A Successful Attempt at Something New!

My one big outing idea for this otherwise very relaxing Christmas Break was a ski trip!  After consulting Delia, who can be a little nervous about new things, we decided to let the girls' first experience with skis be cross-country ones instead of downhill ones.  We drove up to about 7000 feet to a gorgeous adventure center in the mountains with several miles of various-level cross-country ski trails and had the BEST day watching the kids kill it on their first attempt at something so different and new!

The day could not have been prettier!  We quickly shed our coats and even hats and gloves.  Check out that blue sky!  Those white aspen trees!  The mountains! 

Delia spent much of the day waving her poles in the air and "Whoohoo"ing!  The helpful folks at the rental center asked what wildlife we saw and we had to say, "None!"  I think it was because of Delia's whooping on the trails!  I just love watching her find joy in things.  If she loves something, she REALLY loves it.  

As for Dave and I, we have not skied since college days.  It's not very hard and it does come right back, but I think these last few days of break may be spent in the company of the over-40's set best friends: heating pads and ibuprofen! :)

Bedroom Update!

For a while now Ella has been asking if there is anything we can do to update their bedroom.  If you've been to our house, you know it's small and the things in the girls' room fit in a pretty precise way.  We couldn't really rearrange any furniture, but after Dave and I considered, we figured we could make some small changes that would feel big.  We wrapped up a box of paint samples for the girls and gave them a Bedroom Makeover as their big gift this year.  The picture below is blurry, but I love how it shows their faces when they realized what they were getting!

This room came with a fabulous starry night mural painted on the ceiling that we've always loved, so we decided to keep that and update the colors, artwork, and curtains.  This meant painting over the words to the Mathew West song "More" that we hand stenciled when Ella was growing in my belly 14 years ago!

For me, the hardest part of this room makeover was the 2 days my house was complete chaos.  We pushed what furniture we could into the middle of their bedroom, but the rest spilled over into our bedroom and living room!  You don't realize how much stuff you have until you see it all spread across your living room floor!  Motivation to work fast! ;)

Of the paint samples they had as options, the girls chose this dark teal on the bottom and a mint color on top to replace the old gray and yellow.

They also received a pack of 200 new domed light stickers of various sizes to upgrade their starry night ceiling to a real galaxy!  Ella researched constellations and recreated each one on the ceiling.  We love to lay on the floor at night now and see hundreds of tiny lights on their ceiling sky.

I joke that my real motive behind this gift was to encourage a whole room purge and deep clean! ;)  We gave away 4 bags of old toys and threw away 3 bags of garbage.  The room is the cleanest and most organized it's ever been!  These 2 pictures show 3 of my favorite things: the "He counts the stars and calls them all by name" print, the new Starry Night canvas, and the blackout curtains with little star cutouts in them, which cast star shapes all around the room each morning.  

We are so pleased with the way it turned out!  The girls are proud of their room and the work they helped put into it, painting, cleaning and making choices about new decor.   

Christmas and Leading Up

Even though December was busy with lots of fun activities, I am going to just condense it all into one convenient blog post!  Most of these things are of a Christmas-y nature, so it works...right? :)

 I had a very nice night going out to a Christmas dinner with some of my co-workers.  We ate a great dinner, saw a little Christmas program, and I even won a fancy prize basket!

 Another night in December, Dave and Ella went on a super fun father-daughter date, one that I found that was seemingly made for them-- Harry Potter night at the hockey game!  Ella got to see owls up close, drink butter beer, hear the movie's theme music all night, and get assigned to sit in the Slytherin section of the rink.  And they both loved watching their favorite sport together!

 On December 5, Sint made his annual visit!  Some traditions we don't outgrow, even though Sinterklaas brings much more grown up stuff now like wallets, scarves and card games.

Our church girls' group hosted its annual Christmas party this year too, which was awesome.  Our theme this year is "Be a Blessing" so we leaders tried to think of ways to use our party to intentionally do that for others!  We decorated a long trailer and had the girls go Christmas caroling around town.  Whenever someone came out to hear us, we ran up and gifted them a jar soup mix we had made.  The counselors' gift to the girls was items from the around-the-world gift catalog-- a sewing machine for people in Cambodia, garden and nutrition kits for people in Africa.  It was a neat thing to be a part of!

 We had lots of nights of snuggling by the tree and fire with the attention-loving puppy!

In December we also broke ground on what will be a new preschool facility for our school!  Dave was honored to be asked to speak a blessing and a prayer over the service.  He did a great job dedicating our efforts to the Lord and reminding us of Ephesians 3:20-21.  It was super cute when the 40 preschoolers we had on campus at the time of the ceremony each let a balloon go into the sky.

And speaking of preschool, here are a few other fun moments from right before break-- our last days where we get all the classes together to sing (above) and a time of fellowship and good food where our administrator takes us all out for lunch (below).

And here we are at Christmas Break!  Christmas Eve fell right at the start of it, so it felt like we were opening presents right away!  The girls are always most excited to give and get the gifts they pick out for each other.

 This gift was a favorite this year--  a gift certificate for Ollivanders (the wand store at Harry Potter World in LA) from Auntie Heather and Uncle Andrew!  We are slated to take this trip this summer after we finish the book series we've been reading together the past 5 years this spring!

 Auntie Kris sent comfy cozy new bathrobes and perfect books (that have already been read!).

And we sensed a bit of theme from Grandma and Auntie Karen! :)

Our favorite gift to give this Christmas was a Costco membership to Heather and Andrew.  All by itself this sounds boring, but we also made a 25 page book for them showing all the ways we like to use our membership for things other than just bulk groceries!  We got a few funny looks as we took goofy pictures all around the Costco on a busy Saturday, but we had a good time putting this together. 

On Christmas Day we got to join Jetta's family for a feast,

 a bike ride through the country,

 and target practice with the pistols! 

 With the many special services, four babies baptized, and one congregation member passing away on Christmas Day, Dave has been at church pretty much this whole break.  We haven't had tons of whole family time, but one night we were able to go check out some Christmas lights and get some fun dessert.

With no real big plans this break, I and the girls made a wish list of little things we wanted to be sure to do with our precious time off.  It contained mostly friends they wanted to have over-- which was a perfect way to fill our days!  Ella's friend Ansley shared ugly sweater cookie decorating and the new "Be a Broadway Star!" board game with the girls.

 (Some middle schoolers were invited to audition for the big high school musical performing this spring and these girls were actually cast!  Ella is even a featured part, playing the little sister of the lead!  The play is Annie Get Your Gun, so they were excited to watch the movie together too.)

And Kate, Cailyn, and Maya shared some roller hockey, laser tag, and a sleepover with the girls.

Ella's 5th grade teacher has stayed an important part of her life, continuing to mentor her and take her out about once a season to catch up and process life.  We are SO BLESSED that Ella has this wonderful example of faith and voice of truth speaking into her life.  We LOVE Mrs. VS!  This break, Dave baptized her first born, a daughter, and we enjoyed celebrating with their family after church!

On New Year's Eve, we joined with Jetta's family, and other friends from church, to once again ring in 2019 with Oliebollen, a million excited kids, and a hilarious charades/impressions/tune humming phone app game called "Heads Up".

I'll post about the 2 big events of break-- a bedroom makeover and our one family outing next, but as you can see, our December was full of friends and opportunities to eat, laugh, play, and celebrate with some of our most important people.  Though most of this happened just in our home or others', it was a grand finale to the year 2018!