Christmas Celebrations

Opening Alexandra's gifts on the days after Christmas. Sophia was a BIG help!

Christmas Dinner... The ultimate table was a bit smaller this year!

Between Christmas dinner & Boxing day, we were quite the party house!

Sophia & Mira on Boxing Day.
It was wonderful to see so many friends, and to be able to introduce Alexandra to everyone!

Papa was so exhausted at end of year, that he fell asleep with Sophia watching TV after Christmas dinner. Somehow, she managed to wake him enough to go flying off his back...

More Christmas!

Alexandra finally woke up for some christmas celebrations... The hat stayed on for about 10 seconds, but she was pretty cute! She loves the lights on the tree & hasn't really tried to pull anything down, but she does try to stroke the branches. I think the feeling is so new to her that she is just in awe of it!

Sophia in her new Princess lounge clothes, and a tiara of course...

Sean & Sophia watching more snow fall on Christmas day. I think she will remember this white christmas for a long, long time!The snow accumulation on the back deck from Christmas eve. This was all cleared off over the weekend!
Enough snow, time to play the new games.

Christmas!!

I love Sophia on Christmas mornings. Both last year & this year she is torn between a childs desire to just rip open every gift, and her want to play with her toys the minute she opens them. It is hard to do both!

Sophia was so excited for Troy & I to open her present to us. At school they had made the gift and the wrapping paper (glitter everywhere, we had to put it in a ziploc to get it to Seattle without glitter all over our clothes). Her hand is so cute, and she was so proud of herself!

Unfortunately, Alexandra slept thru most of the chaos. We opened a few presents every day for her, for almost the rest of the time we were in Seattle!

Christmas Eve

At mass with Nana & Papa. the snow kept a lot of people home, and we actually got seats together this year! Of course when there are now 10 together we take up an entire pew... Vivian & Sophia in native dress. I knew that Vivan would probably be in one of her family costumes, so I brought Sophia's drindl to wear on Christmas Eve. She was very excited to be able to wear it again!

The girls are so great together, they manage to pick up where they leave off at the end of every summer or winter, and just have a great time together.

Alex & Sean enjoying Alex's PSP.

Alexandra keeps trying out her sea legs, and loved being on carpet!

And she found the presents fascinating!! This one had a butterfly on it that was irresistible.

Suggestions for songs around the Christmas Tree!

The Nutcracker

We decided Sophia was the perfect age to take to the Nutcracker this year, and Nana would probably love and afternoon alone with Alexandra...

She LOVED it! And somehow managed to stay awake until the last 15 min of the program (5 days post jet lag - that's pretty good!), the poor little boy in front of her fell asleep during the overture, and didn't wake up until the curtain call ~ a very expensive nap...

Christmas Houses

One of the traditions we had growing up was decorating Christmas houses during brunch on Christmas Eve. When Troy & I were married I received my own mold for the christmas house(thanks Mary!), but Sophia is just now the age to really start decorating, and she was so excited about it. We had done a trial run last year with lots of help from Papa, but this year she really got involved in the project. Sean had his own, and did a great job working on it with Sophia. It was a fun way to spend another snowy, very cold day.

The frosting & icing containers are so much easier to use than the ones from when we were kids (they are now like the squeeze cheese containers), which were still in the pantry. I don't think that stuff ever goes bad!

Alexandra was very interested in all of the colors & kept grabbing for the kiss shaped m&ms.

Visions of Christmas

Sophia just loved the Christmas Tree at Nana's house. When we asked her (while still in Munich) what she wanted for Christmas, she said a Christmas Tree. We had a small one in the corner of our living room, but I knew she was going to be excited when she saw this one. I think she was speechless when we walked in the room, and then couldn't believe how big it was!
My mom does such a great job decorating, and Troy & I were having a great time experimenting with our new camera.

As you can see, the snow outside lasted FOREVER!

playtime in the snow.

Seattle in the snow from Moya Z on Vimeo.

Snowed in days.

There wasn't a whole lot to do in Seattle during the snow days. Most of the malls closed early, adding to a rather miserable christmas season for the retailers, and we were quite fortunate to have rented a 4 wheel drive so we could get out a little bit. It was even too cold to play outside, with the high being somewhere in the low 20s during the day, and feet of snow outside. Sophia didn't even ask!

In the meantime, there was lots of lazy mornings around the house, and great light.

All there is, is snow, snow, snow

The snow was beautiful & amazingly frustrating. We had many activities planned over the time at home, and most of them had to be postponed or cancelled all together because of the snow removal policy of the City of Seattle. Poor Troy was stuck in the house most of the time, and took himself down to the local pub with wifi in order to get some work done.
I'm so sorry to all the people we were unable to see or talk to. For some reason the days of the snow were very lazy, and it was so very cold...
Just thought I would share a few photos of the neighborhood.

(I think the snowman was playing second base for the snow ball game)

The cross country skiiers were in heaven. I think there was about a foot of snow, and because it was so cold, it was powder, and lovely to get thru.