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Our Christmas story continued much like the Biblical one. Visitors from afar arrived with gifts, though not gold, frankincense, or myrrh. G’Mom and Grampa flew up two days after Christmas to spend 8 days with us and continue the Christmas celebrations.

Molly has been on several overnight trips this Fall, and both girls spend the night out frequently, so these new duffles were very much appreciated!

Back in November, Jen was invited to a party to make creative wood signs. She came home with the how-to and decided to make wood signs for several family members. It was definitely a joint effort. I decided that simply screwing together some boards from Home Depot would not do. So, I bought some rough hardwood (this is Ash, others were Red Oak), milled them, glued up a panel, cut, stained and sealed them. Jen created the design and painted. If you have a keen eye, you may have caught a different version of this in the Christmas Day opening presents pictures.

We don’t see too many movies in the theater, but we’ve been excitedly anticipating the release of Mary Poppins Returns. So, we bought our tickets early and all headed to the theater to see it.

We love going to the movies with reclining cushy seats. It was G’Mom and Grampa’s first time in a theater like this.

Grampa’s birthday fell during their visit, so we made sure to celebrate. We had saved a turtle cheesecake from Molly’s pie sale with her middle school just for the occasion.

And there were lots of little fun activities around the house, like this elephant wood puzzle.

After a late night, the girls didn’t wake us up too early in the morning. Once they got up, the first thing they found by their stockings was a smaller Squishmallow to join their larger one.

Unicorns and fleece onesies are all the rage, so these pajamas were a big hit.

Since Grams was in the hospital, we changed things up a bit. We all met up at our house to celebrate together. Our house was also conveniently the closest to Johns Hopkins hospital, making it easy for us to go see her for Christmas Day hospital visits. Sorry, no pictures from the hospital, though I do have pictures from our house.

Molly brought down her R2-D2 droid to entertain Max, and it certainly did capture his attention.

Even more surprising than moving the celebration to our house, our tradition-keeping family decided to go non-traditional. Tacos for Christmas were delicious (though there was still pumpkin pie for dessert).

After lunch, we opened presents. Charlie got a Squishmallow too.

Molly’s been saving her money to buy a Nintendo Switch for some time. She was much of the way before Christmas, and hoping Christmas would put her over the top to buy one. I knew she would get enough, so I secretly bought one on a Black Friday sale and hid it away. So, after getting enough money, she started asking when we could go somewhere to buy one. I promptly became the store of Chad and let her buy it right then. She was very excited.

That’s one happy girl ready for some fun.

After helping put on several church services (2 for Leah, 3 for Molly), we had a couple of Christmas Eve traditions to enjoy. First, the girls opened 1 present. This is a Grammy tradition, and generally happens at Grams house. Since Grams was in the hospital and Grammy had visited earlier in the month, Grammy left us with a gift to keep the tradition alive. This was the first time this has ever happened at our house. The girls were excited for this Harry Potter themed gift.

Also per tradition, the Jen made the girls new Christmas jammies to wear. They look very comfy.

Grams’s cancer treatment included chemo for a couple of months, followed by giant surgery on December 21. This meant she was in the hospital for Christmas. So, we made alternate Christmas plans. Instead of flying up for Christmas, Grammy came early and we had some early Christmas festivities.

Part of this included some delicious treats. The girls headed over to Grams’s house to bake cookies (per tradition). Aunt EA and Charlie were supposed to be there too, but they’ve had a tough time with illness which kept them away.

Yes, the traditional Christmas cookies were a bit less traditional this year, including dinosaurs and narwhals.

There was also, of course, food (not pictured) and presents.

Leah was excited about this Harry Potter wand that works with an iPad, which she can program to do different spells.

Molly’s been so jealous of Leah’s Squishmallow, she was excited to get one of her own.

Merry belated early Christmas!

Christmas trees were hard to find this year at cut-your-own farms. We headed out to get one on December 9, thinking we had plenty of time. Sadly, our beloved Greenway Farms was almost sold out when we went. We managed to find this very broad Douglas Fir, but I’m not sure where we’re going to go next year.

Here’s our fully decorated giant Christmas tree (we had to scoot the couch over a good bit to fit it.

For Thanksgiving, we gathered at Grams’s house along with Aunt Caroline and Uncle Charles. We decided to forego the traditional turkey in favor of salmon. And we got a picture together with all humans and canines present.

We also had pies from Molly’s pie sale. Her school music program had the kids sell pies as a fundraiser. To get the top prize, you had to sell 40 pies. This sounded like an unattainable goal, but Molly did it! She sold 40 pies, making a lot of money for her music program and earning her lots of prizes. They included a pass to Launch Trampoline Park, 1 hour in a video game truck during school, and 30 seconds in a money machine where money blows around and you get to keep whatever you can catch (she caught $27). While I might have preferred Jen’s homemade pumpkin pie, I was very proud of Molly for raising so much for her orchestra.

