A Barrel of Monkeys: December 2011

Friday, December 30, 2011

Almost White Christmas in El Paso

It felt like the Christmas season when we woke up Saturday to snow in El Paso. We went to Katrina and Joey's house that morning for breakfast. They hosted a big crew including the Gaspar de Albas, Whettens, and Matt's mom and brother Ryan. While finishing the preparations for breakfast the kids had a snowball fight in the backyard.

After a yummy breakfast of crepes and huevos rancheros, the kids kept entertained making graham cracker gingerbread houses. They enjoyed sampling all the candies as they worked.

Christmas eve the kids opened pajama's and books at GrandMindy's house. Christmas day landed on Sunday. GraMindy had church a little bit later, so the kids opened presents first.

We took some pictures after church. Then it was off to go eat lunch and exchange gifts at my parent's house and up to Las Cruces to visit with Grandpa Caldwell and Janet in the afternoon.

On December 27h these three cousins all lost a tooth on the same day. It was Natalia's first tooth lost.

They discovered that they could get a better deal selling their teeth to Grandpa than from the Tooth Fairy. Kylee and Natalia both collected $5 from Grandpa.

We decided to entertain the kids by taking them ice skating with Cynthia and Katrina's families on December 28.

Ben and Erin were able to stop in for a short visit.

We ended our week by visiting Kristina at work at Menchie's yogurt shop.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

December Piano, Leaves, and Candy

December 10, 2011 - Kylee and Brayden played Christmas songs at the Rolling Oaks Mall with 10 other piano students. I was in Hawaii, so Matt took the kids to go watch. He said that they did a great job.

December 19, 2011 - The kids worked hard to collect all the leaves from our lawn and put them in the trampoline enclosure to play with. This was nothing in comparison to the leaves that we would collect in North Carolina (that would have filled the trampoline enclosure to overflowing), but they still had lots of fun.

That same night we put a pre-made gingerbread house together to celebrate the holidays. The highlight for the kids was sampling all the candies.

They weren't very patient to let the roof harden before putting on the candies, so it caved in.

Matt rescued it after they went to bed. I forgot to take a picture before they started taking off the candies.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

All I want for Christmas...

Julia had another dance performance on December 17, 2011. Her class danced tap to the song All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth. Julia continues to enjoy dance and looks forward to her weekly class.