Wednesday, November 27, 2013

The Polar Express

Gramma and Papa treated us girls to an amazing and very special Polar Express ride!  This train ride mimics the Polar Express book and movie and they certainly didn't disappoint!  The train left Carson City, Neveda at 5:00pm Sunday night.  

 Kate was so excited to climb aboard the train.
 Getting ready to leave.

 The conductor came along and punched all our tickets.
 We got hot chocolate and cookies on the train.  Kate loved both!
 Our train ride took us to the North Pole.  We did not get off the train but we saw real elves and Mrs. Claus outside getting the sleigh ready for Santa.

 Santa hopped on board the train at the North Pole.  He stopped by all the seats and gave out special reindeer bells to everyone.  He even posed for pictures at every seat.  It was very cool!



We all got a little goofy with the bells we got from Santa.  









Goofy Kate!

 It was such an amazing, fun, memorable experience!  Thank you Gramma and Papa for this treat!


Thanksgiving vacation in Tahoe

We just got back from a 4-night stay at our family cabin in Tahoe.  The girls and I had a wonderful time playing games, watching movies, playing Wii, doing craft projects and throwing snowballs with Gramma and Papa.  Unfortunately Will could only join us for one night...we definitely missed Daddy on our Thanksgiving vacation but it was a great trip!

Right when we arrived at the cabin we found all of the girl's favorite games to play.
 Papa joined in on the game play too!

 Papa even played Pretty Pretty Princess and won!
 Walk time!  The first morning was a bit chilly but we bundled up and enjoyed the fresh air.



 Kate was SO excited to find snow on the ground!  She threw a lot of snowballs...most targeted at Gramma. :-)
 Kate threw a few snowballs at Papa too!

 After our walk, Will sprayed some pine cones green for our Christmas tree craft project (more pictures below).
 Maggie loved exploring through the snow.
 Kate doing a dance on a stump.
 Maggie was making food for the birds (pine needles) on the large rock in front of the cabin.  She spent a lot of time collecting the pine needles and carefully laying them on the rock.

 Time to decorate our pine cone Christmas trees.
 Maggie LOVED sprinkling entire bottles of glitter on the top of her trees.
 Kate had fun gluing pom-poms on the trees for ornaments.
 All the completed trees!
 I took the girls to Heavenly Village to get some ice cream.  We stopped in a Coldstones and spent a whopping $18.25 for 3 cups of ice cream!  Thankfully we had a $20 gift card!

 After ice cream we went exploring and found this iced-over water fountain.  It was pretty cool to see!

 On our last morning at the cabin we sprinkled waffle crumbs, bread crumbs and cracker crumbs on the back deck for the blue jays to eat.  There were at least 4 jays that came and ate our food.  They gobbled it all up in less than an hour!

 At the end of our stay cousin Chloe came over to play.  Kate and Chloe worked on this snowman craft project together.  It turned out super cute!



Saturday, November 9, 2013

Maggie's First Haircut

Today was Maggie's first haircut!  It was a hard and somewhat emotional decision to get Maggie's haircut since she has the cutest little curls, but the time had come.  Her hair was starting to get so tangled in the mornings and constantly in her face.  Here are a few pictures from today's experience.

Before:  Notice the cute little curls

Haircut time!  Sitting so patiently and still.
 So happy!

The final result!  It actually looks really cute and already makes her look a little older.


Sharing Can

 Kate's preschool class has a special tradition called the Sharing Can.  Each day a child's name is randomly picked from a jar, that child then gets to take the sharing can home and fill it with any one item they want to share with the class.  The child then has to come up with 3 clues to read to the class and have their classmates guess what is inside the can.  Needless to say, all the kids LOVE the sharing can and everyday they hope their name is called.  Kate's turn was this past Thursday and she was thrilled!  She was so excited to put her very special stuffed tiger, Tilly, in the can.

Reading the clues with Ms. Jen.

Pulling Tilly out of the can after one of her classmates guessed a tiger was inside.

After the item is pulled out of the can, the kids take their special toy around the circle so all the classmates can touch and get a better look at the item.

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Kate's School Picture

Isn't Kate just so beautiful?  I love this school picture! :-)