New Car!

Old Santa Fe made it just shy of a faithful 7 years with us.  Once problems started popping up, we decided we needed a more dependable car, so enter NEW Santa Fe!  There's been some amazing advances in 7 years and this new car is so fancy!  I'm still learning all the things it can do.  

The girls think it's pretty cool too.  They want to "ride around the whole world" in this car.  New car also meant new car seats!  Elle graduated up to a big girl seat and she thinks she's SO grown up.  Scarlett got the same seat so now we can actually use the middle seat!  

New Year's Eve

We celebrated the second annual Cavola Mack NYE gathering this year.  We had the pleasure of hosting this year.  We spent the evening snacking and visiting.  The kids had a blast together!  They stayed up until 10:30 when we showed them the Madagascar Netflix kids NYE countdown and put them to bed.  Scarlett told me "I can't believe I stayed up until midnight!"  

Christmas

It's taken me a little bit of time to recover enough from Christmas to get a blog post up :o)  Scarlett was kind enough to share whatever virus she had with me...and it hit me Christmas evening.

Christmas eve morning we met friends at Chickfila for a playdate, then came home to get Santa's cookies decorated.  The girls had an awesomely messy time with it!

We went to dinner at Ruth's Chris to celebrate Grandpa's birthday (very yummy!), then returned home to put out our reindeer food and get ready for Santa!

The girls got to open their gifts from each other. 

Scarlett has been watching Star Wars with Daddy and it's her new favorite thing.  They can't wait to build this lego set together!

We found Elle her very own American Girl!  She was jumping up and down with excitement over this.  Scarlett and I lucked out in finding one that looks exactly like her!  Elle has loved getting her dressed and taking care of her.  She goes by "my American Girl" mostly, but Elle does change her name daily.  So far she's been Layla, Lylah, Emily, Sarah, Leslie, Elle, Ella and a few mismashed syllables that I'm not even sure qualify as an actual name!

We told the girls to come get us in the morning no earlier than 6am and sure enough they walked in our room at 6 on the dot.  We walked downstairs to see what Santa brought!  The MagnaTiles have been a huge hit!  They love them!  

They opened presents from us next.  We saved this for last...announcing our upcoming Disney trip!  

Scarlett's been loving the Kindle we got her!  

We spent most of the morning opening more and more presents!  I loved this picture of the girls opening their Taylor Swift CD.  They couldn't even believe it!  

The girls got bikes from Coco and Grandpa, but due to my illness, I have zero good pictures of that!  They are starting to get the hang of it!  Scarlett's starting off with no training wheels.  

Gigi and Donk came into town the day after Christmas for more celebrating!

December Fun

It's hard to believe Christmas is only a few days away!  We've had a very busy month.

Last weekend we went to see Disney Frozen on Ice.  It was a great show!  We didn't tell the girls ahead of time, so it was a fun surprise for them.  

I found a gingerbread cookie recipe that I wanted to try out.  I didn't expect it to get so complex, but it involved a dinner time run to Target to find a gingerbread cookie cutter (I swear I owned one...).  Since there were none to be found, we ended up with Ninjabread cookie cutters (which after a little convincing, the girls decided was pretty cool).  Like I said, I hadn't anticipated this becoming a big thing, so we had to go with what we had in the pantry for decorating (I had planned a little white icing piped on by me).  The girls had a good time with it and they ended up pretty cute.  More fancy cookies to come this week for Santa!

The girls didn't have Christmas parties at school, but they both had pajama day.  Elle got to bring a blanket and they had a movie day with popcorn.  They did some Christmas crafts at school, but also learned about Hanukah, Diwali, and Kwanzaa.  She came home last week telling me how Wednesday was an important day, but she couldn't remember why.  She said "I think it's a season" and when I asked about winter, she said, "nah, that's not it.  St. Patrick's Day!!"  After a bit more discussion, we landed on the fact that it was the first day of Hanukah!  Scarlett learned about all the holidays too and had "winter" fun at school.  

Friday was a half day at school, so they came home, bathed and changed for Santa!  Poor Scarlett was getting sick, but went along and took a great photo anyway!

Yesterday, much to our surprise we looked out the window and saw SNOW!  The girls were beyond thrilled to run out in it.  Even though nothing stuck, they were still so excited to see snow falling from the sky for the first time (true first for Elle, first that Scarlett can remember).  Look closely to see the snowflakes in their hair!

Today we made gingerbread houses (or as Scarlett insisted on correcting...GRAHAM CRACKER houses).  I found this genius tip on Pinterest to use hot glue to put them together (since no one eats them anyway) and it made the whole thing much easier!  I whipped up some royal icing to cover the glue and stick on the candy.  The girls loved it!  Scarlett of course had to tell me that she couldn't believe I used GLUE so now she can't eat it.  Not that she has EVER in her life eaten or even thought about eating a gingerbread house :o)

Santa!

We finally made it to see Santa on Friday.  The girls were thrilled and Santa was very sweet to sit and sing with them too.

Taking pictures while waiting in line

The wait wasn't too bad..finally our turn to see Santa!  

American Girl Experience

We took the girls to Charlotte last weekend to celebrate Scarlett's birthday.  She has gotten really interested in American Girls since she got Isabelle in June.  We decided to go for the full pink experience!

The Marriott offers an American Girl package that gives you the full pink experience.  They have an official AG check in line with a pink carpet!

The rooms have pink sheets, towels and blankets.

They give you a doll bed, robe and slippers to keep.

Special pink frosted cookies and milk delivery

After checking in and eating our cookies, we headed to the AG store.  Scarlett got lots of gift cards, so she shopped and shopped for Isabelle and Elizabeth.  We had a late dinner at the Bistro, complete with the full birthday party package!

Elle even got to borrow a doll (but was upset when she couldn't take it home!)

After dinner we had cake and ice cream.

Back at the hotel, the girls and dolls changed into pajamas and robes to get ready for bed.

One of Scarlett's purchases was a set of matching pajamas for her and Isabelle.

They also all got matching American Girl Charlotte shirts.  Triplets!

The whole surprise was a huge success!  Scarlett declared it the best hotel she's ever stayed at!  She also told me that the American Girl restaurant is pretty much the fanciest restaurant EVER.

In our Christmas jammies...