The Ehrlichs: December (Part 1)

December started very quickly for us. Right after Thanksgiving was over, I felt like we were in a sea of Christmas songs, trees, cold, green and red. I used to not like this time of year so much, but as I have a little girl that I want to share special holiday memories with, I am finding that some things about Christmas time are really worth celebrating.

We ended up getting our tree up that first weekend of December. In years past we have spent the day after Thanksgiving setting it all up, but this year we just really didn't get to it. We had a little helper this year who is very curious about every little thing that we pulled out of the tubs of Christmas stuff.

This is one to the cutest pictures of Jaycee we took this month.

Jaycee was a little bit of a help putting up the ornaments this year. Tom and I decided that every year we would pick out a family ornament and write the year on it. Last year we started an ornament collection for Jaycee too. She actually got her first Christmas ornament from her grandma Ehrlich last year. I don't quite know what she thought of the ornaments and the tree, but she was pretty good about not going near it. We worked really hard on that. It also helps that our house is multi-level and the tree is on the level where she is not left to total freedom.

Jaycee seemed like she grew right before our eyes over the month of December. One of the newest things that she has been wanting to do is to feed and walk our dog Mollie. Mollie has not gotten as much attention in recent days, and I thought that this was a great way for Mollie to see that Jaycee love her. It is sometimes funny to see them play together. I feel like I have 2 kids some days, but Mollie listens a lot better than Jaycee, but we're working on that. Mollie sometimes gets tired of wanting to do the same things over and over again and will go and lay down in a chair, but she humors Jaycee from time to time.

A Night With Santa

Towards the beginning of December, I found out about a free event happening downtown. It was called A Night With Santa. I thought that it might be something fun that we could do as a family and who can beat free. All we were encouraged to do was bring some canned food for the Kansas Food Bank. It happened to be a week that there wasn't much going on, and so we went. As we were pulling up in the parking lot, I started to think, "What have I gotten us into?" We had to park really far away and when we walked in there were tons of people everywhere. It was like lines as the fair or an amusement or something like that. But we braved it anyway to see what it was all about and also since we were there we might as well see Santa too.

It was like a carnival. There were games, face painting, tatoos, pictures with Santa, and those moonwalk blow up games. Jaycee wasn't much for really any of it except for a blow up toy that was powered by a fan and could be seen from anywhere in the building. She hated the face painting and cried the whole time, and did the same for those rub on tatoos too. So we decided to see Santa. After standing in line for almost 20-30 minutes, we found out that we were in the line for something else. Tom and I decided that this probably wasn't for us anymore and we headed home. I was able to snap a few pictures before we left.

As we were leaving we saw some neat Christmas lights and Jaycee and I got out to pose in front of them.

Jaycee found some things that were toys last month. One of them was the gate. She shakes it and looks through it at us or at the dog. She also really loved the lights and a Little People nativity set that was given to us by a dear friend.

This became one of Jaycee's favorite toys to play with this year. She would take turns stacking different figures up on the top of the stable. I really thought that she knew which one the angel was, but not quite. She put every animal and person on top of the manger and then it played a cute little song.