Present Opening Marathon

Our Christmas festivities don't end in one day, our Christmas spans over a week's time(our house, Kent's parents Christmas weekend, my parents New Year's weekend). So on December 22nd, the day before we left for Kent's parents to spend Christmas up there, we had a little Christmas of our own, just the four of us. We had a special meal of chicken in grape sauce and then we opened presents. The girls were so thrilled to finally get to open these presents that had been sitting under the tree since after Thanksgiving. Kent slaved away for what seems like forever to make them the wonderful doll houses that you see. Someday the girls will really appreciate the dollhouses that their daddy made for them!

O Christmas Tree!

I just thought I would show a picture of our Christmas tree. The last few years we just had a little tree but this year we decided to get a new one and I am very glad we did.

Isabelle's Christmas Play

Every year our church holds a Christmas play that is put on by the Sunday school kids. Now that Isabelle is older, she gets to take a more active roll in the play. This year she was a fisherwoman and had a wonderful speaking part that had a great message about the birth of Jesus. She really loves being in the spotlight and I am sure she will continue to get more speaking parts since she is so good at it!

My Beautiful Girls

Okay, call me a bragger if you must but aren't these some of the cutest girls you have ever seen? This is Isabelle and Mia in their Christmas dresses. They both picked out their own dresses this year (yes, the two year old picked out her own dress, she has a particular style already, and most of the time has pretty good taste). Neither one of them wanted to go with the traditional holiday dress this year, which was fine with me. These dresses will be able to be worn a lot more during the year.

Air Isabelle

Starting in November Isabelle joined the YMCA girls basketball team. She had practice once a week and a game every Saturday. It was a five game series and it just wrapped up the weekend before Christmas. She had never played organized basketball before so it was a big learning experience for her. I think that she definitely has potential to be pretty good someday. She is not afraid to get in on the action and she really loves to play. Those two things, I think, will make her a huge success. And for selfish reasons, I hope she will keep it up because I love to watch her play. Someday when she is playing on the highschool team, I will be the loudest mother in the stand, wearing 15 buttons with her picture on them and a t-shirt that says something like "#12 is my daughter, or Isabelle's biggest fan." When I was in school, I never got those crazy mothers...now, I get it.