More CHRISTmas fun...

Last week we went to Tulsa one day. I had gotten a letter in the mail that said my phone wasn't going to be supported anymore through our service. So I thought I had to get a new phone before the end of the year. It turns out that isn't true, at least for right now. Nate needed to have his phone worked on anyways. So we went to Tulsa and the sprint store. We met my brother Matt and his wife Glenda and their girls at the mall. We visited and shopped for a while. It was fun to see them and hang out. Of course we did a little bit of Christmas shopping and a lot of window shopping. The kids got to see Santa again at the mall, (no pictures this time).
Here is our Santa picture this year by the way. I thought it came out pretty good. There wasn't a whole lot of smiling in the picture but at the time they had fun. Plus at least they are all looking at the camera and they are not crying. :)

At the mall they have a carousel. The kids wanted to ride of course. I have a ton of pictures of them riding various carousels so I wasn't going to take any pictures but Nate called me as they were going around to look. Everytime they went around Kaden gave me a thumbs up. We don't know why he did it but it was cute and funny. Meghan is there too but she is behind Nate. You can kind of see her pink sweater. haha

On another day we decorated gingerbread houses. I got a kit that made 5 tiny houses this year instead of the one big one. I thought it would be nice for the kids to have their own... which it was. Putting all those tiny houses together was not that much fun though. They had a great time with them. Kaden was doing so well, he was putting icing and candies on the houses until Nate asked him how it tasted or something like that. Once he found out that it was all edible he was eating it. He even took the candy off that he had already put on and he took bites out of his house and slurped icing out of the bag. We were cracking up.

Here are some pictures of them decorating the houses.

Here are the watchers. :) Ellie is making the cutest faces whenever I get the camera out. She knows what is going to happen!

On Friday we met Matt and Glenda in Muskogee. We went out to eat together and then went to look at Christmas lights. There is a castle there where they do holiday activities. We went there for the Halloween things for the kids. For Christmas they have a drive through snow globe trail and it's free to go through. You just drive through looking at all the different kinds of snowglobes. It's nice because everyone is going slow so you can see but you don't have to be out in the cold. After that we went to the Garden of Lights and again drove through looking at all the light displays they have. My favorites were the one with movement. There was a boy skipping stones and a man playing fetch with his dog. This is the only picture I took there. My camera doesn't take pictures very well at night. Overall it was a nice night hanging out with family and one of our Christmas activities we do each year.

Another thing we did this week was to take Ellie to get her ears pierced. We have been kind of putting it off and I wanted to get it done before I decided I didn't want to all together. We got Meghan's ears pierced at 5 months and Ellie is 9 months now. So we went to the mall in Muskogee and got them pierced. She did better than I thought she would. It seemed like the part she hated the most was being held still. I was trying to hold her while the lady cleaned her ears and put the dots on and she was struggling and getting loose. So Nate decided he should hold while they were pierced. She she was crying long before the piercing from being held still. She didn't cry too long after though and they don't seem to be bothering her. Again the cleaning of them and having to be still bothers her the most. That's one thing that would have been easier if it were done when she was younger. They are cute and I am glad we have it done now. Here are a couple pictures. I am posting a few because of the faces she is making when I get the camera. So cute! (Oh she is saying "dada" all the time now and looks at Nate when she says it so I think she knows. She also has 6 teeth, most are still working themselves in.)