class, but level 3 is not a parent/child class so until she can wait her turn and not jump off the step randomly, she is sidelined from going any farther. Here are some pictures of Ellie's favorite things at swimming:
The Popcorn song!
Hey, There's Jojo!! I want to swim with the big kids!!
The other traditon that we started last year was letting Josie put the star on the top of the tree. She loves that this is her special job, but once Daddy lifts her up over his head she has a hard time getting the giggles under control to actually get the star on the top of the tree. I suspect that by next year there will have to be a conversation about who gets to put the star up, but we will either take turns every year or maybe the star will have to go up twice!
After a long mornings work the tree was beautiful and the girls were very proud of their masterpiece. The tree is my favorite thing at Christmas time. I love to turn on the lights and turn off every other light in the house and just sit in the room with the tree. Josie and Ellie love this becasue we have a button to push to light the tree instead of having to plug it in. They both learned very quickly how to turn the tree on and off and they love to turn it on every morning.
