Pre-Christmas Celebrations

The season is in full swing around here! The girls got their first holiday gifts from their beloved sitter, K:





Aspen's preschool had a winter celebration, where she decorated a box to house her special bead that she received as part of a little friendship ceremony.



Then we rushed over to Sabine's school for Sabine's class's celebration. They had an island-themed party!



Aspen thoroughly enjoyed herself,



and Sabine's group (all four of whom happened to go to preschool together) put together a lovely lagoon diaorrama!



We had our annual Louisvillian fondue dinner:













and the kids had a blast together, as always! We even made some new friends this year. It's getting more and more fun as they get older and are able to play together.

The Halls Are Getting Decked

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here!



We are getting more Christmas cards, which is one of mommy's very favorite things about the season!



Aspen and I went up to see Grandmom and Grandpa's decorations,



Sabine and I took Aspen skating, she did actually skate but preferred to be chauffeured around by her sister,



and we went to a production of the Nutcracker!



This was Aspen's first time to the ballet, and she was absolutely entranced! At the end of the show, they invited any interested children to come up on the stage to come learn a dance. Most of our crew demurred, but Aspen didn't wait for anyone, she literally burst from her seat and ran up on the stage without looking behind her.



Despite being one of the smallest, she totally picked it up, and had a blast! If I can ever figure out how to get the video to load, I'll add that.



Afterwards there was a chance to meet the cast, and have programs signed. Aspen was absolutely smitten with the Sugar Plum Fairy.





The girls even talked us into getting our own Nutcracker.



On the way home, we asked Aspen if she wanted to take dance lessons, and she said, "oh, yes, yes, yes!" And then promptly burst into tears when we pulled into our garage, she thought we were heading straight to said lessons. We will get her signed up ASAP. It was only a small consolation to learn cousin H was a very good dancer who got to wear the beautiful dresses.



Another day, Sabine's Brownie troop went to a holiday tea party, hosted by some an older troop in the area.







We also made it to downtown Denver to see Santa,



Sabine asked for a FurReal Tiger and Aspen asked for an Ariel doll, like the one she saw in the Disney store.

While we were downtown, we also checked out the ChristKindl Market,



we enjoyed warm pretzels, fries, and, of course, chocolate.

Traditions

It's December!  Snowflake's back:

Both girls are very eager to find her every morning. She brought new pajamas for them, it seems to be something she likes to do each year.

Our local Parade of Lights was early this year, on December 1st. Sabine's Girl Scout Troop was IN the parade this year, that was really fun!

We picked out our Christmas Tree at the local high school this year. Much easier drive, and many more branches to decorate, but we all kind of agreed we miss the look of a local tree that we cut down.

Still, we had a blast decorating as always, the girls are now older and can do most of the work, and Sabine invited a good friend, who happens to be Jewish, to join us this year, so that she could experience tree-decorating.

The girls did a beautiful job!

Speaking of new traditions, our Buddhist friends invited us to the Children's Day celebration at the Shambala Center in Boulder, which was an incredible treat. The Children's Day ceremony was lovely, each parent/guardian got a chance to take their child up to the microphone, say a few words about what makes them special and precious in this world, and then they got a blessing in front of the mirror, and a little chocolate to sweeten the deal. I absolutely loved this tradition!




(Sabine's head is on the left, and Aspen's back is to us on the right in the polka dot dress.)

Land-ho!

We closed on our land! It seems appropriate that we officially became the owners of a property on Turkey Roost Rd. the day before Thanksgiving. To celebrate, we took the girls, Nana, Aunt Dani, and the cousins up to see it.

The girls approved!

As did everyone else, I think.

We stopped at the neighborhood restaurant for lunch, I doubt this is the last time these two will play here:

and we stopped at Forks for ice cream; hopefully the start of a new tradition!

Black Friday

We have a new tradition! Somewhere, Sabine heard about Black Friday. As she is becoming quite the little consumer, she was bound and determined to check out the craze this year, her purse burning with allowance. How could we say "no" to this face?

We braced ourselves to brave the masses, traffic, and chaos by inviting some good friends to join us...only to drive up to almost the front door of a nearly-empty mall!

It was an unexpected but wonderful surprise! We all enjoyed ourselves, and actually made some great holiday purchases. Aspen even got to be one of the big girls, for once.

We also snapped this picture of these two dear friends, in about the same place as the original, about four years ago: 

When we got home, we opened the first box of Christmas decorations.





We are definitely getting into the spirit!

Thanksgiving

Aunt Dani hosted a gorgeous Thanksgiving spread, as always, this year, but we somehow forgot to document much. I think we were too busy eating. Sabine was nice enough to take this picture of the adults, quick before the kids disappeared to play the entire day!


Our contribution this year was an apple pie:



and we got one token picture of Sabine with the puppies. Next year we will try harder to get a picture of all the kids!



Per tradition, we we did remember to turn on Christmas carols for the drive home. 'Tis the season!