Early Christmas

Since we were making the "dreaded drive" home for Christmas in our gigantic car, we let the kids open some Christmas presents at home before we left. They opened their goods from Grandma & Grandpa Haynes. Let me back up a bit to about mid-November. KynnLee starts saying she wants a LaLaLoopsy doll for Christmas. Seriously, never heard of or seen them. I loved the fact that she found something all on her own with no outside influence. To be honest, when I saw the commercial for them I thought they were a bit weird. They have buttons for eyes, kind of like the girl on the movie Coraline, but not that creepy. But after I checked into them a bit they are actually really cool. Each doll is made of something recycled. KynnLee got the Bea Spells-a-lot doll and the Dot Starlight doll. Bea Spells-a-lot is made from a school girl's uniform, she is a smartypants who always follows the rules and loves to talk... a LOT! Dot Starlight is made from a real astronaut's space suit, she's a dreamer who loves science and she always has her head in the clouds. KynnLee about jumped out of her pants and said, "It's Lalaloopsy!!" when she opened it! It was to die for! She was so cute!

Jaden-boy got "golfing clubs". He's very excited for this summer. We will have to bring them with us when we make "the dreaded drive" again in July.

I'm glad my cute little stinker-pots got spoiled by G&G Haynes. And yes, KynnLee did actually fall asleep like that, I didn't pose her!

Breakfast with Rudolph

Jaden got to have breakfast with Rudolph at his school and KynnLee and I joined him.

KynnLee sat by my friend Kim to eat breakfast, I have never seen that girl behave so perfectly!!! She's pretty good buddies with Kim and Mia. :)

They had this cute little picture corner for the kiddos as well as a little activity table with beads and pipe cleaners to make a bracelet. Rudolph was just a teacher with some antlers on his head, we didn't track him down for a picture.

Mr. Daniel the principle (who is fabulous, by the way) was helping serve breakfast. Jaden snuck around by him for a quick pic.

Breakfast with Rudolph was a definite success, the kids loved it!

Post-Thanksgiving festivities!

I'm not going to lie, my favorite holiday is Black Friday. Not just for all the crazy shopping, but mostly because, to me, it is the green light to officially start the Christmas Season. All this craziness with the stores putting out Christmas decor before Halloween is even over... it should be illegal!

We saved the wish bone from our Thanksgiving turkey and Jaden thought it was so cool! He had a really hard time waiting the few days for it to dry out. KynnLee didn't really understand, she thought it was cool and was a good sport about it, but was over it before we got to actually break it. Ha ha, so mom ended up breaking it with Jaden.

I started the tradition of watching The Nutcracker or listening to the music while we put up all the Christmas decor. These kids are HUGE fans of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker music! They listen to it year-round, mostly when going to bed, but I do get requests for it in the car. Jaden's favorite piece is the march at the beginning in the party scene, and KynnLee's favorite is the Waltz of the Sugar Plum Fairy. I LOVE that they love this music, and I LOVE that they picked out their own little favorite song.

It didn't take this little girly long to find her stocking....

Jaden loves the Christmas Village and did a great job setting it up. KynnLee's favorite was the little clay nativity scene that Grandma Sara made. She wouldn't leave it alone!

My girly did a fantastic job decorating her section of the tree...

We got a super fun package in the mail from the Vallace's. It was a Christmas Village to count down to Christmas. Every day we had an ornament to put on the little mini Christmas tree, a theme, a scripture, and either a present to open or an activity to do. It was perfect, the kids absolutely loved it! Thank you Vallace's!