We celebrated Leah's 9th birthday with a Double Dare party. Jen and Leah were in agreement that a non-messy version was the way to go! Jen did the planning of all the fun "Minute to Win It" type games, and I created a display for the game show. It’s a QLab workspace for showing the scoreboard, displaying the graphics just like the TV show, countdown timers, and sound effects.

After watching an episode of Double Dare so everyone knew how to play, Round 1 Opening Challenge was a Hula Hoop Relay between all three teams.

The teams then rotated answering trivia questions. Because there were three teams, we threw in an extra "triple dare." The kids loved playing all of the physical challenges. Below are a few that we played.

Into the Hanger: Players attempted to fly 2 paper airplanes into the hanger. (Jen made use of the strawberry we made for a bean bag toss for one of Leah's previous parties.)

Elephant Head: Players stretched panty hose with a tennis ball placed in the toe end over their heads. They then tried to swing the balls around on their heads until they knocked down a dozen coke cans in 45 seconds.

Snowball Shake Down: With a dab of Vaseline on their nose, and without using their hands, players must transfer 10 cotton balls from one end of the table to the other.

Cool Shot: Players used the squirt guns to try to knock all of the balls off of the tees.

Final team challenge: Hanky Panky. The first team to empty their box got an extra 200 points!

The game was tight, but the Caticorns managed to barely defeat The Savage Kittens in the end, and headed to the final Obstacle Course!

The final Obstacle Course consisted of stations in which a small orange flag needed to be found and passed along to their teammate. First up, Duck Hunt.

While the two remaining teams caused a pillow fight, a flag had to be carried down the stairs to a teammate.

Someone then had to pop the balloons to find a flag.

Opening all the Easter eggs to find the small flag was little challenging because Jen put so many eggs in the basket. Oops!

After the winning team ran the course, we reset the stations to allow the remaining teams a chance to run it. They were all so excited to run through the house!

Finally, it was time for cake and ice cream. Jen and Leah designed an ice cream slime cake. This was the only slime allowed at the party, and it was delicious!

We sang to the birthday girl.

When the house was again calm and quiet, Leah opened her gifts. Leah has wanted a giant cat (a Beanie Boo) since Molly got hers. So, Molly got her one for her birthday.

Leah's best friend introduced her to Lost Kitties.

Panda + Unicorn = Pandacorn slippers!

The toy that has made the largest impact has to be Winston, a Squishmallow. He seems to constantly be with Leah. So soft, so squishy…

Happy birthday Leah!

The girls decided to be Athena and Artemis for Halloween. Thanks to Rick Riordan/Percy Jackson for inspiring them to learn about Greek mythology.

Jen made the toga dresses, belts, bracers, bracelets, and quiver. She originally thought she might get away with a simple T-shirt toga, but then found this awesome post (thanks Make It & Love It). So, the costumes ended up much more extravagant than originally thought.

I was excited to make a bow for the first time for Molly. At first, I tried to make one using scrap pine from studs, ignoring the advice of the Internet that pine was not strong enough. And after a lot of work, it snapped. So this is actually the second bow I made, and it is made of oak. Some stain, a few coats of lacquer, and it looks quite nice.

The arrows are made from dowels spray painted gold with feathers glued on for fins. The tips are actually foam earplugs (thanks Jen for the idea).

I made Leah a spear (modeled after this statue of Athena) from a thick dowel and some scrap wood. This was much easier than Molly’s bow. It just took some work on the band saw, some sanding, some lacquer, and gold spray paint for the spear head.

Molly was called on again to play in an ensemble at school. This time, it was to play Pomp and Circumstance (and some other songs) at the 5th Grade Promotion Ceremony.

Molly walked across the stage and shook hands with the principal, signifying the completion of her elementary school journey. She’s ready for middle school.

Back in April, we had a lovely Easter. The girls put out baskets for the Easter Bunny. Leah decided she needed to leave a note for the Easter Bunny with a very specific request. I think it was too specific, as the Easter Bunny did not grant it.

Their Easter baskets may not have had a narwhal squishy, but they both did get squishes (and lots of other goodies).

Leah’s gotten into string tricks, and loved this book and string to learn more.

After church, we went over to Grams’s house for some family time. This included the whole Sellers side, as well as G’Mom and Grampa who had come in town for Molly’s birthday. It was a beautiful day, so the girls and I headed outside for a little fun on a flat road.

Leah has had her Heelys for months, but struggled to use them and stopped trying soon after getting them. However, now that Molly had some too, Leah was determined to master the skill. She got it in no time, and the two of them rolled all over the place.

Molly praised the Lord for her new Heelys when she got to use them on Easter. At the end of Grams’s street, there’s a quiet, flat circle that was perfect for rolling around.

Leah warmed up enough to take off her jacket.

The girls were excited to wear the new dresses that Jen made them for Easter.

Not only did we celebrate Easter, we celebrated Molly’s birthday again. This began with presents.

No birthday celebration would be complete with a cupcake and an evil grin.

Also, Grams got a new dog. Her name is Roxanne.

And here’s the Sellers family.

And the Batson family.