Christmas

Well, we made it through the holidays.  I have a love-hate relationship with that time of year.  I do love the holidays.  I love the food, cookies, gifts, time of giving, Christmas lights, etc.  But I hate the crowds at Super Target when all I want to do is get some groceries.  I hate waiting 10 minutes just to park my car.  I actually did most of my shopping online this year and it was most pleasant!  

Anyhow, Christmas was good.  Meredith is back in school and she is having a great time having playdates with some other kids in the neighborhood.  We are in the process of registering her for kindergarten!  She loves playing hockey and we have seen so much improvement since she started back in October.  

Anna is talking up a storm.  She must have 15-20 words.  She even has a 2-word phrase - mo cwacka (more cracker).  Everything that is food is a cracker to her.  She giggles when she burps and farts.  It's fun to see her little personality develop.  She's stubborn.  She screeches all day long - basically whenever Meredith touches her.  She is teething all four of her 1st molars.  The two upper ones have cut through and the two bottom ones are hugely swollen and will probably pop through any day.  I just signed her up for a 2's program starting in the fall where Meredith goes to preschool.  How is she going to be old enough for that already???

Here are a few photos from Christmas.  Most are dark, out of focus,  and do not feature faces.  

Meredith, Anna, and cousin Bowen with Grandma.  

Opening a gift.  

Every year, Meredith passes out all the presents and Grandpa helps her read the tags.  

The three littles.  

The Hello Kitty umbrella was a huge hit.  

This was funny although you can't tell from the picture.  My cousin Mary Jo got a Coach purse and wallet as a gift and Anna came over and just started looking at it and crying.  

Christmas Day's loot from Santa.  After that, we Skyped with Grandma & Grandpa Carlson and Uncle Scott and opened more gifts.  Then Lois stopped in for a visit as well before we headed back to the farm.  

Again, trying to get a nice picture of the girls but this is the best I can get.  

Random Holiday Stuff

Before I post Christmas pictures (most likely in a couple weeks- ha!) I thought I'd share a few pictures leading up to the holidays.  

Here is our Christmas card photo for anyone who didn't get a card.  We actually took this on a warm day in November sometime.  It's extremely hard to get a picture of them both looking, and smiling.  One I had to bribe and the other...well, you get what you get.  

We took the girls to see Santa at the Burnsville Mall.  It was a different Santa than we have seen since Meredith was a little baby.  It makes me wonder where the other one went?  Anyhow, after paying around $30 to get the digital file and a couple prints, this is the result.  Out of focus and dark.  And the proverbial screaming child.  I think next year we'll try the free Santa at Byerly's.  

Here is the rare picture of Greg & I all cleaned up.  We were headed out to Greg's work holiday party.  

Meredith had her Christmas program for pre-school.  It was absolutely adorable.  There were 3-year-old and 4-year-old, and 5-year old classes singing.  That's Mer in the middle in the red dress.  

The following week, adults were invited into her classroom to help make gingerbread houses.  We sampled cookies the class had made as well.  

Florida Part IV

For the rest of our trip, we just kind of hung out.  We played shuffleboard, pickle ball, and bochee ball. The men golfed.  We ate out and bought a did a little Christmas shopping.  

On the way home, our plane changed twice before our trip even started so our seats we had all together kind of got ruined because they gave us new seat assignments each time.  Our seats ended up being about 10 rows apart.  Greg had the pleasure of taking care of the baby beast on the way home while I sat about 10 rows up with Meredith.  Surprisingly, she did quite well again and there was no prolonged crying or fussiness.  Thank goodness!  See, all smiles!  

Florida Part III

On Day 3 of or trip to Florida, we visited Uncle Donald's Farm (or Old MacDonalds Farm as we referred to it as).  It's just a farm on the outskirts of The Villages.  But not just any farm.  Actually it was more like a zoo.  You want to see Chickens?  They have 30 different kinds.  You want ducks?  They have 20 kinds.  Geese, swans, rabbits, goats, ostriches, cows, pigs, horses, wild cats, owls, birds, and many other varieties of wild animals.  They had a lot more than I expected.  

