Christmas 2009

I have yet to download my pictures. Not sure what my little monkey did with my cord. So you will have to do with a narration.

Christmas Eve Savannah was all in a tizzy. She kept running around the house saying, 'We have so much to do. Hang the stockings, make Santa's cookies and milk.' She was very adamant that we 'make' the milk for Santa. So she helped Daddy hang the stockings. I was making acini-de-peppi for Christmas dinner and Muddy Buddys so I was not worrying about the cookies. I remembered we had some Keebler fudge stripped cookies upstairs and she was happy with that.

Once it started to get dark we decided to take a stroll through the neighborhood with the kids and dogs to look at lights. (we are dog sitting through the holidays. Needless to say the other dog is not used to a real tree and I think it thought it was great that we brought a real toilet(tree) in the house). Savannah was so nice to teach her sister the word 'awesome' although Charlie pronounced it a little different. So every house was 'wow' and 'hawsome'!! according to Charlotte. Charlotte loved the snowmen and penguins in peoples yards. Savannah liked the houses that were playing music. It helped to get us a little more into the Christmas spirit.

Christmas morning comes and I get a text from a childhood friend at 7:30a as my wake up call. My kids are still a snoozin. Charlie is the first one awake at 8:15. We recently took her crib down and so she is good at escaping. I bought the little childproof knobby things to keep kids out of things which I put on the inside of her door. The little stinker is smart and can take it off. Some days she is lazy and just yells 'DOOR' until we let her out. Christmas morning she decided to open it herself, although she did not come out of her room. Instead she decided to turn on her cd player full blast with the Chipmunks Christmas blaring. She was sitting on her bed singing along to Jingle Bells. In her version there is a Hey! after every line of song. This eventually woke up Savannah. We brought the scriptures into Charlies room to read Luke 2 and drink our grape juice.

**Grape juice is a Wright tradition from Chads grandmother. During the depression it was a treat to have grape juice so they only got it Christmas morning. The tradition has continued but I have evolved to white grape since I can't stand the purple stuff.**

We let the girls finally come down and they ran to their stuff. Savannah got a LeapFrog Tag system, a boy barbie, an alarm clock, a lite brite and some little tinker fairy Barbie things. Charlotte got the dora castle (totally recycled from 3 years ago with Savannah), a rocking chair, a magna doodle and the little fairy thingys. When Savannah asked to see Charlotte's magna doodle Charlotte layed down on it and yelled, 'MINE'. It was pretty funny. Chad let the girls play with their Santa stuff for like an hour so I went back to bed. Then we finally opened the gifts from everyone else. All in all we had a great Christmas.

We got a few unexpected gifts from unexpected people to which we are truly grateful for. These small gifts really helped to understand the true giving of Christmas. To whomever you are with the cards sent to and from us, we thank you. It helped out more than you will ever know. We are sad we were not in the black to send out cards to everyone this year. Maybe next year or a happy July. We wish you all the best and hope you will have a Joyous New Year.

Charlotte is 2!! ~ little late in posting

Charlotte is finally two!! Since our budget is to tight it squeaks I had to get creative. I wanted to throw her a little party with family and a few of our friends. This way she can get the whole party thing without me having to buy oodles of presents although I did already have stuff for her that I bought in September. Savannah helped me come up with the idea of a 'Winter Wonderland' party. Savannah's original idea was a snow fairy party but that required more $$ I thought. So I went to town with making snowflakes. My sis in law Anna showed me how to make the coolest 3D snowflakes. A lot less messy that the normal original ones I did. We even won a can of the spray snow at a gingerbread house contest so I used it on the windows out front. We also incorporated snowmen into our theme. Charlie loves snowmen so it was perfect!! (I forgot to take a pic of the snowman ornaments I gave out to kiddos, I'll post later)

Charlotte was not too sure about her cake. I decided that I am always going to do cupcakes for birthdays. Then have the special little birthday cake for the Happy Birthday person. Then they feel special and I don't have a huge pan of cake left over. With the help of her cousin she did finally get her candles blown out and stopped trying to grab them. Even though she had already had a cupcake she still wanted to dig in.

