Santa came to visit at the Roe's house again this year. Melissa Roe is our Children's Minister at our church and my boss. She knows Santa personally and asks him to stop by her house every year before Christmas. She makes lots of cookies and invites all of the kids from church to come visit with Santa in her living room. It's friendly, relaxed and you can talk to him as many times as you want. Here are our pictures from our visit as well as Grace and Lyla's Wish Lists.
The girls wrote their letters to Santa asking him to send his elves again this year. They also asked for Christmas pajamas and the elves delivered!
When we got back from Thanksgiving this is what was in the mail! A tadpole. Last May Lyla was giving a frog habitat from a preschool friend. It was empty but had a sticker on the side that said free tadpole. I don't know why I did it, but I went to the website and put in our address for the free tadpole (plus $8 shipping!). When I clicked submit a message popped up and said our tadpole would arrive sometime in November. November!? This is May! I completely put it out of my head and completely forgot about it. The habitat was stuffed somewhere out in the garage in a goodwill pile. The tadpole came in a test tube. Lyla didn't see me open it so I asked Eric if we should just flush it rather than show it to her. He thought I was crazy and said, yes, of course we have to show it to her. She was so excited! I didn't take a picture right when we got it. These pictures are from a few weeks later. It was itty bitty when we got it. It was about a 1/4 of an inch long when we got it! So, we filled up the habitat with chlorine free water and went to buy tadpole food. I assumed it would die like goldfish always do. But it hasn't! Here are pictures of "Frogger".
The girls were getting excited about Christmas even before it was Thanksgiving. The cute thing was, they weren't getting excited about getting presents. They were getting excited about decorating. They really wanted to decorate our yard and put up our Christmas tree. Our neighbors decorated their yards for Halloween so Grace and Lyla had been talking about decorating our yard since Halloween. One afternoon in particular they were talking about it and got themselves all worked up. They were telling me all of the things they were going to put in the yard. I finally gave them paper and pens and had them make a yard "plan". Unfortunately, I can't find it now. Not happy about that. Anyway, we went shopping for yard decorations before Thanksgiving. I tried to steer them in the direction of the classy, white light reindeer and white light tree decorations. We ended up with candy canes, two blow-ups and colored lights on the porch. It looked cute though. If it made them excited then I was fine with it. After all, we were decorating the yard for them.
We got home from Thanksgiving and immediately started setting out the yard decorations. After that was done we put up the tree. The girls get excited about talking about each decoration and where it came from and if it is "theirs" or not. They get a new ornament every year to call their own. Hopefully by the time they have their own house with their own tree they will have a special little ornament collection to start decorating with.
Last year they slept in the family room in sleeping bags with the Christmas lights on after we put up our tree. Grace remembered this, of course, and said it was a tradition and they HAD to do it this year.
Here are the pictures from our night of decorating. The yard picture doesn't actually show all of the lights. We added colored lights to the porch banister after this picture was taken. I don't have a picture of that. 
Why is Lyla doing a karate move in the picture?
Taking a break for cartoons...
Crazy face picture...
Photo shoot in front of the tree...
Easton playing with the girls....
Grandma coloring with the big girls...
Papoo pushing Lyla on the tire swing...
Thanksgiving at the Gardner house....Grace and Lyla "making a wish"
These are pictures of Lyla and Grace licking the spoon from something yummy. Eric was actually taking these pictures b/c Lyla let us put her hair in a ponytail to keep it from getting in the batter. It came down immediately after she was done! She looks so cute with a ponytail!
Papoo watching cartoons with the girls....
This past fall Eric played on a Saturday morning football league. It was a bunch of guys playing flag football. They took it pretty seriously though. The organizer even wrote about the games every Saturday after they were done naming MVP and other titles. The girls and I went to his last game and I took the camera. I didn't get very many pictures. First of all, he told me he would play two games. He was finishing his first game as we were getting there. The girls brought their scooters with them to the park. There was a big hill right by where Eric was playing. So, of course, being the daredevils that they are, they started riding their scooters down the hill. Then Lyla got the bright idea to sit on her scooter and go down the hill. I'm sure all of the moms were thinking, "where in the world is the mom of those girls?" Well, I was right there watching along with all of those moms that were thinking that. What was I thinking? "They are so crazy! What's the worst that could happen? A cast? A couple of stitches? They'll be fine." Well, Lyla got that little boo-boo rather quickly. She hit her head on the scooter somehow when she went down the hill sitting on the scooter. She put a little cut on her eyebrow. It was bleeding enough to need attention so I had to carry her to the car for a bandaid. By the time we got back, Eric was done with his game and they had lost, so he wouldn't be playing a 2nd game. So much for watching him play. We spent a little time on the playground after that. Lyla actually has a little scar in her eyebrow from that little cut. Did she learn? Nope, she's always up for a dare!
