At the Exploration Place

We had a grand time. There's a great aviation exhibit, and one on Kansas. But the thing the girls liked best was the Castle. A huge, two story castle, with costumes and horses and shops and mirrors and balconies. They could have spent the rest of the afternoon there! The reason why we don't have any pictures of Caitlyn is 1) she would never hold still enough for one and 2) our camera has taken to going on the fritz, and it chose to do so when we wanted to take a picture of Caitlyn. Every time. Go figure.

Two princesses on the castle balcony.


Megan's working the controls for the wind machine for this:

This is the wind wall: 350,000 metal discs that move and ripple when the wind blows them. It's really quite neat.

This is Kristen having a good time in the Tot area.

When Mommy Has a Tummyache

This seems to help.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve...

And Christmas Morning!
Santa brought Alison a "'tar!"
And Cailtyn some Strawberry Shortcake dolls.
Kristen got a bear,
and Megan got her donuts!

Stories and Horses

But not horse stories.

Listening to Tony Clark read a story. He's got a great reading voice (the English accent helps, methinks.) That's Jamie, his 6 year old, in the background.
Megan reading a story. This picture earned me a "MOM! Stop taking pictures!" That's Hannah in there, listening. (Actually, I think she was telling everyone to be quiet and listen.)
The family on the carriage ride Saturday night. There are more pictures from that over at Flickr.

Megan's Christmas Concert

She's in there: next to the boy with the blue shirt. It's the last song they played at the fifth and sixth grade strings concert. She did a great job!

Clapping!

But I like the cookie

We did our annual Christmas cookie decorating tonight. Everyone had their own method.

Megan's:

Caitlyn's:

Alison's:

Maybe too much sugar??

We're groovin' to Herp Alpert (Okay, I know it's Herb, but saying "Herp" is more fun.)

Caitlyn's Christmas Concert

Her school's first and second grade Christmas concert was today. She had the opening part. She was a bit nervous before, but she did great!

Putting up the Tree

The tree went up on St. Nicholas day (the 6th)... it was a bit of a rush job this year because of Church and work and school. I did come up with a bit of a brilliant plan, though: I laid out all the ornaments beforehand, so all they had to do was put them up. Worked pretty well, and none got broken! Oh -- I went artistic this year with the pictures... hopefully, you can still see them all just fine. :)

Look who's "flee"!

Alison had a wonderful Dora Birthday, with a Dora Cake, and some Dora presents. She was very excited (the cake she said was "beautiful"!) the whole day.

This was the first present she opened. She wore the shoes and dress and carried the wand the whole day. She was very excited when we went to the store to get batteries so the shoes could sparkle, too.

Lindsborg

Is a little town about 72 miles north of us. It was settled by Swedish pioneers originally, and is the home of Bethany College. Every December (and other times of the year, too), they have celebrations honoring their Scandinavian heritage. We missed much of it -- it was mostly in the morning, and we didn't get there until around 3 p.m. -- but we did catch a bit.

We especially liked talking to the Tomte.


Around town they have these "dala horses" (the brochures said it was a Swedish thing) in front of all the shops. This was the girls' favorite.

Alison finds a new friend

This was at the Friends University tree lighting. (I took a movie of the lighting, too, but it didn't turn out.) She monopolized him for as long as she could!