Have yourself a Merry little Christmas!

Here's just a few pictures from Christmas break.  I took the kids to the mall to finish out Christmas shopping on Saturday, December 23rd.  They got to pose by the nutcracker statue.  They've watched the nutcracker every year (on TV--I'm not brave enough to take them to the actual ballet).  We also read the story book from the library this year.  

I was excited about Christmas presents this year.  Isaac had been asking for a bow and arrow ever since his birthday, and finally decided to write Santa a letter asking for one the Saturday before Christmas.  Since the letter was so late, we decided to take it to our resident mailman, Al, and he was amazing.  He not only delivered the letter to Santa on time, but he managed to get Santa to return a letter to Isaac and a bonus one to Esther the next day.  It was postmarked with a  very genuine looking North Pole stamp, and had some oats to feed the Reindeer.  So When Isaac opened his present from Santa, he was pretty sure Santa sent him a bow and arrow.  Lucky for us, he was right.  Esther had no idea what she wanted for Christmas and told Al that, but luckily, Santa knows her well enough to have given her her favorite Netflix show characters.  Esther has also liked to be a cat lately, so we got her a little tiger dress up costume.  So far she really only wears the tail.  I guess she doesn't like headbands.  But her face when she opened it was enough for me.

After Christmas, we had some time to just chill because both kids have been sick with a cough and Dad was trying out his new bike on a trail, so we had a puzzle day.  Esther did three 24 piece puzzles, and one 60 piece puzzle.  Isaac did two 100 piece puzzles and one 60 piece puzzle.  They did fabulous, although I did have to help here and there.  Esther was definitely puzzled out by the time we hit the 60 piece puzzle, and needed some encouragement to finish up.  But they did a good job and they are proud of themselves.