Decorating for Christmas and SNOW!!

**Note to the reader**
If ANTS make you squeamish, you should probably NOT read this post

It's tradition in our family to set up our Christmas tree and Christmas decorations the morning of Thanksgiving but that will probably change the year I end up making Thanksgiving dinner.

Dar got the tree set up, but the rest of the decorating had to wait until the day after Thanksgiving--we've learned that sometimes things end up being a multi-day process now that we have kids :)

We have a nice set of Christmas bulbs that we've had for about 7 years that we love and we store in our storage unit year round.  We've never had any problems with anything in our storage unit until last year.  We didn't take any pictures for proof last year but when it happened again, Darwin made me grab the camera for evidence.

For some reason, ants like our Christmas bulbs.  Yuck!!!

 We thought we resolved the issue last year when we removed the de-moisturizer packet things they were eating, and cleaned them all out really well (we thought we removed them all, anyway).  We were unpleasantly surprised to see they found their way into our Christmas stuff again this year.

And these are not small ants.  Eew!

Our poor vacuum worked so hard sucking up those little buggers that it overheated.

Aurora was a good spotter and would yell to Darwin over the noise of the vacuum if she saw an ant escape out of the box

Savannah had fun watching Dad work too.

The vacuum just sucked the little guys up though, it didn't kill them.  It totally gives me the eeby-geebies to just look at the picture.

Dar is a very thorough cleaner--I'm so glad I have him!



Cleaning up the ants was definitely a process and took a big chunk of time.  We only found one later on that had escaped.  Guh!  Although, I am glad they were ants and not spiders!

Even with being busy cleaning up the nasty ants and decorating, Dar found some time to play with the girls and made them the happiest girls in the world by making a "Time Machine Sled" for them.  They loved it!



 
 After a few Time Machine Sled rides around the house, Rori loved decorating the tree this year.




And Savannah watched :)

She's getting so strong!

That Sunday we pulled out the girls fun Christmas clothes.  As soon as we put the hat on Savannah, Aurora wouldn't call her anything but "Rudolf" and treated her as such.
 
Savannah hated the hat.  She kept trying to pull it off the second we put it on, as she does with most hats and bows I put on her head.

Look at Aurora's face.  She was so proud of herself and her idea to use Savannah as her flying reindeer.

Savannah got sick of playing the part of the reindeer, so Daddy traded his role as the sled and took a turn being the reindeer :)


I love Aurora's camera faces sometimes :)

Savy made herself nice and cozy after a few laps around the house

Oh, how I love these girls!

When Aurora had her fill of riding in the sled she took a turn playing the reindeer too :)



That diaper box has turned into a favorite toy lately.  The joys of being a kid with a box at Christmas time!

A couple days after getting our decorations up, we got a good amount of snow.  It snowed lightly but it came down most of the day.  When Daddy got home from work he bundled Aurora up and took her out to play while Savannah and I stayed in our warm, cozy house and made dinner.
Aurora was so excited to go play in the snow!

Her poor little face was so cold and red when they came back inside--see the tear on her cheek?  But she was totally happy and had such a blast playing in the snow with her daddy.

I love this little family of mine.  They make me so happy!

We hope you're having a great Christmas season so far.  We definitely are!