New holiday tradition

I love Chinaberry.com. When our house sale in Wyoming closed, I ordered the perpetual advent calendar pictured below. The box sizes are varied, so you could put actual small treasures in them, but we've been doing it like a treasure hunt. Each night after Bret gets home I put a note in the appropriate date and give the girls clues to where they can find that day's prize (an edible treat/holiday book/tickets to see a holiday show/a $1 bill for each girl/etc...). It's been a really fun way to count down to Christmas, and to get to know some of the nooks and crannies of our new home.



Of course, we've also enjoyed the chocolate-a-day calendars that Uncle Brian and Aunt Livia sent...Vivian ate all her chocolates on day 2...not Sabine, she takes this stuff seriously.

Random photos from this fall and winter

For sharing Bret with the team for 12+ weeks, Sabine and Vivian got flowers at the Swimming and Diving team banquet (so did Carolyn). Sabine and Vivian also picked out their "special outfits" to look pretty at the dinner.


Chirstmas tree "hunting" photos. We got our permits from the Forest Service and went out with the Klomparens clan. We found a tree that had been cut, but left on the ground (so yeah, it's a little Charlie Brown-ish, but just right for us!).



Sabine getting ready for her second ice skating performance as a Snowflake in The Grinch on ice...pretty darn cute. And can you believe I put all those curls in her hair? It holds a curl about as well as mine does (or doesn't). Thank God for hairspray!