Holidays at Home

Since I had surgery on my foot on the Friday before Christmas, we pretty much stayed home for the holidays.

We took the  girls outside to sprinkle the reindeer food their daycare sent home with them on the lawn.  I think this is a fun tradition and other than nearly giving Dave a migraine with the light sensor for the flash at night, it was a quick, fun activity.

Frosty gets the girls pajamas to open on Christmas Eve each year.  This year he went with a matching penguin theme.

Arden set out cookies (which she helped make – stamped shortbread) for Santa, along with some carrots for the reindeer.  The carrots are a tradition from Dave’s childhood.

Okay, this one seems a bit odd.  Dave’s family had a tradition of an orange in the stockings, but Hadley is such a nut for bananas that we thought that seemed more appropriate.  She doesn’t normally have her pacifier when she isn’t sleeping, but she’s gotten all four of her first molars over the last week and a half so she’s justifiably wanting it more than usual lately.

Hadley modeling some of the fun headbands from Grandma Sunshine’s box o’ fun.

We had a full schedule of Skyping with family planned.  You can see Grandma & Grandpa Sunshine (my parents) in the computer screen in the background.  Grandma is in the holiday spirit with her own fun antlers.

And later on Skyping with Grandma & Grandpa Idaho (Dave’s parents).  This is also a pretty good depiction of how I spend my days after my foot surgery – foot propped up on the little foam rest and either in the boot or with ice on it.

We spent so much time on the computer with relatives that we had to have a gift opening intermission for the girls’ naps.  We did have Arden open one more gift before her nap – her Hello Kitty sleeping bag!  She loved it!  As Dave put it, “is it possible for a gift to be too successful?”.  She has slept on it for every nap and bedtime since – including taking it to and from daycare.

Who am I to complain?  She also likes to lay inside the sleeping bag on top of me.  I’ve gotten some serious snuggling mileage out of this present, so I’ll take a little dragging it back and forth.

And one more fun one – Hadley has learned to sign “more” which is super adorable!  Now if only we knew in all cases what she wanted more of…