Scene 1 – The Visit:

The girls visited with Santa in Miami this year. Santa was visiting in an ice and snow palace and after talking with him there was a snow room that had snow for kids to play in. Emily was very excited to see and speak with Santa. She showed no shyness with him. There was no line behind us so she had plenty of time to talk. Santa asked Emily what she wanted for Christmas and she told him she wanted toys and a star for the top of the tree. Santa was very kind and sweet with the girls. Julia had a different response to Santa. She cried at the idea of sitting with him. In the end, Mommy had to sit next to Santa and Julia on her lap. The girls were not sure of what to make of the faux snow, but liked to watch Mommy play in the snow and throw it into the air.

Scene 2 – The Message:
Some sweet friends of ours arranged for the girls to receive their own individual messages from Santa. We recorded the girls watching their videos. The messages were quite a hit! Emily continued to talk about what Santa told her through Christmas.

Emily’s Video Message–

Julia’s Video Message–

Scene 3 – Christmas Morning:

Christmas morning we found that Santa had visited the house and left lovely things in our stockings. Among what he left there was a Christmas star, princess coloring book, Backyardigans characters, Ernie doll (a Julia favorite), ponies, musical instruments, and toy kitchen utensils. The girls loved finding their stockings and were excited to empty them out. There were lots of excited proclaimations of discovery and joyful facial expressions.

Mommy is a train person, Grandpa is a train person, Daddy sure likes to build track, and we are starting early to create little train girls. This year the girls started their Thomas the Train collection. There has been a layed out track everyday since Christmas with engines running around it.

Robby was chomping at the bit to build track layouts with all of the track, but we thought it would be best to wait for Emily to get used to the toy with just the starter set. Emily has enjoyed talking to the engines and quickly wanted to name the engines that didn’t come with names. She hasn’t mastered all of the rules of trains, like she thinks they can make turns and double back at switches. It is really cute.

After a few days of the simple layout Robby has started building larger track layouts that take up almost the whole floor. Amazingly the girls play with it for a while before destroying it and when it is destroyed it is always Julia’s work. Julia has been imitating the rest of us by running the engines around the track some too. This is going to be one fun toy for a while!

Christmas is always a fun, busy day, and it is so easy to put the camera down and forget to pick it back up. I’m sorry to say that I didn’t get family photos on Christmas and I never got a photo of Emily looking at my camera. This Christmas I guess Emily was the photographer. These are just two photos of the girls from Christmas day and the joy that they shared that day. It was a good and fun day. May all of our Christmases be so merry!

Emily received a kid’s digital camera for Christmas from Uncle Doug and Aunt Saba, and it has been a hit. Somehow she knew immediately what to do with it. She only needed one half lesson on what the buttons were for, and she ran around taking photo after photo. When Robby downloaded them, the total was over 300 that she took the day of Christmas and the day following. It has been interesting to see the photos and reflect upon the fact that this is the world from her eyes. She took photos of people, people taking photos of her, toys, things that were important to her, random things, ceilings, carpets, and many more. Here is a sample of her photos – They aren’t going to win awards, but they are expressions of her perspective and interests.

What happens to the bows after they come off of gifts . . . well, you can decorate your head with them. I’m not sure if Julia put it on her head first or if Emily decorated Julia with it. Julia definitely took the bow off, looked at it, and then put it back on her head. Last Christmas, we had a little baby laying on the floor covered with all the bows that came off the gifts. I guess this year we will have a toddler covered with bows. Fun times!!

We are continuing a tradition from Robby’s childhood of hanging an ornament on the advent wreath each of the days of December. Robby has really enjoyed watching Emily pick out the ornaments remembering back to he and his brothers doing the same thing. It was a lot of fun to do with her and Julia enjoyed looking and touching them. We saved a Santa ornament for Christmas Eve and baby Jesus for Christmas day.