Christmas in Minnesota

We celebrated Christmas a little early at home this year since Mom was hoping to work a day shift on Wednesday and get a good night's rest for the travelling on Thursday.

Claire had a very princess-y Christmas. She got a table and chairs set, a blanket, and a dining set. Most of her presents were also wrapped in princess paper.

Claire opened a few gifts and then just wanted to play...

This present is almost as big as Gabe!

Finally, we just let Claire spend time feeding her baby and put the unopened gifts aside.

Christmas Shopping

Claire and Mom spent a lot of quality time together shopping for Christmas gifts.

Once she had her coat on, she grabbed her purse and was ready to go. This girl is going to be a handful for a mom that never wears makeup or carries a purse. All she wanted to do was run around the stores and pull things off the shelves. She is quite the little shopper but doesn't realize yet that Mommy doesn't have enough money to buy everything she wants to get.

Claire wasn't so sure about Santa. The night we went to see him, they were also allowing pets to come see Santa. Claire was definitely more interested in the pets than the guy with the beard. She kept saying "Dog" and running up to animals to pet them. Luckily all the pets were pretty tolerant of her but she was quickly redirected once we realized this was going to be a problem. She acts the same way at PetSmart!

We were the last humans to see Santa so the lady at the photo booth gave each kid a balloon. Claire was very excited about this since she normally only gets to see balloons from a distance.

Helping Herself

Apparently tonight Mom wasn't cooking supper fast enough. Claire found a box of cereal while Mom was cooking and decided to help herself to a little snack. Mom must have been so focused on cooking that she didn't even realize it until Claire brought a completely empty box back into the kitchen.

That's our little ornery girl.

Thanksgiving

This year, Claire ate her first Thanksgiving dinner. To make her feel like she was part of the family, we even sat her in the booster seat for the first time. She still doesn't get the hang of eating with a spoon so most of what she ate was finger fed.

Claire has figured out that when the camera is out, she can be cheesy.

Gabe wouldn't let us leave him out of the pictures.

Playtime with Daddy's Camera

Mom left the kids alone in the basement for a few minutes (probably to let the dog out or go wake Daddy up in the morning) and these are the pictures that appeared on the camera when we uploaded a few weeks later.

Lights at Bluff Valley

It was a nice weekend so we decided to go to see the Lights at Bluff Valley. We had never been before and wanted to see how it compared to the Festival of Lights. There really was no comparison. The drive through display was very simple but the rest of the activities were a lot of fun. First we went through the lighted maze. Claire was more content to either sit on the ground or try to climb under the lighted sides. I think it was confusing for her since there were 3 other Claires in the maze and someone kept calling her name.

Gabe led the way for Daddy and they eventually made it out.

Next we moved on to the miniature golf course. It was pretty neat that we golfed with balls that glowed in the dark.

The kids' favorite part was the arcade inside the campground recreational building. Gabe tried his luck with the Wacky Alligators game.

Then Claire joined in the fun on the next round.

The evening ended with watching the Century High School pop band perform. By the time we got home everyone was exhausted.

Halloween

This Halloween we had a bumblebee and Superman in our house. The kids were dressed early in hopes of getting out to trick or treat before Mom had to go to work.

Our bee was not too enthusiastic about keeping her antennae up.

She was more hungry than anything and just wanted to sit in her high chair for a snack. She had no idea that in a little while she would be out getting her share of snacks.

As it got closer to time to trick or treat, her makeup started to get wiped off. The cheeks disappeared due to the fact she was crying for food.

Then she smudged the nose with her cup of milk.

Superman was excited to show his muscles.

Our bumblebee was laying on the floor showing off her stinger.

We trick or treated down half the street before the kids got cold and Mom had to leave for work. Gabe went up to the doors and just yelled "Treat" to try to get the neighbors to open up and give us candy. Claire banged on one neighbor's door and when they hadn't answered within five seconds, she started walking back towards the sidewalk as if she was impatient and wanted to move on and get more candy somewhere else. She was very eager to pick out candy when the neighbor gave her a choice on what she wanted.