Gower Christmas 2011

Well the Christmas season has come and gone and we had a lot of fun over the holidays. This post is a very pictured filled one to show all the good times we had through the month of December. We did some of our favorite traditions including: making gingerbread houses, decorating cookies, cutting down our Christmas tree and decorating it. Christmas morning was a blast and it was cool to see Paisley really understand the true meaning of Christmas (because it's all about presents, right?). Paisley remains deathly afraid of Santa Claus, but she was sure thankful for all the toys he brought. She even called him on her play phone and said, "Thank you Santa!" Enjoy the pics!

We picked out the perfect Christmas tree!

London is pretty excited for her first Christmas!

Look who's sitting up now! (Don't worry, I only left for a moment. I really had to go to the bathroom.)

We took the girls to the mall to see Santa. Paisley was deathly afraid and would not sit on Santa's lap. She also became quite protective when I said, "That's fine you don't have to, but London's going to sit on his lap." She quickly replied, "No London! Back in carseat, back in carseat!" London was all smiles on Santa's lap but we couldn't take any pictures due to the mall's policy. (This picture was actually taken at our Ward Christmas party.)

Paisley had fun with these cookies and thought it was pretty cool there was a snowman in them.

I took pictures of the girls this year for our Christmas cards (always a stressful event) and I was so impressed and happy with how well they smiled for the camera (it made it amazingly less stressful). It was really hard to pick the actually pictures for the card because they were so many good ones, so I decided to include them here. Enjoy!

 

 

Paisley had a lot of fun putting all the candies on our gingerbread house and London slept through the whole thing. I was really glad the house stood up because I skipped a few steps. (Who has time to let the house set for an hour before you put the decorations on?) I'm proud to say the house is still standing strong today.

 

Here's Scott and Paisley decorating the Christmas tree! Funny story: Paisley wanted to cut the netting off the tree so Scott helped Paisley hold the scissors and they cut together. While they were cutting, Paisley casually says, "Oh my finger." They get done cutting and when Scott takes his hand off the scissors, there was some blood. He had no idea where it came from. He looks at Paisley's hand and there was a cut on her finger. So THAT'S why Paisley said, "Oh my finger."

We decorated Christmas cookies using a recipe from my mother-in-law (it's SOOOO good.) Paisley had a lot of fun and enjoyed decorating and of course eating the cookies.

Here are the girls' dresses they wore on Christmas morning to church.

Paisley's two favorite phrases she likes to say to London are "Go away!" and "She's hugging me!" I'm sure you can guess which one this is because we can't show you the other.

Here's Christmas morning and the loot Paisley and London accumulated. It looks like Paisley got a lot for Christmas but her big gift was a kitchen and then she got mostly clothes. The poor girl only had like 4 outfits we were rotating through. I'm sure as a teenager she'll be very excited to get clothes but now as an almost 3 year old she was totally disinterested. In fact every time she opened an article of clothing, she would say, "This is for London," and pass it over to her little sister.

The day after Christmas we drove to Scott's parents' house and got to spend a few days with them. Here's Paisley and London with their Uncle Russ. Paisley has a bear stuffed animal she used to call "Rarr." After we visited them during Thanksgiving, Paisley started calling her bear, "Russ." Her kitchen comes with a play phone and on Christmas morning she kept telling us, "I'm going to call Russ." So I think we know who's her favorite uncle now.