These are all the cupcakes I made for the party. I even found stuffed in my cupboard some snowflake cupcake wrappers. I sat and pipped all these cookies the night before. All the kids got to take home 2 cookies as their goodie bag. Two because she is 2 after all. They were yummy cookies and I got the recipe from my friend Debbie. I think I will have to make them again.

Of course this was what our winter wonderland looked like in our house. We will have all the snowflakes hanging up. Chad asked if we can just leave them up through January. When the heat kicks on they start blowing so we feel like its snowing.

This is 'Super Charlie'!!! My friend Aimee with her awesome talent made her this costume set for her. She looks so cute in it. She runs around the house going 'Da...Da...Da.. DA' with her little arm up in the air. If you want one she will custom make one with different logos (which she designs herself) for ya. I believe they are like $25. She does not buy the cheapo stuff, always the best. I had other pics of her opening gifts and I thought I loaded them but apparently not. It takes too long to load and I am already so far behind. We gave her a sit n spin and some little FP clip dolls. I am glad that I had got 2 because Savannah was good at 'breaking in' all Charlottes toys. She also got a pony, barbie, princess stuff, these fun bath butterflies that she plays with all over the house and some clothes. She was soo funny opening too that she had to get every piece of paper off the package before she would see what it was.

I made these little 'take home cans' for the kids to put their cookies in. We wrapped them in snowflake paper and they got to decorate them with making their own snowman. It was a lot of fun and kept the kids occupied.

When the party was over and we all had our naps, we had another party to go to. Our friend Sophie had her party on the same day. The girls were on the teeter todder together and it was so cute. Then Savannah got on the other side and bucked Charlotte off. She landed on her head. So she fell asleep pretty early into the party. Lots of fun but a little cold. Glad I had my little sleeping heater in my lap.

Wild Weather

We had a doozie of a storm on Monday night. It blew down trees and literally blew the lights off my house!! I had Christmas lights on the second story outside the girls window. It blew one strand completely off!! They were stapled gunned to the house and everything. I have no idea how it was able to unplug it's self and not pull all of them from the house but I am grateful. I guess I should have the simple single lights and not my snowflake ones huh. So if you see a strand a snowflake lights flying through the air they are mine. I guess Mother Nature wanted to make it 'snow' in Phx.

Land of the Dragons

So it has been forever since I have posted on the family blog. Little bit of craziness, plus I like to post pictures and I am a huge slacker when it comes to loading pictures. Here goes

At the beginning of November we went to the Phoenix Zoo since they were having a special day with Fisher Price. They brought in a bunch of toys (which was excellent marketing on their part for the kids to play with then ask for them for Christmas). They had a little station to make little necklaces and just play. Charlotte had fun playing with Dora and Savannah made necklaces for the entire family. They had a huge blow up dinosaur like one of their toys, and Charlotte wanted nothing to do with it.


They also had a power wheels driving course. It was pretty funny to watch all the kids drive. Savannah insisted that she wanted the pink Barbie jeep. Charlotte was just happy to be along for the ride. Savannah was pretty much an A to B driver and hit the rails a few times since she was going a bit too fast and didn't turn in time. They both had grins on their faces the entire time.


We went to see the Spider Monkey's which are Charlotte's favorite. She loves that you get to walk in their enclosure and have them right up close.

We also got to see a sneak peek before all the other crowds at the new Land of the Dragons, with our new Komono Dragons. There is a male and female. They are brother and sister. The male is 7 feet long 150lbs and the female is 6 ft 75lbs. We also learned that they will find a way to reproduce if there is not a male around. A female can lay fertilized eggs all on her own, but they will all be male. If you want to produce a female well then you will need the male.

We also headed over to Harmony Farm. The girls love to play on the little playground which was sponsored by Fisher Price and has all the Fisher Price animals to play on. We also went over to see Jack and Pedro (the horse & donkey). Chad was holding Charlotte and she want to nervously pet Jacks nose and he sneezed. She instantly starting crying and didn't want anything to do with the them anymore. It was hard to just get her to sit on the wooden horses for a picture.

Lastly the Sting Rays are back from their summer vacation. By the time we got there Charley had fallen asleep, but Savannah enjoyed reaching her hand in to pet them.