Anna's Christmas Fun

I absolutely love making memories around "events" and this Christmas, we worked really hard to squeeze a lot of those in. It was much easier to make that happen for Anna if we took only her and left Megan behind. Megan's just at a difficult age because she wants to get into everything and isn't too content sitting in a stroller. We didn't feel so bad leaving her out knowing that she didn't have a clue anyway. (I'm really looking forward to next year when it will be perfect to celebrate everything with both the girls.)

Baking cookies at Grandma's - This was during a Bengals home game. I took the girls over and laid Megan down early for nap and the three of us "big" girls baked Christmas cookies. Anna couldn't stand the excitement knowing that she could eat them when she woke up from her nap.

Southern Lights in Lexington - This has become a Blaze family tradition ever since our days began on campus at UK. We start out with dinner at Cracker Barrel down the road from the Horse Park and then head over to drive through the lights and go to the petting farm. Anna checking out the lights by kneeling on her car seat and holding onto Baw Baw's seat.

"Getting the Feel" of the ponies.

Sometimes I think Uncle Andrew gets more excited about the petting zoo than the kids.

This picture turned out hysterical. I have no idea what this weird creepy animal is, but I was a mean mom and made Anna take her picture with it because I thought it was hilarious that a) it looked like a cross between a llama and a lion and b) that Anna was so scared of it (rightfully so). The best part of this picture is that our camera is terrible when capturing eyes so this thing's eyeball looks like it's straight out of a Lord of the Rings movie or something.

Jonathan, Shelby, Andrew and I help decorate the Christmas tree.

Festival of Lights at the Cincinnati Zoo - A perfect night, not too terribly cold. We enjoyed as much as we could that would also appeal to a two year old. This included pizza, a train ride and a gingerbread man cookie.

Fun family night culminating with a fantastic Anna quote that has become our favorite: We grabbed a hot chocolate and coffee as we were leaving. On the way home, Matt cranked up the Christmas music and was singing quite loudly for fun. As he was belting out "O Holy Night" in his best choir voice, we hear a tiny voice call out from the back seat in between gingerbread man bites "Hey Daddy! Drink. Your. Coffee!" Soooo funny. We were rolling in laughter.