Christmas Craziness

It's been so long since we've updated because we've been busy, busy, busy seeing friends, family, and other such miscreants here in the Frozen Tundra! We're happy to report we had the most amazing Christmas and feel so blessed to have such wonderful family to celebrate it! Our Crazy Christmas Chaos is documented below in a slightly random order (beware, there are tons of pictures!).

We had Christmas Day dinner at our Aunt Lindsay's house and it was a very fancy party (and of course we l-o-v-e fancy!). If you know our Mommy, you know she loves to throw a great party, and our Aunt is no different. A divine time was had by all sitting around this delectable dinner table:

This is our cousin Sophie with Daddy. She is a spectacular playmate!

Elyse: Let me ask you this: Is there anything more exquisite than playing with toys on a leopard print rug? I didn't think so. Our Aunt definitely knows how the cool kids roll.

Elyse: Uncle Nathan was extremely entertaining with his iPhone. We listened to the moo of a cow about one-point-three-million times and it never, not ever, got old. Seriously. This is what I call fun!

Felicity: Shhhh...baby is sleeping. My new baby is so sweet! I even got all kinds of new clothes for her to wear!!

Christmas morning is a time to SMILE! Check out my new smile. I think it's pretty cute. Mom says I should keep working on it...needs a little refining or something like that.

What fun it is playing with new toys! This is my new doll and she is so fun to put all kinds of cute outfits on, and she has blonde hair just like me!

Elyse: This is my cousin and pal Olivia. She is much older and wiser than me, but is willing to play with us young-pups. How nice of her!

14 fancy shoes: Lots of money. 7 beautiful dresses: Even more money. 4 hair bows: A little less money. 7 pretty cousins celebrating the joy of Christmas together: Priceless.

Our little family. We think we clean up pretty well!

Here we are, enjoying the thrill of opening presents:
(Elyse: hey there, I got the opening part under control!)

Elyse: Auntie Lindsay can litigate your socks off AND play with my baby and me.
Impressive, indeed.

What a wonderful Christmas celebration we had with our family!

Wisconsin Wishes

Here ye, here ye! I have something to say! We had a stupendous time celebrating Christmas in Wisconsin! Wahoo! (Just beware how many pictures are below--Mommy is a little camera crazy!).We went out sledding and enjoyed multiple feet of snow...

...saw our friends The Barnes and our new pal Baby Brady...

...and enjoyed a multitude of presents and family craziness!

Lots of love for our Uncle Steve (and for all of our crazy, wonderful Aunts and friends we had so much fun with!)

Christmas Dress #2. I like to smile with a very cheesy grin...oh the silliness!

Sparkly, pretty, and just the kind of fanciness I like!

The beautiful family of 4 generations:

We learned a new trick from Uncle Steve. The monkey face:

We made this special plaque for all of our grandparents and great-grandparents. (And by "we" we really mean Mom did it).

Mommy and Daddy are always working away on their laptops and now we have our own! See, I'm a natural:

We are so grateful for all of the wonderful presents and fun we had with our family! Thank you to everyone! What a merry old time we had in Wisconsin!

Christmas Before The BIG TRIP

Before we left to journey to the Frozen Tundra, we had one more Christmas party at our house. This time, it was with our fabulous Mothering Matters group through church (10 mommies, 7 babies, and 4 kiddos ages 2 & 3). We just l-o-v-e these ladies and babies! They are the best part of our week and we are going to miss them while we're in the Great Northland!

This picture captures everyone except us and our one friend Jackson. We were actually taking the picture for everyone, so couldn't squeeze into the pic...or just playing, you figure it out!We had so much fun at our party and loved showing off our fancy dresses:

Christmas this year was a special time of celebrating Baby Jesus and our many wonderful friends and family whom we love so much!

Next up, the Frozen Tundra!

Ho, Ho, Ho! Merry Christmas!

Today we were able to go visit Santa and we were just so excited for the trip! We have such a busy week getting everything ready for our trip, so it was a special surprise to be able to make this our 2nd annual trip visiting the Big Guy with our cousin Peter.

Of course we told Santa our secret wish list and helped him practice his "Ho, Ho, Ho!"Merry Christmas!

(take note of Christmas dress #1...there are many more to come!)

Snow!