My favorite chicken.  So cute!!  

This little one was sleepy.  

Meredith had a blast feeding the animals.  

Another one of my favorite, fluffy chickens.  I think it was a Frizzle chicken.  

We took a hayride out to the pasture and we fed cows.  Since I was the farm girl, I was designated to lead the way on all this so you will see me in a lot of pictures.  

Yep, there I am feeding the cows.  And petting our kitty friend who joined us on the wagon ride.  

Since we were the only ones there, Meredith got to do a lot of things like hold this chicken. 

And pet this goat.  

And milk this goat.  I milked the goat too.  

Here we are waiting to feed a baby goat.  

Awwww, so cute.  This little girl was only two weeks old.  

Florida Part II

Day 2 we headed over to New Smyrna Beach on the Atlantic Coast.  The day was a cool, cloudy day but we hoped as we got closer to the coast, the clouds would dissipate.  No such luck.  It actually was super windy too blowing all the really fine sand in our eyes.  As you can see, we were the ONLY ones on the beach that day.  And we weren't there very long.  New Smyrna doesn't have much to do so we ended up driving a bit further north to Daytona Beach.  We didn't actually get out and go to the beach but we drove through the town and it was quite nice.  I think we may do a weekend out there the next time we go.  

It looks like we landed on the moon but alas, that is the beach we're on here.  

Oh wait...did I say we were the only ones at the beach?  Let's not forget the dog walker and the metal detector dude.  Anyway, this next series of pictures is cute. Mer was so happy to be at the  beach that she just started hopping and skipping around and wouldn't stop.  It looks like she's moon walking in the ones where she's in the air.  

Oh, we have this cute little baby too...her name is Anna.  And her hair looks quite red in this picture.  

 No matter what the weather, you can't go to the ocean without wading so I took one for the team and ended up getting wet.  Seriously, look at those waves!

 What to do with white, fluffy sand?  Make sand angels of course!  

Florida Part I

It's been a while since I've updated. We've been busy with lots of stuff going on between preschool, hockey, and going to Florida with a bunch of other stuff mixed in!  I'm going to post pictures in a couple of different posts because I simply have too many to go through.  

Our trip was great!  I was most nervous about the plane ride.  Not so much Meredith, but I was afraid Anna would screech or scream the whole way down.  I was next to her on the way down and she did pretty darn good.  She had her own seat and we did strap her in her car seat so I think that helped as she's used to being good when she's in her car seat.  I went armed with tons of snacks.  And when she did get antsy, I let her play on the iPad.  She loves just looking at pictures and movies.  And I was AMAZED at all the junk we were able to haul through the airport without a cart.  Two large suitcases, two carseats, diaper bag, camera bag, stroller, & Meredith's backpack which she wheeled herself.  

As for what we did, I was not even tempted in the least to go to some mega tourist attraction (AKA Disney World, Sea World, etc.).  Yay!  We ended up doing some great things where we were virtually the only people there most of the time!  Pure bliss I tell you.  

The next day after we arrived, we headed to Weeki Wachee Spring State Park to see the Mermaid shows.  There were probably only 50-75 people there that day and it was delightful.  First off, the park was full of peacocks.  They are everywhere!  And they come up to your table and beg for food like rodents.  

This was a set of Christmas decorations that actually spelled Mermaids but I thought it was cute for Mer to sit on the first three blocks.  

We were inside the underwater theater here ready for one of the mermaid shows.  

This is about as good as it gets for my mermaid pictures.  You can see the three of them in there.  It is actually quite an amazing show they do.  

And then the girls got to sit for a picture with a mermaid!  

Cute picture of them playing with each other.  

In case anyone was wondering, yes, I was in Florida too.  A horrible picture but there I am!  

Last but not least, we got Grandpa Carlson to pose as Poseidon.  You can't see his face very well in this picture though.  

Stay tuned for more pictures of the things we did in the next week or so!