As many of you know, we haven’t gone a year without building and decorating a gingerbread house (see exhibits here, here, here, and here, and we weren’t about to skip it this year. We found something a little different this time, though – a gingerbread turkey kit from Trader Joe’s! We thought it was a fun departure from the usual house, and it also gave us an excuse to exercise our decorating skills a little early, around Thanksgiving time instead of Christmas!
We got a decent photo with Santa this year! We had only taken Mio to see Santa Claus once before two years ago, and that didn’t end well. We just skipped it last year because she didn’t seem crazy about Santa then either, but this year she has actually been talking about him a lot, maybe because preschool has been hyping him up and partially because she’s able to grasp the idea of him a little better at this age. She’s had only one thing on her Christmas wish list this year (“pink octopus”, a Beanie Baby octopus she saw in a store a couple months ago), and she was determined to tell Santa in person to be certain he knew what to bring her for Christmas. This was Mirei’s first time meeting Santa Claus, of course, and she handled it surprisingly well!
When Mio spotted Santa, she dashed to him, yelling “I WANT PINK OCTOPUS FOR CHRISTMAS!” but I guess he hadn’t planned on having any further conversation with him, so once he sat her on his lap and asked her more questions, she was silent, looking slightly uncomfortable and awkward…
Well, I’m glad that we got at least one photo of Mio smiling with Santa, and although Mirei just looks kind of startled, at least she’s not in tears the way big sister was the first time meeting him!
It’s that time again… for one of our favorite holiday traditions: building and decorating the gingerbread house! I’m finding that it gets more and fun with every year, as Mio becomes more capable and involved in the decorating process… she placed a lot of the candy herself this year, and gave us some art direction! Mirei was asleep this year (probably for the better, since she probably would have tried to wreck our creation) but maybe next year she can help decorate, too!
In the days since, she’s been asking if she can break off a piece of candy off the house to eat almost daily. Eating it is part of the fun, too! 😉
See past years’ gingerbread houses: 2013 • 2012 • 2011
Hope everyone had a memorable Christmas! We’re spending the holidays quietly at home this year, since my due date is only about a month away now.
Christmas Day also happens to be my birthday, and this year I turned 31! We had a delicious dinner with the family (on Christmas Eve we had ham, but Christmas we had Peking duck for dinner — my favorite!), with cake afterwards. Here is Mio helping me blow out my birthday candles! (This is her favorite part of birthdays… she gets pretty upset if you don’t let her participate in blowing them out.)
A very Merry Christmas and happy holiday wishes from our family to yours! Here’s our holiday card from this year…
A lot of people have been asking where we got our photos taken. We actually took them in the comfort of the living room at home! Dan worked his magic with the lighting as well as some color correction of the photos afterwards, but the pictures came out looking pretty decent — almost studio quality! Thanks to how well the photos came out, they were easy to work with as I designed our custom holiday card. So glad so many people loved it! Hope it brought a smile to your face. 🙂