Rice and ice

We had a nice December afternoon. I worked at the coffeehouse this morning then Mr. River walked over with Blue and Baby Bear, and we all continued to the mall (about a 5-10 minute walk from our house).

Our mall has an indoor ice rink for hockey and ice skating - and it's in the foodcourt. So you can literally sit over the ice rink and watch them skate/play. We picked up some Japanese food - Mr. River got sushi - and woodfired sandwiches and watched some people practice ice skating



If you can't tell by the picture, daddy got the girls ready.... the good thing was that he remembered the diaper bag. The bad part was that it was empty except one diaper LOL

After lunch, we picked up a gift for Mr. River's work gift exchange, and then we had the girls say hi to Santa - who had no line. They were able to stand in the room with him and chat for a bit. Well, Blue stared at him all wide-eyed and quiet, and Baby Bear petted Blue's hair.

We're hopeful that this "introduction" will make it easier when they get pictures next week.

Then we looked at the time, and raced home so naps could be had and Mr. River could get to work!

Is Christmas Here?

The day started in the wee hours of the morning as I finished sewing a hat onto a snowman:

Then, at a far more decent hour, we finally took down our fall season wall so that we can start our Winter and holiday crafts. I have a pretty grand idea for our "tree" but I need to get to work on it. Hopefully I will have it up in a few days :)

Beyond the tree, though, we have lots of winter crafts planned, plus our ornament advent calendar.

Today, we started some snowflakes and a Christmas countdown chain. 

For our snowflakes, I got the idea off pinterest to use coffee filters. These work ok, though they're a bit too flimsy for young children. We'll probably do other ones with normal paper. Blue's scissors are missing, and her purple spring-loaded ones are not nearly as "preschooler-friendly" as they claim. So I let her use my scissors, under our sharp (pun intended) eye. She did good, but enjoyed hanging the snowflakes up the most. We put them up on the windows of the girls' room. Between those and the Christmas lights, it's looking quite nice!

While Blue and daddy worked on the snowflakes, Baby Bear did some coloring. She bored of that quickly, though, and moved onto tasting the crayons. So, we switched her to playing with the fall leaves we had taken down.

I worked on the Christmas countdown chain, with Blue helping me count. Blue is "getting" that Christmas "is coming." But is having a harder time realizing that we'll be waiting a few weeks... not hours. I think the chain will help with that, as well as making our wall even more festive :)

Lights...camera... Christmas!!

In my family, we always started our Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving. No Black Friday shopping for us, we were busy decorating our (fake) tree, hanging up wreaths, and sorting through ornaments while we listened to Christmas music.

Mr. River doesn't seem as enthused about doing all the Christmas decorating on the day after Thanksgiving, and this year Thanksgiving fell so early that I was still in November-fall-fun mood and not feeling Christmasy quite yet.

But, with Thanksgiving and my birthday behind us, I am now feeling ready to deck the halls! Or at least, our apartment.

And so, today we started with the lights!

Blue helped daddy hang up the lights while Baby Bear stared up in awe. Blue helped me pick out some icicle lights at Target the other day to go with our standard Christmas decorating lights.  Of course, they were even more appealing since they are blue :) We put those out on our balcony.

Out front. Mr River and Blue hung up our multicolored lights, and then we even decorated the tree out front! I hope the complex doesn't mind lol. They're doing inspections next week so we'll see!

Blue decided to add some Christmas spirit  to our sidewalk :)

We discovered some awesome mushrooms at the base of the tree!

Blue admires the balcony