Christmas Week

For the third year in a row, Olivia got sick over Christmas break.  On the Monday before Christmas, she spiked at 103 fever and a trip to the doctor revealed strep! 

So instead of playdates and ice skating, we stayed home and did some low key activities including making salt dough ornaments which we decorated the following day.

After stirring the dough, "All I Want For Christmas" came on the radio, so Olivia showed off her dance moves! (Apparently a little strep throat isn't going to slow this one down.)

The ridiculousness of this pictures pleases Matt to no end! ;)

And back to the ornaments!

She really enjoyed decorating them.  For the first time, Olivia has recently been really into art/painting/coloring.  She will sit still for a significant period of time (20 minutes) to color or paint.  So, I suspect Santa will be bringing her lots of art supplies this year.  Decorating these cookies was right up her alley!

Matt's family loves looking at Christmas lights.  They will spend hours in the car enjoying lights.  I can't say I've got the same spirit as him, but when Olivia was interested in lights this year, he jumped on the opportunity.  So he surprised us that night with popcorn, hot chocolate and a Christmas light scavenger hunt game.  We found an awesome street close to our house that goes ALL OUT with the decorations!

Of course we also decorated cookies for Santa. Olivia took an extra long nap because she wasn't feeling well.  But she woke up to this waiting for her in the kitchen!

 She got to decorating and I think we created some pretty awesome cookies for Santa!  Olivia worked very hard on the "ornament" filled with purple gumdrops and she was thrilled with it.  She told the whole family about it and told them that she was pretty sure Santa and Mrs. Claus were going to fight over it.