Brobee Revisited

The Morales girls really do LOVE these comfy Brobee pajamas!

 

They have been apart of our night time wardrobe for the last four years and I am sure I will be sad when these pajamas are finally outgrown at the end of this season and are retired to the keepsake bin in storage. Truly the end of an era for us.

What is with these pants?!?

Chepe encouraged Lily pick out her own outfit today. Instead of finding something in her own drawers she dug out Eden's old zebra pants and then found a summer shirt to "match". Something about these pants make the girls opt for zaniness...cute, but zany! Bet you won't find fashion forwardness like this on pinterest.

Christmas Time Recap

We had so much fun this Christmas season! Here are just a few of our special moments...

Decorating our gingerbread men. 

Gearing up to go to Uncle Brian's & Aunt Tanya's for Christmas eve

where the girls went on their annual scavenger hunt around the house.

Once we were home Eden made sure to remember to scatter the reindeer food on the lawn,

 and Lily was sure to pick chocolate milk for Santa this year because she has recently discovered how yummy it can be and wanted to be sure Santa had some too.

Christmas morning brought lots of goodies from Santa. Eden got her 3DS and Lily got the pixie dust jump rope she wanted. Santa sure "did not fail" them and even surprised the girls with new band-aids (can you see Lily's joy!) and even magically replaced her little pink (she does not like pink) stocking with a perfectly perfect blue one. Note to Santa - next year Eden is hoping you work your magic and replace her "boring" red one with a big pretty pink one.

 Then the girls looked and looked for the pickle Santa hung on the tree and once Lily found it the girls opened the special pickle gift he left under the tree for them to share.

Then back to bed we went while the girls played with all their new toys. 

We had Chinese take out for dinner and left the mess for later which was the perfect way to wind down another lovely holiday season for the Morales Crew.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Cookies with Bita

Today we celebrated Christmas with Bita and what better way to celebrate then with baking cookies!

 

Thank goodness Papa helped because Bita and Momma were too busy snapping pictures.

 The good ol' Christmas Ghost made an appearance.

 The girls each made a fancy hand print.

 And then spent the evening decorating their sweet creations.

 With lots and lots and lots and lots of frosting and sprinkles.

Look closely...yep all those white dots are sprinkles on the floor, but hey it was fun and boy do they taste yummy!

Season's Greetings!

From our home to yours...

We wish you all a Happy Hanukkah, Merry Festivus, Wonderful Winter Solstice, Festive Kwanzaa, Cool Yule, Feliz Navidad, and Very Merry Christmas!

Another Potty Milestone

Today I woke up to this...

Lily has decided that she is really a big girl and can use the potty without any assistance as long as she has a step stool nearby. I had to convince her that she should still ask for help with poopies, but it looks like a month into being three years old brings another big girl milestone for our Lilybug.

Dec 20th UPDATE - This morning Lily was so proud to tell me that she managed a poopie all by herself. So, it looks like my days of having to assist in the bathroom may be numbered.

(And yes, this is another poop post...but at this rate it there may not be many more for us.)

Christmas Lights Tour

Can you tell the girls were excited to drive around checking out Christmas lights.

We checked out the neighborhood across from Costco and saw that the house that used to have lights that played to music was gone this year (boo!), but that another court had actually expanded (whoo!). 

 But this was just a teaser for the rest of our Christmas lights adventures of the night, for the real deal is the Pebble Creek neighborhood in Rocklin. Here you can see every character you could think of celebrating the holiday season. It is just so cool and completely worth the drive. Here are some of our favorites, though it was hard to pick which ones to post because we took close to 100 pictures in just this neighborhood alone. 

 Eden's new favorite this year. She also really loves the Princess & the Frog one, but I never can seem to get a picture of it for her.

 There is also a cute alien Toy Story one that we like.

 The girls love this one too.

 Makes us giggle every year.

 Another one of Eden's favorites.

 An entire neighborhood like this. Love it!!!

 The girls asked, "What are Beetles?" since they did not see bugs.

 I love the Sesame Street House!

 One of Papa's faves.

 Never fear Twilight fans, there is a house for you too.

 Papa's favorite this year. Super funny, but we think this one replaced the car air freshener Christmas trees from last year that we liked too. 

 Lily's favorite. She really wanted to see a Candyland House and she got her wish this year!

 Loved the Up! house.

Reminded us of the year we made a pineapple gingerbread house.

 

Oh how we love Christmas lights!!!

Lily's Decorative Touch

 Chepe found Lily adding her own flair to our the Christmas tree yesterday.

Folding

I remember as a child I enjoyed helping my mom fold the laundry. Crazy, because now I despise it and maybe if I still enjoyed it there would not always be a mountain of clean laundry in our room. Recently Eden has begun wanting to help me with folding and I have started to show her how to fold different items. Tonight she helped with our cleaning rags and for her first try unassisted I think she did a great job. 

 Maybe that mountain of laundry will slowly be conquered by a new little folding helper in the house.

In Pairs

I guess we like to do things in pairs around here...

Two little girls that love celebrating the magic of the holiday season.

Two advent calendars (our cute Hallmark one and of course a chocolate one for each of the girls).

Attending two Christmas tree lightings.

Having at least two Christmas shirts each for the girls to wear to be festive.

Seeing at least two neighborhood fire department Santa parades (ok, we will actually see three this year).

And our newest tradition of having two Christmas trees.

I think this is my favorite and I am so glad we broke Chepe's one tree rule last year for the first time. We love having the best of both worlds with both a live and fake tree. We love going to Wise Buys to get our $9.98 tree, especially since we are not tree farm or wilderness types and there really is something magical about tree lots and the competition of finding the perfect one before someone else grabs it. 

  We love having one tree dedicated to all the homemade & keepsake ornaments. 

 We love being able to have one with multi-colored lights and one with white lights because both are so pretty and having to decide on one type is impossible. We love that the fun of decorating a tree is doubled. And we love that this year we were finally able to give Papa his wish of a black Christmas tree. 

Chepe has talked about having a black tree since we first got married and since the girls and I got a pink tree last year I wanted him to get his wish too. The girls were so excited to surprise Papa with his very own tree. We worked hard at spray painting ornaments black and even being lucky enough to find black snowflakes at Target. Then we added a few other ornaments that represent our Papa Bear, including the original Vans Sticker that he stuck to our very first tree over a decade ago on our first Christmas season being married. To me this is the prettiest we have ever had (pictures do not do it justice), but maybe I am biased because black is my favorite color or maybe because in a way it represents my love for my honey bunny.

Merry Christmas Papa Bear...we love you!