Holidays at Home

After multiple attempts of blogging about Christmas I have finally been successful at uploading pictures!  We were fortunate to spend another Christmas season at home and have family come to us.  My parents spent an entire week hanging out with us and loving on the kids.  It made for a great Christmas. 
We went to one Holiday party up at the base Eric works at and the girls go to have lunch, make crafts, play games, and even visit with Santa.  We didn't have the heart to tell the girls that Santa was Eric's boss a few years back!

Chloe and Santa

Etta and Santa

Christmas Eve was amazing.  Friends of ours had a Christmas party at their house and there was a surprise guest for the kids.  Santa and Mrs Clause came bearing gifts.  It was funny because Chloe and Etta were one of the last of the bunch to be called up and you could see how nervous they were the entire time sitting and waiting.  They must have been worried about being on the naughty list!

Here are the girls with their presents.  Etta got a sewing kit and Chloe got a earring holder and a new owl hair clip.

Christmas morning was wonderful.  We were able to convince the girls to sleep in until 7:30am and have breakfast ready for the adults.  Of course the kids have no interest in eating Christmas morning!  The kids came running down the stairs to this sight.  Needless to say they were so excited.

Etta received a magic set from Santa

Chloe got an American Girl doll named Saige

My parents spending pretty much the entire morning watching the girls unwrap presents.

Chloe even got Saige's horse Picasso.

Chloe spent a lot of Christmas break riding her bike and her new two wheeled scooter.

Etta is still learning how to use her new skates.  There have been many falls.

I can't believe it's 2014 already.  Where did the past year go?  I feel like time moves so much quicker now that the kids have gotten bigger.  I can't believe it's been a month since Christmas and have enjoyed looking back already at all the pictures.  Hope you enjoyed them too.

Halloween Fun

Earlier in the month our elementary school had it's annual Fall Festival.  Kids can dress up and play tons of carnival like games that each of the teacher runs.  At the end of the night the teachers get paid for the amount of tickets they make which means they strive for a good booth.  I know Etta's teacher was raising money for a new class set of books.  My mom and grandma were in town that weekend for a dog show so they got the pleasure of walking around with the girls playing while I helped run food and keep the teacher prize buckets full.  A big sigh of relief to put that behind us for the year! 

They of course went to their art teacher for face painting.

 

Our neighborhood is full of kids so of course our door is constantly being visited.  Eric took the girls, our friends, and their kids around the neighborhood to Trick or Treat while I stayed home to hand out the candy.  Wow there were a lot of kids!

 

The girls.  Etta dress up as a Monster High girl named Ghoulia.  And Chloe is a butterfly.

The girls finally got their school pictures.  I didn't bother scanning them, it was easier for me to take a picture of their picture!  So, they look slightly distorted but figured you might like to see how cute they are this year.

 

 

Over the summer Etta cut 9.5 inches of hair to donate to Beautiful Lengths by Pantene to be used in wigs for cancer patients.  She was recognized by the school and received a teddy bear.  She says she wants to grow it out again to donate but it's growing slowly.  I'm sure it will be awhile before she can do that again.

 

Sorry I haven't been keeping up to date on my blog.  I'll try posting more!



Disneyland

We spent our second day and part of our third day at Disneyland.  We spent so much time on characters we don't have many other pictures.  We tried going to Tomorrowland and got in line for Star Tours first since there was no wait.  We were in line to board and Chloe broke down.  Eric took her out so just Etta and I road it.  I think Chloe had a hard time not seeing the rides before getting on them.  It's too scary for her.  Etta enjoyed Star Tours but said she didn't want to do it again since it was a little scary.

We did Autopia and the girls had tons of fun on that.  Of course the gas pedal was really hard to push so I did the pushing on Etta's car while she drove.  Space Mountain...I have memories riding that when I was little and it was scary!  Now, both the girls love roller coasters so we presented it as a roller coaster ride.  I wish I took a picture of the girls' face from the first time they road it.  Etta couldn't be seen since she was so small but Chloe had her ears covered with her hands since she thought it was too loud.  Chloe was not up for it again but Etta LOVED it.  Throughout the weekend, she went on it about 10 times.  That's how short the lines were.  However, Chloe ended up loving the Matterhorn.

Something about going round and around and up and down makes the kids happy.



After Tomorrowland we headed to Fanatasyland where the girls could see all the princesses.  I was shocked to she how long the lines were to ride simple rides like Dumbo and Alice in Wonderland.  We chose not to wait in those lines and headed for quicker moving rides with short waits, like the carousel.

The merry go round always puts smiles on little faces

It's a Small World was closed so after walking around Fantasyland we remembered Pixie Hollow.  We didn't wait long but got to see a cute set up that reminded the girls of Secret of the Wings, one of their favorite movies!

We went over to Toon Town and the kids had a blast.  It's just fun to walk around (see all the characters) and ride a small roller coaster.  The girls lucked out and get the front seat.  Happy girls!

 

 After meeting Mickey, the girls got in this cute car for pictures.

 

 

In the evening there was a parade and we had great seats!

It was about 5pm our third day and wanted to call it quits, but the girls still had some spending money.  So, we told them we'd take them to Build a Bear to spend what they had left and we'd cover them if they were short.  It took the girls around 30 minutes just to pick which stuffed animal.  Then Eric said they could pick out a sound.  It didn't take Chloe long since she picked a dog but Etta has picked a Minnie Mouse inspired teddy and they didn't have a Minnie sound.  So, he let her pick a sent.  After stuffing he even let them pick out accessories!  Chloe picked a dog house and some hair clips.  Etta had a harder time, she tried on every dress before picking the first one tried on.  Then, she had to pick out shoes.  Sigh, it took us about 90 minutes to get out of the store. 
We had a blast at Disneyland and we are finally recovered!



Christmas 2012

We are fortunate to live this close to both sets of parents and were pleasantly surprised that each of them and my grandma wanted to come visit for Christmas.  I'm thinking the odds of this happening again isn't very likely.  My parents and grandma arrived on Saturday and Eric's parents arrived on Sunday and we spent lots of time just hanging out and catching up with each other.

 

Christmas Eve dinner

Santa and grandparents have visited the Winterbottom home!

Luckily I had been wrapping presents here and there over the month so it wasn't a big shore the night before Christmas.  I can only imagine how much time my mom spent wrapping since they brought a van full of presents. 
The girls weren't allowed to unwrap anything until all granparents were downstairs and ready to watch.  Lucky for them Santa and grandma left a few things unwrapped, as you can see we have to very happy girls!

 Very happy girls

 

 I don't know what she was looking for, but she must of had her eye on something in particular.

 

 Mom and her dog Mickey

 

 I love seeing all of the smiles.

 

Eric slicing up the ham.  We also had a turkey but somehow wasn't pictured!

 



 The night before everyone was leaving we had a little family photo courtesy of our remote control.

 Four generations of red heads!

 My parents, grandma, and the girls.

My grandma and the girls.

My grandma was having tooth problems the last two days at our house and wished she would have felt better and enjoyed it more. Glad she was able to make it to the doctor the same day they returned to Phoenix.  My only regret, we didn't get pictures with Eric's parents!  It was a great time having so many family members under our roof and hope against all odds that we can spend another Christmas here in Vegas.  It might not be the perfect place to live, but it's a wonderful having them only several hours away.