Watch This:

If you are feeling overwhelmed, sad, tired, or just need a little reminder of why we celebrate Christmas, then give this video a watch. 

Have a very Merry Christmas everyone!

The Weekly Photo + some Christmas Scenes

Elanor waiting backstage at her ballet recital.

Recent Christmas Scenes:

Knights and Princesses

Elanor wanted a Medieval birthday party. Mostly, she wanted a dragon at her party. She really likes dragons. Since, the theme was medieval it had to be an evil dragon, so the kids could slay it. To start off the party, each kid had a cardboard sword I had cut out and painted and then they could use jewels/sequins/glitter glue, etc. to decorate their swords. It was surprisingly successful and all the kids enjoyed it. 

Elanor's decorated sword.

A little later, we told the kids about a dragon that had stolen all the gold from the village and these brave princesses and knights needed to take back the gold for the village and in the process slay the dragon. We had a dragon piñata that we filled with gold necklaces, jeweled rings, chocolate gold coins, and another candy which was also wrapped in gold. The piñata was super fun, even if they did need some help. 

Soon after, we went back inside and all the kids took turns shooting Elanor's bow and arrow (this is what she wanted for her birthday) and then did cake. I love making cake, so it was fun to put this one together! I made a chocolate caramel cake (chocolate cake, caramel layers in between, and chocolate frosting). 

I made a small caramel lake on top, just for fun.

She loved it!

I usually upload my videos to youtube, but it was not working all that well! So, I uploaded this through blogger and hopefully it works fine. This is just a video of Elanor blowing out her candles. It is rather funny as she zones out for a bit while everyone is singing "Happy Birthday".

All in all it was a fun and successful party. Everything went smoothly and Elanor even got some great gifts. Thanks parents! (gifts are always totally optional as I feel bad having people spend extra money around Christmas time).

Elanor Turns Four

Four years seems like an incredibly long time and an incredibly short amount of time. Elanor is so talkative and funny, opinionated and smart. I did not know a thing about the little person that I gave birth to, but over these fours years I have loved getting to know both her strengths and weaknesses. She is wonderful and will continue to be so. We feel blessed to have such a lovable, beautiful, intelligent, and full of personality kid. She is certainly not boring.

Traits/passions unique to Elanor: Very social and loving, loves to learn/do school, reading/being read to is Elanor's favorite thing to do, loves babies/very nurturing, is a good hiker, loves to dance, fast runner/athletic, loves her family and friends, loves to swim/go under water, is very silly and can teach you to be silly (i.e. silly lessons),  loves to go to church, has a vivid imagination, loves to play dress up, full of funny facial expressions, loves to ride her trike, loves all food, oh and she still sucks her thumb.

I love looking back at pictures of Elanor and hopefully you do as well, because here are 20 some pictures of Elanor growing up.

The Weekly Photo

Elanor turns 4!

The Weekly Photo (for Monday the 8th)

I know super late. This was from last week!

Elanor with Father Christmas. 

Elanor was so excited to talk to Santa! She was a tiny bit shy in his presence, but throughly enjoyed it. He asked her what she wanted and she said a bike. She was thrilled by the whole experience and I love all the magic Santa Claus brings into Christmas.

The Weekly Photo

I wanted to have a Thanksgiving picture for this week's photo, but I never end up taking pictures on Thanksgiving as it is so busy and full of food and fun. We did get our Christmas tree on Saturday and I got this lovely shot of Elanor looking at the tree.