Decking The Halls

We were home for Thanksgiving this year so I was able to start decorating over the weekend.  Friday morning we pulled out the Christmas boxes.  Emily was so excited to decorate for Christmas.  For weeks she kept asking when we could get out her Christmas books and I kept telling her "the day after Thanksgiving".  Well,  she was ready and so the book box was the first we opened.  She spent lots of time arranging her books on her shelf.  Next, we put up her little tree for her room and decorated it along with her other decorations.  She was so happy!

Emily really was such a big help this year.  She helped me unpack all the boxes and arrange the manger scene.  I have each box labeled by room and she was so excited that most of our rooms have their own special decorations.  We had a lot of decorating to do inside and out and so we had to finish things up on Saturday.  She helped decorate all of our trees.  This is the first time she has had the patience or interest to stay and decorate the whole time.  Here she is decorating our little tree that goes in our front room.

Here is the tree all decorated.

My mother had a Santa collection and now I have it and I really enjoy unpacking them and displaying them each year.  One of these Santa's belonged to Jeffs grandmother.  We almost don't have enough room for them all.

Saturday afternoon we headed to a Christmas tree farm about 30 minutes from us.  It was a neat little place.  This is the first year we didn't just go to a regular Christmas tree lot.  They grow lots of different kinds of trees on their local farm that you can cut fresh. They also have a farm in the mountains where they grow Frasier Furs and they pre-cut them and bring them to their local farm.

 

We wanted a Frasier Fur so we didn't cut our own but we took a hay ride to tour the farm.

As we left for the hay ride Frosty was being blown up and when we returned he was up to size.  He was big.  Here is Emily in front of him.  His belt buckle is bigger than her.

Here are Jeff and Emily with Frosty.

Next it was Emily's mission to find the "perfect Christmas tree".

Emily found the perfect tree and begged us to buy it.  It was a beautiful tree so we did.  I think it is really cool that Emily picked out our tree all by herself this year.  Here she is standing in front of our tree.  Look how proud she is.

Jeff bought her some cookies to take home which made her very happy.  They also had free apple cider and coffee.  Here are some signs by the check out area.  I thought they were cute.

We had a lot of fun at the tree farm.

After dinner Emily helped Jeff with the lights.

Then it was time to decorate.  As Jeff was finishing the lights she kept trying to put toys on the tree to decorate it.  Finally, she decided to help with the actual tree decorations.  She kept saying "I think our tree is nearly complete".

 

Now our tree is complete!

It looks good and smells great!  It is a great feeling to start the week off already decorated:)

Princess Worm Cakes

Our Emily is a girly girl. Her favorite color is pink, she loves dolls, tea parties, princesses and Barbies.  She loves her pretty dresses and hair bows (thank goodness because I love them too).

Emily also loves to get dirty and messy.  Last Saturday Emily spent some time making "worm cakes" in her garden box.  There were no actual worms as far as I know because she thinks they are gross.  So I guess that pretty much makes them dirt cakes but she insisted that they should be called worm cakes.

                 I love that my little princess likes to get messy in the dirt!

Thankful

Happy Thanksgiving!  We had a great family day at home.  We started the day off by watching the parade.  Here are Emily and Jeff chilling on the couch enjoying the parade.

Emily spent the morning watching the parade and playing outside with Daddy and Grandpa while I worked in the kitchen.  Emily was excited about the table.  We made place cards with Emily's hand print turkeys. 

We had lots of food to be thankful for today.  We had turkey, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, corn and bread.  Emily has been sick and still doesn't have much of an appetite.  She had to try a bite of each thing on her plate but then she was given permission to eat a Thanksgiving banana:)

 She also got to drink coke with her Thanksgiving meal.  This is a rare treat and she was so happy!  We also had pumpkin pie which she didn't eat either.  She did finish off the last pilgrim hat and the last few acorn treats.

We have so much to be thankful for.  We are so blessed!  Here is our thankful tree filled with leaves.  We could keep filling tree after tree with all the things we are thankful for but tonight was the last night for this year.  We will definitely be doing another thankful tree next year.

                                   Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Fun

Emily's preschool had a Thanksgiving feast on Friday.  Emily's class and another combined for their feast.  Emily's class dressed as the Pilgrims and the other class dressed as the Native Americans.  I brought in my camera and one of Emily's teachers was kind enough to take some pictures for me.  Here is Emily in her Pilgrim hat.

Here is a shot of the table. They are all so cute. The menu was chicken nuggets (filling in for the turkey), mac and cheese (Emily said her teachers said this was the best macaroni and cheese the world even has), green beans, cookies and juice boxes.

Emily's class also made a Thanksgiving quilt.  They sent home a square and markers for each child to draw what they were thankful for.  Then they put the squares together to make a quilt.  

Here is a close up of Emily's square.  She said she was thankful for mommy and daddy and we were doing arabesques:)

This week at home we also made some Thanksgiving treats.  Some we kept for ourselves and some we gave away to Emily's teachers at school, Little Gym and church.  I got all of these ideas from other people.  They are so cute and were very fun for Emily to make.  They also tasted yummy!  We made turkeys, pilgrim hats and acorns.

Leaves At Dusk

We have had some really mild temperatures this week.  Monday we spent much of the day outside and after walking around the block we decided to rake up some leaves for Emily to play in.  It was getting dark but it was still pretty warm outside so we decided to stay outside for awhile and have fun.

Another Party, Another Princess

We had two birthday parties this weekend.  One of them was another princess party.  This time we got to hang out with Cinderella.  Cinderella started the party by getting the everyone ready for the ball.  The girls got make-up and the boys got tattoos.

Then there was the usual story telling, music, instruments, games and dancing.  So much fun!  Again, this was the same lady from Princess Performances!  Once again, she did an amazing job!  Emily hasn't made any connections, thankfully.

It was a great party and Emily loved seeing Cinderella.

Our Thankful Tree

On November 1st, Emily and I went outside and collected sticks and broken branches to make our "thankful tree".  I made some fall leaves and put them in a basket with paper clips.  Every night before Emily goes to bed we each pick a leaf and write something we are thankful for on it and then we attach it to the tree with a paper clip.  We plan to do this through Thanksgiving. This has been really good for all of us and lots of fun for Emily.  Here is what our tree looks like so far.

I'll post another picture on Thanksgiving Day.  Our tree will be very full of leaves by then.

I Love A Lazy Saturday Morning!

 

Wordless Wednesday

Snow White

Today Emily went to a friend's princess birthday party. Snow White was the special guest! 

Here is Emily before the party. 

There was much anticipation about the arrival of Snow White.

Snow White did a craft.  The girls decorated their own tiara.  Then Snow White told her story, sang and danced.  This was the same lady that did Emily's princess party as Belle.  She did a fabulous job once again.

 

 

What a fun princess party!  Next week we have a party to go to with Cinderella.  It's so much fun to have a little girl.  I have to say that I think I enjoy all this princess stuff as much as Emily:)