Crown Center Christmas Crayola Land

Right after Kylie's birthday, Jason and I took our girls to the Crown Center to check out all the Christmas decorations and displays. It was lots of fun. They had their Christmas Crayola Land exibit which was perfect for Kylie. She was big enough to play with everything completely on her own, but not too big where it was boring. It was fun to watch her run around and have a blast. She fell down a couple times climbing on some of the displays, and I heard some of the moms say: "Oh no! Is she alright?" I told them just wait and see. Sure enough, Kylie just bounced back up, laughing and fell down again... on purpose. I need to get this girl in gymnastics (or maybe in some toddler stunt actor program); she falls off of lots of things on purpose and just laughs and laughs. The minute I rush over and act worried, she starts crying, so I know now to just wait and see if she gets up laughing or crying to judge if she is really hurt. If I act like she should be hurt, she just acts hurt because she sees that I'm worried. Well, she sure had lots of fun climbing everything and "tumbling" everywhere.

Eve also loved it, we found quiet corners for her to crawl around and pull up on. She also just enjoyed sitting and watching all the "big kids" run around.

The night before we went, Jason had brought home a surprise for me. A new digital camera. I know what you're thinking, I do NOT need another camera. I'll agree. However, it is an SLR camera, a Nikon D40. Unbeknownst to me, he had been keeping an eye on it at Sears. Sears was no longer going to be carrying that model, so Jason watched the price drop and drop. Finally, Jason purchased it and got an amazing deal. I would have been so upset if he would have spent the regular price on it (We are trying to be more careful with our money and are starting a new much needed budget), but when I heard how much he spent on it, there was no way I could tell him to take it back. So, this trip was the first time I got to play with my new camera. I still have lots to learn, but it was just so much fun regardless! I hope you enjoy these pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them. If you want to make a picture bigger, I think you can just click on it.



Going down head first, like the little daredevil that she is:


Yes, that is a Dora backpack (a birthday gift from her Aunt Stephie):

Somewhere along the way, we seem to have lost a sock:

Check out Jason in the background trying to encourage Eve to go through the tunnel:



We tried to take a picture with this mechanical Santa. We don't teach the girls that Santa is real, since we want to emphasize the real story behind why we have Christmas. You really can't get away from Santa in this society around this time of year, so we just tell them that Santa is a fun imaginary story. So we didn't bring them to get a picture with Santa anyhere. I figured a picture next to an obviously fake Santa wouldn't be a big deal. Unfortunately, we had a hard time getting Kylie to look at the camera instead of robot Santa. This is the best we got.