Christmas 2012

Finally caught up to Christmas! And it was only a month ago!

We were very excited to celebrate our first Christmas 'at home' this year. It was one of the more relaxing Christmas' we can remember in a long time. We hardly knew what to do with the extra days off and nowhere we needed to be!

Zoe enjoyed all the activities leading up to Christmas this year: searching for Holly our house elf every morning, reading all the Christmas books all day, making cookies every other day with Mommy, decorating the tree, and putting her ornaments on her Advent Tree from Grandpa. She was obsessed with Santa this year, but we missed out on ever actually seeing him, so she'll have to wait until next year.

Christmas day lasted 2 days this year as well. Zoe didn't really know what was going on this year until she went into the family room the morning of and saw all the presents and stockings filled. Next year, she'll be a pro and just getting thru December will be daunting enough! She was perfectly happy tearing through a present and thinking it was the best toy ever and playing with it for half an hour. Then curiosity would get the best of her and she would open another and find yet another best toy ever. She was also a big fan of helping Emma open her presents as well, and sometimes relieving her of said present.

We did miss seeing all our family and playing in the snow. We didn't miss the holiday travel and accompanying sickness!

Zoe's Advent Tree

My dad made Zoe her very own Advent Tree.  Zoe loves the tree and points to it if we haven't added an ornament to the tree for the day.  Sometimes she says tree, but it sounds like eeee.  She loves the star at the top - this year we are not waiting for Christmas Day to add the star.  It's definitely her favorite! She sings "Twinkle, twinkle, little star" after taking it off and adding it every day :-)

Our Christmas Tree Adventure

This year we decide to try out a new Christmas tree farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains....  It was the real thing!  Cut and carry your own tree to your car.  No lots or labeled trees and believe it or not our tree did look small compared to all the rest!  We have a new rule: If Brian needs my help to carry the tree into the apartment, it is probably too big :-)

Our Christmas tree... and yes, we did cut off about a foot :-)

Some additional pictures of Zoe with her Santa hat - she picked the hat with sparkles.

An Elf in St. Louis

Finally caught up to all the Christmas pics. Unfortunately no Wii fun with MeMa and PawPaw...but there were lots of snuggles! Zoe also got to meet the rest of the Missey clan: Uncle Steve (aka the unabomber), Aunt Julie, Megan, and GG Roy.

An Elf in Indy

A little long, but worth it if only for the wii action at the end. Enjoy!

Zoe's First Tree

We're still catching up on all the backlog of pictures and events from the holidays. Prior to heading home to the midwest, we wanted to get some pictures of Zoe with her first Christmas tree. This tree was a bit like the sad Charlie Brown tree, though not quite as sparse. Originally, we wanted to head back to the Christmas tree farm we went to last year where you cut down you're own tree. But the weekend we wanted to do it was cold, wet, and nasty, so we ended up at Home Depot. First, the tree didn't want to suck up any water. Then a night later, MeMa's first with us during her visit, we turned on the heat and woke up the next morning to a large patch dead and browned. Miraculously, the tree did make it almost three weeks with no water. At least Zoe didn't care! :)

For her pictures, I think we were able to cover up the dead spot with her Bumbo throne lined with fleece. :)