Sillies

Since having her hair done at the Fancy Nancy boutique Elsa has requested the I recreate the look for her several times.  This particular time she asked me to take a picture.  Then Nora did not want to be left out.  Then Elsa wanted back in and things got very silly.

(I just love this perfect shot of Nora!)

Silly time!

Splendiferous Holiday Hairdos

We love the Fancy Nancy books and all the big, "fancy" words she uses, so when one of the local libraries offered a free Fancy Nancy Splendiferous Holiday Hairdo Boutique, we had to go and check it out.  While we waited for our turn they had tables with hot cocoa, coloring pages, cookie decorating, and a little craft.  (And this was just one of many Christmas events - we have some really nice libraries around here!)  Nora decided to just watch, so she and one of our friends (with the green "Christmas Tree" hair-do, in front) watched as Elsa was done-up.

I think Fancy Nancy would approve!

Christmas Cookies with Daddy

I'm not very good about "taking it easy," especially when there's a particular way I like to do things.  So I was rather proud of myself for buying a box of cookie mix for Christmas.  I wanted to let the girls have fun with it, but I had no bandwidth left for baking several kinds of cookies from scratch this season.  So I saw a box of cookie mix and I bought it.  I pulled out the red and green sprinkles from last year and voila!  (I even let Joel be the one to get messy with them!)

Here is Daddy showing us how it is done.

And the clean-up was really easy!  By the time the girls had licked themselves clean there wasn't much more to do!

Thanksgiving with the Dunhams

We drove north to Joel's parents' home for Thanksgiving.  Since all of Dunham siblings and families made it to town we did a lot of Christmas-y things together, so it almost felt more like Christmas than Thanksgiving!  

One of the highlights for the girls was that it snowed one day.  Enough for one teeny snowman!

Elsa and Nora loved helping to decorate the tree with Aunt Carrie and Uncle Gabe.  I think Elsa is whistling Christmas Carols.

It wasn't hard for Betsy to get all the girls busy crafting.  She had everything together for us to melt crayon bits and swirl them in glass ornaments.  They turned out really pretty!

She also had projects for the little girls while we did ours.

 We also kept up the traditional series of Setters games.

I now have so many photos of the family playing Settlers with Andrew making a strange face that I think the holiday would feel incomplete if I didn't include one!

So far Lincoln just has cute faces.

Beatrice and Grandpa.

Those of us who were not going to be there for Christmas also exchanged presents.  Beatrice thought Aunt Heidi's wrapping paper was rather tasty.

And, finally, for those who missed it on Facebook, Joel and Andrew now have matching Sesame Street pajamas.  And Joel has even stretched the definition of ugly Christmas sweater" and worn his to a Christmas party.  

Dragon Park

We discovered Dragon Park in Carbondale this year!  It was new to Joel because it was only made in the last ten years, built by a family in memory of their teenage son who loved Dungeons and Dragons and Tolkien's novels and such.  Joel and his brother Andrew loved all that too when they were teenagers.  Though I should change that to the present tense - they still do :)  We had a great time exploring the winding maze-like passages in the castle, finding unicorns and fairy hidden in gardens, climbing on sea monsters, and making friends with the dragon.  

Elsa really liked this little gargoyle on the highest tower - she thought he looked like a chameleon!

It was a VERY cold day and we weren't dressed warm enough, so we didn't stay as long as we would have liked too.  The kids all lasted just long enough for Nana to get a photo with all the grandkids + Joel.

Boyle's Law

Children are like a gas.  They expand to fill the space available to them.

I put the baby on a blanket to play in the middle of the recently recently cleared, wide open floor space of the den/school room.  The girls were happily playing the nursery.  I took a few moments to throw a load of clothes in the washing machine and load the dish washer.  When I returned to the den, it looked as though the whole nursery had been moved out into the den to surround the baby!

Boyle's law states that, with constant temperature, if you decrease the volume of a gas, the pressure it exerts will increase proportionately.

I could feel the pressure inside of me increasing as the size of our apartment felt suddenly constricting with the claustrophobic piles of life strewn about in every room.  Thankfully God reminded me about my camera, so I grabbed it and, like a balloon, the pressure popped as I started to listen to their playful chatter about which of the baby dolls were twins with Beatrice and which one was going to have a birthday party today.

I'm really trying hard to enjoy whatever moments I can this season to fight back the overwhelm.  Dolly birthday parties are way more important than a clear path through the room anyway, right?

(The baby in the middle is the real one, and she seems to love every minute of the mayhem :)

She's found her toes!