From last week's trip to the bakery...

Liv couldn't resist cleaning her plate,



there were blueberries all over "tiny munchkin",


and I can barely believe it but this little darling will be 1 year old very soon.

I had a little visitor at the office while Chris changed the tire on my car. She charmed everyone.

Enjoy a handful of pictures from our busy weekend. I'll update with more pictures very soon.

We've had a busy social calendar full of gingerbread house decorating parties, birthdays and a wedding! It's been lots of fun.
And Violet's big news is that she got her first tooth and took her first step this week! For her first step she was playing with her walking toy lion and got so caught up in things that she forgot she wasn't holding on when she took a step back and to the side. She didn't fall, she just grabbed hold of the lion again.

Some funny quotes from Liv:
"This is a stable so Santa won't poop in his panties."
"Mommy I swallowed my teeth." Clever, sweet girl was telling me her throat hurt.

This wonderful pop up book by Robert Sabuda is what we read for our advent activity tonight.

We set out our advent calendar (a three dimensional house with drawers for the windows) while Liv and Violet were sleeping last night. When Liv woke up this morning and saw it she ran to Chris and said "Daddy, there's a Santa house in our living room! Who did it? Was it my decorating friends?" I have no idea who these decorating friends are but I wish they'd come around more often.

I was inspired by a few blogs on the internet to do an activity advent calendar instead of putting treats in the calendar. Today's activity was to drink egg nog out of our Santa mugs. Liv decided she'd rather have hot cocoa so we did that instead. We enjoyed our drinks out on the front porch with our large tree covered in white lights. And Chris told a great story about "Doropede" the dinosaur and how she drank cocoa with her mommy and daddy. Liv has been a big fan of the Wiggles and Dorothy the dinosaur all year long. Here are some pictures of Liv and Chris making the hot cocoa.

Here's the note we put into the calendar.