What We've Been Up To

We were snowed in for most of the weekend, which was actually really nice seeing as it was our last weekend as a family of three.  By this time next week, baby sister will be here!

On Friday afternoon, Eric took Madeline shopping for snow boots.  Madeline is the luckiest girl in the world when it comes to Dadas because he bought her these:

I am a mean Mumma, so I probably wouldn't have even let her see those sitting on the shelf.  I would have found something plain and sturdy. But Madeline loved them so much that she didn't want to take them off in the store, so Eric scooped them right up.  Their best feature is that they light up when she walks.

What turned me in favor of the boots was how happy it made Eric to buy them for her.  As soon as they got home, he had her try them on for me.  Those two are the cutest.

We spent the rest of the weekend lounging around playing Santa...

 And watching The Polar Express for the first time.

We have the book, but I was worried that Madeline might be a little scared of the movie since it has some creepy parts.  She didn't blink through the entire film.  It was a major hit.

By the time it was over, she was completely amped up for Santa to visit our house.  It's hard to convince her that he's not coming until Christmas Eve.  Whenever we try to explain that concept to her, she argues, "But it's the Christmas season now."

We did some quick and easy "baking" projects.  Madeline made Reindeer Food (trail mix).  This was a great project for her because she could scoop all the ingredients into the big bowl herself.  It can get a little chaotic and frustrating cooking with Maddie Bear.  Madeline likes to dig right in and start pouring all the stuff into the bowl even if the recipe doesn't call for two cups of salt.  Then she gets mad if I try to limit her creative process.  Usually I end up giving her a separate set of spoons and some fake ingredients and let her have at it.  Reindeer Food was a success because I just sat back and let her do her thing.

We also made some chocolate turtles.  Nom.  Cookies are on the agenda for later this week!

We finally wrote Madeline's letter to Santa.  I wanted to list the reasons why she's been a good girl this year, so I asked Madeline, "What do you do to help Mumma and Dada?" She thought a moment and answered, "Um, eat candy canes???"  Of course when I asked her, "What toys would you like Santa to bring you this year?" she had no problem at all answering, "Frozen dollies and Ariel Legos."

We had about a foot of snow fall through the night into Sunday morning.  When Eric went out to shovel, Madeline wasted no time putting her new boots to the test.  I did not go out into the cold with them, but I had a fun time watching Madeline make snow angels from the window.  She's been obsessed with trying to eat snow.  If we don't watch her carefully, she tries to scoop it up in the grossest of places...like parking lots.  Since this was new snow, and there was a lot of it, Madeline finally got her fix of snow eating.

We spent the rest of Sunday afternoon in our PJs.

Until cabin fever started to set in...