Christmas 2009

The Yamaha piano is my gift to our family. It's a digital piano and I love it. When it arrived in a giant box, Laura wanted to open it right away but I kept telling her that she won't really want it once she starts lessons. She won't be smiling like this for long.

She's already singing and playing.
Christmas eve was spent watching sports and doing puzzles.

For the first time in our lives, we waited to open our gifts on Christmas morning and not Christmas eve! It's because Laura's dad had to work the night before and we waited for him to be home before opening all the presents. Laura was looking rough but she was very excited.

Barack Obama illustrated book from Ymo.
Gifts for dad.
Chess game from her dad.
More stuff from Ymo.
She also spent the day playing computer games and making crowns for everyone in the family.
Not a very exciting Christmas. Laura believed that Santa forgot to come to our house because her tree was not in the living room so he must has left without leaving any presents for her. I am shocked that she believes in Santa Claus because even in my memories as a kid, I don't think I ever really believed Santa Claus was real (or maybe it's because we never got presents except for an envelope with money in it from the parents). I guess next year, I will have to make the effort in getting some presents from Santa.

Bowling

Laura, my dad and I went bowling at the new "Kings" bowling place at Legacy place. It's fancy and expensive. You can program it so that the bumpers come up for an individual player. Thank goodness for the bumpers or Laura's ball would have been in someone else's alley.

Ha Dah Buh Gee is in da house!

We picked up Laura's granddad at the airport in the afternoon. Then we went to Bugaboo Creek for an early dinner. Dad got a huge piece of prime rib, as usual!

Back to the house to decorate cookies!

Unfortunately, Laura went a little heavy on the frosting for some of these cookies and they will likely be inedible but they are still very pretty.

This is what happened after Laura ate her cookie.

Ugh, another snow day

I think we got maybe a foot of snow here. Laura was very excited and wanted to go sledding but it was freezing outside. We didn't do much but stay inside and of course, we had to shovel.

After dinner (I made oxtail stew), Laura and I made gingerbread cookies and we watched "The Babysitter" from the 1980's starring Patty Duke, William Shatner and Stephanie Zimbalist. Wow, talk about feeling old. Laura's dad and I kept laughing at the scary parts but Laura was really scared and kept covering her eyes.

That's gross!

She ate at least 4 cookies and I had to stop her from eating any more. She kept making the excuse that she messed it up and had to eat it. Sneaky little girl.

Gingerbread house

Today was a dreary and rainy day so it was perfect for putting the gingerbread house together. We did run around a lot today to do errands but I made time for Laura to decorate her house.

Get the candy ready.
Put the house together.

One candy for the roof, one candy in her mouth. Repeat.

I'm shocked that there is any candy left on this house because she was eating s0 much of it during its construction.

Giant feet

On Saturday night, we went to a small holiday party thrown by one of hubby's coworkers. Do you love Laura's fashion sense? She wore black tights with pink socks and too small shiny red shoes.

We left fairly early around 9:30pm and after getting home, Laura got ready for bed. "It's a wonderful life" was on so I let Laura watch it on our bed. Within 5 minutes, she was knocked out.

Look at her giant feet. I have a feeling that this is going to be a problem when she gets older.

Baklava

Laura and I were invited to my neighbor, Evelyn's home to make homemade Baklava. She gave me step by step instructions and lent me her special pan to make them.

First, she showed me how to coarsely chop the walnuts.

She also added sugar and rosewater.

She instructed me on how to render butter. She also showed me how to make the syrup too.

Then we layed out the filo dough and painted it with butter. Layer by layer.

Laura helped for maybe 5 whole minutes.

The walnut mixture in the middle.

More layered filo dough until we used an entire 2 lbs.

Then we cut it using her ruler.
Ready to bake.
Right after taking it out of the oven, pour the syrup. Yummy goodness.

Christmas project

I put up the wreath that I bought from Laura's school. So pretty but it's making a mess in the foyer already.

Laura brought a Santa project from Thomas' play date. I had to go out a buy a glue gun for this.

Note to self: not a good idea to give a 5 year old a glue gun.

No burns were sustained during this project. Santa was completed, a little cross eyed but still cute.

Antlers

Laura's school was let out early on Thursday for a Teacher's conference so Thomas' mom picked her up and babysat the whole afternoon. They went to McDonald's for lunch! She watched movies and they made ornaments and Christmas decorations. Laura was in heaven. She wore these antlers the whole afternoon and wouldn't take them off. She was in such a good mood all night long singing Christmas carols and jumping around.

Winter

Saturday was cold and rainy so we didn't do much besides stay in and watch a lot of tv. Laura and I stayed up till 11pm to watch "The Incredibles" on tv. We woke up early to a sunny snow covered day.

Before breakfast or even brushing out teeth, we were outside playing in the snow. Laura was excited. It was only a small amount so I wasn't freaking out.


She wanted to go sledding even though I kept telling her there wasn't enough snow!

She was very excited about the snow and then requested that we bring her tree down from the attic. I brought the box down and she proceeded to set it up herself and began decorating.
I had to help her properly put the tree up but she decorated it by herself.
She likes to put things in clusters as you can tell.

We then made the star to go up on the top. Instead of painting or coloring, she glued some tinsel to it.

Ta dah! We're all set for Christmas.