Desert trip

Christmas

Christmas at our house starts with the tradition of going out on Christmas Eve to go look at Christmas decorations. While we are gone Santa never fails to leave a pair of brand new pajamas for the Children in the house. My mom got them as a girl and so did I. Aurora thought that maybe he brought them so he could make sure the girls had a good deep nights sleep and wouldn't wake up when he came back later to deliver the rest of the presents. I thought that the idea of magic pj's was a good way to think of it.

When we got home we decided that since we were having a bit of an ant problem in the condo we would leave a note for Santa on the fridge to help himself to the cookie plate and milk in the fridge because we didn't want any ants in his treats. Aurora also wanted to add what she wanted for Christmas because we never mailed a letter off. Santa was nice enough to rinse his plate when he was done and put it in the sink so we were ant free Christmas morning.

We spent the morning opening presents and both girls really liked the doll house that Santa brought. My new year's resolution is that next Christmas there will be no presents that involve parental assembly before Christmas morning. Aurora was a little disappointed that morning because there were no dress up clothes(Santa must have know because that weekend camping in the desert she go them from her grandma) and the superhero cape/ridding hood that I made her for her present wound up being too big. Morgan had a great morning and really digs seeing "Hanta" on stuff. She really got into the whole thing this year.

That afternoon we went to grandma's house for dinner and more presents. The girls really got a kick out of the new pinball machine grandpa had gotten to take out to the desert house.

Getting the Christmas tree

We arrived in SoCal on Sunday night and Monday was too busy for Dave at work for us to go out so we went the night before Christmas Eve. It was rainy so the girls got bundled up good.

As you can see Aurora has entered a new phase in her life. The mommy stop aiming that stupid camera at me all the time phase.

The tree lot was empty except for us but there were lots of trees left. There were some really nice looking trees but man they sure got expensive. We didn't really like the idea of spending $50-$75 for a tree when Christmas was so close. We were going to leave to go check out another lot when the worker offered us 1/2 off so we picked out one we liked and loaded into the back of the truck.

Dave wrapped the lights around with a little help from Morgan while Aurora made herself her own mini Christmas tree from the clippings from the bottom of the tree. Aurora was extremely happy we got the tree and finally gave up saying "when are we going to get a tree?" over and over again. Morgan was looking forward to "hanta" coming to visit.

We didn't do any other decorations on the tree because we didn't want to bring them all with us but we were all really happy with how pretty the tree was.

Travelling to SoCal

I have decided that I just do not enjoy packing up stuff to travel for vacation during Christmas. I keep on feeling like I am forgetting something. Packing up for the family is stressful enough for a regular vacation and I have added presents to the mix. Now I remember why after I Christmas in Chicago 3 years ago I said no more travelling over Christmas. Too bad it just makes more sense for us to go back with Dave now not after Christmas. That would have entailed 3 separate trips back and forth for Dave and even though the price of gas and diesel has gone down a lot I just can't see spending that extra trip that we don't have to. Well enough procrastinating....I need to get back to packing.