Getting Ready for Christmas!

We have had a fun week leading up to Christmas.  I have all of my Christmas shopping done, so it has been nice to relax and leisure head out for Emma to enjoy the last week of lights, santa, and snowmen.  Here are some photos from the week!

Our Target shopping center has these huge ornaments all around.  Emma was much more interested in running in the grass and chasing birds then getting her picture taken!

I read in our local paper about a neighborhood not too far from us that has a "loop of lights".  Since Emma has been in love with all the lights, I thought we would drive through it.  I am so glad we did.  It was amazing.  These house went all out.  The last house in the loop was unbelievable.  Not only was their entire house covered in lights, but they had hot air balloons, and Santa and The Grinch in their drive way that the kids could get their pictures taken with, AND their lights would "dance" to the music playing on a radio station!  We will be making this a yearly tradition!  Here are some of the houses from the loop.  If you make the pictures bigger, you can see that some neighbors did a joint effort and would hang stars and balloons in between their houses.

We also did our holiday baking.  I thought I was being a little over zealous thinking I could get it done all in one day with Emma running around here, so yesterday I made chocolate chip cookies, rice krispy treats, and chocolate covered caramel apples.  Today I made sugar cookies and snicker doodles.  Emma got to help this year with the sprinkles.  She loved it so much that she was very upset when I didn't have the next batch ready for her to do.  You will also notice a pool of sprinkles on the cookie sheet.  Luckily the sprinkles didn't stick very easily to the cookie balls.  So you won't have to worry about getting a mouth full of sprinkles!

Then of course we had to taste our final product!  At first Emma wasn't too sure what to think, but then decided that she liked them!

In between baking we kept ourselves busy with stickers...

We got a new desk for the bedroom and Emma has been having fun putting stickers on it.  Then she thought JD needed a sticker too!

Then we played dress up.  I am going to have to remember I have these pictures and then bring them back out 25 years from now at her wedding shower!

We did some yoga...

And then she did the cutest thing and wanted to lay down with her baby!

Our plan for tomorrow is to deliver some of our Christmas goodies and play.  We will then go to my mom's for Christmas Eve, and Robert's dad's for Christmas Day.  I'll be back later with pictures from both!