Saturday, December 13, 2008

Merry Christmas (oh so early)!

Today we celebrated our little family Christmas together, since we'll be celebrating with others for the rest of the season (and we can't wait!).

Christina's gift today was a new camera lens - and oh, it is a beauty. You might notice a difference in some of the close-ups today, if you're into that sort of thing.


The girls have been getting their Christmas gifts at regular intervals since October. Christina has a serious problem keeping secrets/waiting to give gifts. But today, Elena and Clara got their big gift for this year, a play kitchen with fruits, vegetables, and bread that you can cut with a toy knife. They had so much fun exploring this today, and we had so much fun watching them.




These aren't the best shots, but we wanted to post them to show off the girls' dresses. They are lucky enough to have several Christmas dresses each this year, thanks to family and friends, so we decided to start in on the several-days-of-dresses.



We posted a video last year of the girls making Christmas cookies, but this year we have a series of pictures to share, from the annual Christmas-cookie-baking-party over at our neighbor's house. It's so funny to contrast the girls making cookies today with the babies rolling around on a blanket "baking' with us last year!
A blurry shot, but the best we got of the three girls starting out their baking:

Clara prepares some dough:
And Elena sidles up to Linda to figure out how you make the sugar cookies into chocolate sugar cookies:

Clara really loved wielding the spatula:

And Elena LOVED shaking out sugar and sprinkles:

One of our works-in-progress (it's an upside down reindeer, in case you can't figure that part out!

Clara SO wanted to sample the dough - it was really tough keeping her from it, because she had her eye on it all of the time.

Busy little bakers:
Elena tries to figure out the rolling pin:
And decides to stamp out a star, instead:

Clara, finally able to try one of those delicious cookies. Look at this face!



Of course Elena ate her share (3!) of cookies as well:


What a fun day, and a wonderful way to kick off the holidays. We wish you all a very warm and wonderful holiday season!


2 comments:

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Laura said...

Your new lens definitely helps you get that shallow depth of field you love! I can't believe your impatience, you crack me up. Isn't it great when you get to be the boss of when Christmas comes?