Four Random Things

One. Christmas Concert. The girls Christmas concert was as cute as could be! I have never seen costumes quite like this, but I kind of ended up loving them! Ev's was a Christmas tree!! She adored it (and rocked it!).

Two. Fake eyelashes. A friend convinced me to get fake eyelashes with her and I have to be honest, I kind of love them :).

Three. Not winning any fashion awards in China. But, seriously. We had to run down to the market and it has been freezing here! Everly was wearing three pairs of pants!

Four. We wish you the merriest of merry Christmas's.  We are off on a fun and exciting adventure to New Zealand and Melbourne! This is our first Christmas to spend without our families and while we are sad about that, we decided to plan one last big family vacation! 

She's Back :)

When we looked at our December calendar, we found ourselves with only one weekend at home in Chengdu (which was December 8th and 9th). We thought if we waited until then to bring back our favorite elf, we would only get one week with her before we left again, so we decided to bring her back as a Monday afternoon surprise. I am kind of sad that we didn't get to have our North Pole breakfast, but you know what - it didn't bother Emma and Everly one bit and they were just excited she was back!! 

Wes drew a special Christmas decoration with a picture of Snowflake.

And then he stuck her up there just waiting for the kiddos to notice.

Except that by the time they got home from school, she had accidentally fallen in the toy basket! Whoops!! Everly found her right away - Wes got a video and the excitement was too cute. They love our little elf.

She brought them a countdown calendar.

The next morning, she found herself in the refrigerator.

And then she brought their trees with ornaments.

She got into my anniversary roses.

Brought yummy donuts for a Friday morning breakfast.

And on Saturday morning, she brought the kids gingerbread houses! More pictures on that later.

This was her best hiding spot - the girls couldn't find her for more than an hour!

One morning, she brought them unicorn onesies/jamas.

hahaha, so ridiculous, but so cute!

One day, she found herself in a craft box.

Snowflake got into an orange one morning.

Hehe, I love this one.

She also has been found eating these cookies, twice!

All, and I mean ALL, the Snowflake credit goes to Wes - he is a rockstar with moving her and coming up with fun things for her to do! It has been so fun to see the excitement the girls have over Snowflake - it is the first thing they think about then they wake up in the morning. Wes tells me that Emma dashes home from the bus stop in the afternoons to see what Snowflake has been up too. And I love hearing all the stories relayed by the girls when I get home from work. Gosh, we love this season of life where everything is oh, so magical to our girls!!

Sister Sister

In addition to twirly pictures, I have several pictures of the girls with their arms wrapped around each other looking out at the beach. We affectionately refer to them as sister sister pictures and, again, I insist on getting one of these each beach trip! And they put up with me. Because they want ice cream ;).

Twirling in Thailand

I just cannot help myself - if there is a beach, I insist that my girls put on a twirly dress and twirl their hearts out. One catch - one of my girls is always up for twirling (because it means hunting for hermit crabs with daddy afterwards) and one of my girls takes a lot of convincing. Regardless, I am glad I put my foot down and make it happen. These photos are some of my most treasured photos through the years and one day, I will take the time to put together a little montage of them twirling throughout the years. Please indulge me while I share way too many pictures of these cuties in their twirly dresses :).

My favorite dresses on my favorite girls.