Playstreet Museum!

That was a fun little pause on our trip at home celebrating Emma's birthday and getting a look at Valentine's Day! Now we are back to pictures of home; I promise we will make it to Christmas soon ;).

^ typically when we go home, Wes and I spend one morning at the dentist and getting our skin checks (they are both in Dallas so we try to combine them) and then we reward ourselves with my favorite burger from Shake Shack. ohhhh emmmm geeee this burger is delicious. hands down my favorite burger. my mom watched the girls (thanks Nonni!). ^

^ this particular day, we decided that Ev's spider bite (we weren't sure exactly what it was at this point) wasn't getting any better so we took her to the doctor too.  turns out it was a spider bite. ^

^ my mom hosted a family dinner this particular night (with Ally's clan and Austin's clan) and these two enjoyed sitting by each other ;). ^

^ Emma loves a good craft. she was beyond delighted when Papa George went to the library and brought her home a book full of crafts (Nonni and I were not as thrilled because we knew the execution would fall on one of us - turns out Nonni was the lucky duck ;)).  she looked through the craft book and picked out two or three crafts that sounded the best (of course, her preference would have been to do every.single.craft.) and we wrote a list of the art supplies for Nonni and Papa George to pick up one day. then Nonni and Emma got busy working on crafts #luckyNonni ;). ^ 

^ bedtime books with Papa George was a favorite activity. ^

^ the girls found Snowflake one morning doing their favorite puzzle. ^

^ after they found Snowflake, Ally and I took our kiddos to meet Kelli and her kiddos at Playstreet Museum! we had heard about this, but never had a chance to go before and it turned out to be super fun - the kiddos (ages 1 - nearly 6) all had a blast! ^

^ we played with Magnatiles. ^

^ played kitchen and gave our cousin some snuggles. ^

^ the girls favorite part, though? definitely these pipe things where they constructed the pipes to go down and make a turn - they loved figuring this out and then letting the ball go down multiple times. ^

^ this is what happens when you are playing by yourself and your cousins can't stand to see you having any alone time ;). my girls don't believe in personal space. ^

^ the girls loved this foam. ^

^ I can't remember, but I think she is holding a phone? ^

^ another one of the kiddo's favorite parts - playing mail delivery :). ^

^ my favorite part? the old fashioned ice cream shop.  I loved how the girls could use their imaginations to play here. ^

^ Ally and Katelyn!! ^

^ we love these markers so much, we bought a couple of packages to take home to China with us. ^

^ the girls played for about three hours before we headed out. ^

^ Chuy's lunch afterwards was perfect - the food was yummy yummy! ^

^ when we got home, Snowflake had brought the girls a cute snowman cake - and even had taken a bite ;). ^

Enchant

Long before we arrived back in the U.S. for Christmas, Wes had heard that there was a new light show coming to Arlington and he booked our tickets for December 18th! We were pumped when the day was finally here!!

^ daddy and his girl. ^

^ we got there fairly early and there was literally a two minute wait for Santa - so we got in the very short line, the girls could already see Santa from where we were waiting! ^

^ what a bonus! we had no idea Santa would be there - the girls enjoyed getting to meet him! again! ^

^ it's hard to capture how ginormous and terrific this tree was in person - it was a delight to take in (the only thing that would have made it better in my opinion is if it was programmed to music - we were a little disappointed that there was no programming throughout the venue). ^

^ can you see how itty bitty Emma looks next to just a portion of it? ^

^ there was a scavenger hunt for the kids to participate in - they needed to find all of Santa's reindeer and do the scratch off when they found them.  this was right up Emma's alley and they really enjoyed this activity. ^

^ I loved this huge tunnel full of lights - there were also tons of other people that loved it as well. ^

^ there were food trucks galore - we had no idea or else we wouldn't have eaten dinner before we came, but the girls still had fun grabbing a treat of cotton candy and popcorn. ^

^ Evsie's inside of an ornament. ^

^ we found another reindeer! actually I have pictures of the girls by each and every reindeer, but I don't want to bore you to pieces (just letting you know if you have kids around Emma and Everly's ages (4 and 5), they will love this next year!). ^

^ I had two favorite memories from this night - one of them was watching Everly run with pure joy through this area that had thousands of lights stringing down and mirrors all around (a really cool effect). ^

^ just look at that smile. ^

^ pure magic and enchantment (see what I did there?) from our littlest bah-boo! ^

^ gleeeeeee! ^

^ we asked someone to take our family picture and I am so glad we did! zoom in to see Everly's blue mouth, stained from the cotton candy! ^

^ their poses crack me up - where do they even come up with this stuff? ^

^ goodness, I love these three so much! ^

^ my other favorite memory of the night? taking Emma ice skating for the first time!! ^

^ this could have either been a disaster or so much fun, but for $5 a person we decided to give it a go and it was sooo much fun! she did great (I attribute this to her roller blade-ing practice). ^

^ growing up, my parents would take us to the Galleria every Christmas to go ice skating around the huge Christmas tree and it is such a fond memory for me; I am so glad I got to experience just a piece of that with Emma - I look forward to many more ice skating sessions in our future. ^

^ while we were ice skating (Ev's opted out), they watched us for a bit and then Wes took her to a maze where she could run all about - looking at these pictures, looks like she was having a great time with just her daddy. ^

What a great night!!!