Cookies for Santa

We brought the cookie we baked with Vale yesterday to Cuneo to leave for Santa.

Careful...careful...snack for santa/bribe to ensure he will leave presents!

The Day B4 Xmas Eve

Today Valentina came over for a playdate. It was impromptu and I still had lots of things to do, like baking cookies. Luckily I had two good Santa's Helpers!

And the little elves reap their rewards with a little tea party afterwards!

Jabba the Snowman

About pick up time from the preschool, it started to majorly dump snow. I ended up walking because cars were stopped up and our car was already buried in snow quite a bit. I think it was faster anyways, and Sophia had fun catching snowflakes on her tongue. That was yesterday...today Sophia is at home, school vacation started a day early due to the heavy snow (unfortunately for me because im not finished with xmas presents yet!!!). She and Max unburied the car.

And then they made a snow(er?)man?
I think he has to go on a diet, looks like he swallowed a panettone whole!

Last Minute Tree Decorating

We are soooooo lagging behind this year. I put some of it down to the fact that I was sick, but really most of it is just typical Christmas slacking. We are so late that Ikea didnt have any trees left, luckily Castorama (like Homedepot, but less organized) did. I like Ikea's trees, because you can return it and they give you a gift certificate worth what you paid for the tree to spend inside their store. (even if the tree is dead!). Trees here only come potted or fake, I feel so guilty about the fake trees making the landfills bigger, we usually just get a real one, hold on to it and then try to keep it alive until the next xmas. Of course we end up leaving the decorations on until Easter, forget to water it all the time and it is usally half dead by spring. Anyhoo, Sophia told us we needed to get a real tree this year and not decorate her treehouse again this year.

Hanging up snowmen with Dad.

The proud tree decorator.

Hiding Mommy's tummy in front of the tree.

Waiting for Grandma

Sophia has been missing her grandparents a lot lately. I told her Grandma is coming in Feb for the arrival of the baby. So she made a sign for us to hold up when we pick up her up from the airport (in case she doesnt recognize us).

The story of Rudolf in 8 pages

This summer my friend Karen introduced us to bare books. It is such a great find. The idea behind it is sooo simple, but genius! They are just blank books that kids write their own stories/illustrate in. We did our first one this summer at the Gran's house. Now Sophia likes to do books all the time. Unfortunately we don't have any more bare books left, hence the computer printer paper style book. Why waste 45 minutes watching that old stop motion movie Rudolf? You can see it here in 8 pages:









ps yeah i know some of the drawings are mine, altho its hard to tell. usually she does the whole book by herself, but this time she wanted help. i'm looking for other books to stick up here where its just her stuff, but this was the first one on hand.

The Christmas Wish List