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.

Wonderscope

Jason has been working every Saturday from noon to 8-9. Or some similar shift. During the week, I work during the day and he works in the evenings.Sundays are busy with church and Awana. So we haven't really had any time to do any fun family activities recently. Today, however, he somehow managed to not be scheduled until early afternoon. I don't work Saturdays, since there is no school. So we finally were able to plan a fun family trip. We took the girls to the wonderscope in Shawnee, KS, which isn't all that far away. It was lots of fun!

I charged my battery the night before, cleaned my camera lens and of course forgot my memory card! So I could only take as many pictures that could be saved into the internal memory of my camera. That was kind of a bummer. But thankfully I got some good ones...enjoy!

As you can see, Kylie was upset she was being held when there were so many fun toys in sight.

This is one of my favorite pictures of all time. It doesn't get much cuter than babies playing with mirrors.

She was having a hard time getting over that hill. It was a lot steeper than it looks in the picture.

Jason was laying her down and letting her go down the slide "all by herself." She LOVED it.

Jason painted the letter "K" on her cheek. That's about the extent of his artistic abilities :).

When we visited this room the second time, Kylie discovered that all the toy cars were scattered around the room. She exlaimed: "Oh no! Mess!" and picked them all up. It made me laugh.

Family Fun and Goat Tackling

Here's everyone at Deanna Rose (minus my mom who was taking the picture). Eve is there too, she's hiding in the stroller.

A couple weeks ago, my youngest sister Kelly had a week-long softball tournament here in Kansas City. So she, along with my parents, stayed in our apartment with us. They were very busy with the tournament, so we didn't see them during the day very much. There was one day, however, that Kelly only had one game. Jason also had the day off, so we took advantage, eating lunch with my great aunt in a fun family buffet complete with bumper cars and laser tag and then going to Deanna Rose Children's Farmstead along with said aunt's granddaughter and her children. We all had lots of fun, except for my mom during laser tag. She hates being chased. I do not have pictures of our lunch/bumper cars/laser tag experience, but I do have lots of Deanna Rose:

Kylie and Johanna in the old schoolhouse







Kylie in the goat pen: at first all she wanted to do was run around in circles like the wild child that she is.


















Then a nice lady gave her a bottle to feed the baby goats. How fun!


















And here it is: the moment we've all been talking about (i.e. when Kylie decided to tackle this poor goat). Here she is putting him in a headlock before throwing him to the ground. The poor goat is so docile, he just got up and ran far away.















This goat is pretty smart and is trying to escape from Kylie Bear.