Doors and Magnets

These are the advent calendars we used to count down the days to Christmas.Every day, the girls traded turns choosing a magnet for the cookie sheet or opening the door to see what activity we were going to do. This post is to record some of the things we did and memories we made during the "doors and magnets" days this year.

These necklaces were inside the door on December 1st, and the girls wore them all season. The gingerbread girl is Cailyn's, the Rudolph is Rylee's.
We made a gingerbread house,

ate the cute Rudolph cupcakes that Grandma made,

went to Rylee's preschool Christmas pajama party

(this is Jack...he and Rylee have a little romance going on!),

made sugar cookies

and ate them

(I wasn't lying when I said that Cailyn has a habit of sticking her face straight into her food),

and made messes out of ourselves......and everything else.

We put on Christmas shirts

and went to see Santa.

Rylee knew what she wanted Santa to bring her ever since she saw it in the store around Thanksgiving - a "baby cruncher knees." (What? You need a translation? That would be "a baby who crunches her knees." Still confused? Click here for a demo.) She talked about the baby cruncher knees all the time. Cailyn, on the other hand, had no clue; when we asked her what she wanted Santa to bring, she always said "I don't know!" That is, until we went to see Santa. Amongst the decorations that were set up around Santa's sleigh, Cailyn spotted just what she wanted: a green present. So she told Santa she wanted a green present, and from then on, that was her answer whenever anyone asked her what she wanted Santa to bring. Of course, if we asked her what she wanted inside the present, she still said "I don't know!" Cailyn hadn't talked about this green present business too many times before Rylee decided that she wanted Santa to bring her a blue present. Oh, and one more thing...in the very top left corner of the picture with Santa you can see a stuffed tiger. Just before the girls said bye to Santa, he asked them if there was anything else they wanted. Rylee looked up behind her and pointed at the tiger saying "I want that tiger!" Fast forward to Christmas afternoon, and this is the conversation Rylee had with her Grandpa Mac:

Grandpa: Did you have a good Christmas?

Rylee: Yes!

Grandpa: Did Santa bring you everything you wanted?

Rylee: No! I wanted a tiger!

Keep in mind, there had been no mention of a tiger before or since Santa's lap, until this conversation! That girl is a trap...she NEVER forgets anything!

Other fun memories this year:

-Rylee's favorite Christmas song was Jingle Bell Rock

-Cailyn's favorite Christmas song was Santa Baby...she got pretty good at singing it!

-The girls loved watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman

-Rylee played "present" several times a day...she would come up to us with a blanket, wrap herself in it, lay down on the floor and tell us to open our present; when we pulled back the blanket she would bark or meow or make some other kind of noise so we would know what kind of present we got.

-When walking around in public, Rylee loudly tells everyone she sees "Merry Christmas!" Most people would smile and tell her Merry Christmas too, but if they didn't hear her or for some other reason didn't respond, she said "Mom, they didn't say Merry Christmas!" (She is still telling everyone Merry Christmas...we've tried to get her to switch to "Happy New Year," but haven't had any luck yet.)

-When we got our nativities out, Rylee held Mary and the lamb and started singing Mary had a Little Lamb...I caught Cailyn doing the same a day or two later.