While our Mom and Dad's "homeland" gets covered in snow at this time of the year, we often just get boring, yucky-old rain and mud. Blah. But last Saturday we were so excited to find snow coming down. It was even sticking to the ground!

Come on Daddy! Hurry up and get your coat on--we're ready to go!! Daddy helped us make our first snowballs of the season:

Hey lady, why don't you put that camera down so I can toss a little snowball delight your way...

We even played in the snow for more time than it took to get our gear on (which is saying a lot!).

And now, just a few days later, the snow is a distant memory replaced by rain and mud. This really is quite a bit of snow for us:

The good news is that pretty soon we're going to have lots of snow to play in with our aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. Yippee!!

There Were Kids Jingle-Belling...

...And everyone telling you be of good cheer! Even though Mommy has been still working on recovering from surgery, she can't just let the Christmas season pass her by! So we had the first of many Christmas parties at our house last week. It was so much fun (well of course 14 moms and 20 kids is going to be fun!). Above you've got the huge spread (yum!) and below you've got us hanging with two of Mommy's favorite ladies:

Our play-room was filled with lots of great conversation, fun, and chaos!

Our living room was just about the same:

We had the best time and can't wait for our next Christmas party!

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

What's a Girl to Do?

It's been two weeks since you've heard from us two,
So what's a girl to do when her friendly readers are feeling blue?Just flash her big pearly smile at the camera and say "how do you do?"!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! We are very sad that we've been absent from our blog lately, but we've been busy playing with visitors and helping Mommy recover.

This Thanksgiving Mommy is grateful for all of the help, prayers, and well-wishes she's received in her recovery from surgery. It's been a slow road, but hopefully a successful one! Mommy is also grateful for catered Turkey Day meals so she doesn't have to cook.This year, Daddy is thankful that the Packers won their Thanksgiving Day game. He also says he doesn't know why Mommy dressed us up for the day as we are not going anywhere special. Mommy says any day is a good day to dress up, especially holidays. We told him it's cool to be fancy. And that's that.

Elyse: I'm especially grateful for all of the fun time I've been able to spend with my many grandmas lately. It's been loads and loads of fun!

Felicity: Thumbs up on the outfit Mom!
What am I grateful for? Well, everything really (as I love to say "thank you" all of the time), but most of all, I'm thankful for the small things in life--like snack time, Mickey Mouse, and cheese.

Here's our great-grandma (one-half of The Greats, remember?). We are so happy she was able to stay to help Mommy and hang out for Thanksgiving. We love you!

And just because it's been so long since we've posted, we thought we'd give you a little glimpse into our Thanksgiving-morning tradition: watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, of course! Here we are in our seats, waiting for caramel rolls and sausage (good breakfast fare), and getting ready to cheer for our favorite balloons:

Did you see how big that Mickey Mouse is? H-U-G-E!!! Can we get one of those?

After breakfast treats, we lounged in style while watching the events on 34th street. Maybe one of these years we'll go to NYC to see it in person! We had such a great time watching the parade in our jammies.

One final thing we have to mention on this day of gratitude. We were so lucky to have Mommy's BFF, Kate, also come to play with us and help out while Mommy recovered. She was so much fun, brought us a bounty of presents, and was basically the coolest cat around. We would've posted about her trip earlier, but we were a little pre-occupied with our crazy happenings and other visitors! Thanks for everything Kate! We love you!

In Preparation for the Frozen Tundra

In preparation for our big trip to the Frozen Tundra for Christmas, we decided to model our new hats and mittens. So what do you think?Grandma definitely thinks we're all set for a little snow and chilly temps!

Gathering Leaves

By Robert Frost

Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.

I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.

But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.

I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?

Next to nothing for weight,
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.

Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,

And who's to say where
The harvest shall stop?

Trick-or-Treat!

Our very first trick-or-treat experience was spectacular! Did you know that if you just knock on a neighbor's door, they will give you candy? It really is a great set-up!

Here we are all set to go out on our big excursion!We had our own special bags (thanks Grandma!) and filled them with lots of yummy treats!

Come on Daddy! I'll show you just what to do. First we knock, then we wait, then we say "twick or tweat!" and then, yup, you guessed it! Treats pour into our bag. It is practically magic!

Faster, faster, faster! Let's go people! Do you think I'm getting any younger? Gotta get me some yummies!

We had a fun family Halloween with lots of help from Grandma, Daddy, and Mommy!