Merry Christmas!

We had a wonderful 2nd Christmas with Natalie! She was blessed to have Grandma and Grandpa Dinse and Grandma and Grandpa Johnston come to Ashburn to celebrate as well as Uncle Sam from San Diego. On Christmas Eve Day we introduced Natalie to decorating sugar cookies - she did a great job picking the different sprinkles she wanted to adorn the cookies with. Surprisingly, she didn't like them as much as we thought she would, not sure if it was because we haven't given her that many sweets or it was just Kaija's cooking :-) Christmas Eve we enjoyed a lasagna dinner and then arranged our cookies and milk for Santa. Christmas morning Natalie must have been really excited because she woke up at 6:15! After checking to make sure Santa had visited and taking the annual picture at the top of the stairs, Natalie had her first look at the presents under the tree. She beelined for the baby stroller which promptly got taken for a spin around the house. After our traditional Christmas morning brunch we settled in to open the rest of the presents. The biggest hits were the piano from Grandma and Grandpa J, the baby doll from Mommy and Daddy, crocs from Grandma and Grandpa D and a tricycle from SANTA! We spent the rest of the day relaxing around the house and preparing the turkey dinner (can you tell we did alot of eating?). We tried to get a good family picture..as you can tell, hopefully we'll have better luck next year!

Getting In The Christmas Spirit!

This weekend the Johnston household dove head first into the Christmas season. Saturday we took our annual trip to Snickers Gap Farm to get our Christmas tree. Kaija envisioned a happy family frolicking amongst the trees - searching for the perfect one. What reality brought was a 1 1/2 year old that didn't want to walk or keep her mittens on in the freezing temperatures...maybe she'll appreciate it next year! Anyway, we did get a lovely tree which we spent the evening decorating. Natalie loved looking at all the different ornaments as Kaija explained the significance of each one. Her favorite ornament is the one that Grandma J gave her last year that has a picture of her on it - she just walks around with it saying "baby", "baby". Hopefully one day she will understand that it's her! Natalie particularly favored the "ball" shaped ornaments, which she proceeded to try and throw like her regular balls. We ended up with only one casualty and the tree has been toddler proofed...breakable ornaments on top and playable ornaments on the bottom.

Sunday morning we went to the Santa Breakfast at the firehouse. After Natalie devoured 4 pancakes (yes, 4!), we decided it was time to introduce her to Santa and Mrs. Claus. No sooner did we get up there than the clinging began, I didn't push it too much, little does she know we'll be headed to the mall later this week for the official Christmas picture! Later in the afternoon we had our good friends, John, Lauren and Emma Duffy over for football and chili. Natalie was very interested in Emma since she is a "baby" (10 months old). We are trying to teach sharing though, which she isn't very into yet - I guess it will come!