Lexi, Badgie and Katie,
When your Daddy and I walked into our house for the first time 10 years ago and I saw 25 foot ceilings in our living room, I immediately visioned our house decorated for Christmas anchored around a huge beautifully decorated tree that lit up that room from floor to ceiling.
This year, part of that dream came true. We were gifted a new 12 foot Christmas tree with more than 1000 twinkling lights built into it. It was beautiful. Unfortunately, many of those lights started to burn out, which caused the entire string to burn out and Daddy and I had to manually replace them–which was kind of a nightmare. Eventually, we just gave up and decided we’re going to have to get new lights next year. BUT it was beautiful and has really become a statement in that space. Once it was all set up, you kids loved to help decorate. In true kiddo fashion, every ornament you put on ended up in a 1″ radius of each other so once you were in bed, I had to re-disburse the ornaments around to make it a little more balanced. 
You love to help decorate the rest of the house as well. The three of you especially love the little snowman collection we’ve started. Grammy gave us a lot of her snowmen and we’ve added to it and you guys LOVE to play with the snowman and pretend they are little character people.
This year, we splurged a bit on our Santa visit and did the Santa Experience at Mall of America. There are no lines, or a rush to get in and out and you get to have a much more relaxed and personal visit with Santa as he gets down on the floor and plays with the kids or talks to them before taking pictures. Kate was a little hesitant on the big guy in red, but the our appointment happened to be on Lexi’s birthday so she was extra excited to see Santa on her birthday.
Another thing that was a lot of fun that I want to continue for future years is special shopping trips with you kids to pick out gifts for your siblings. Lexi and William had a special trip to Target to pick out a gift for Kate, Lexi and Kate for William and William and Kate to pick out a gift for Lexi. Together you had to decide on a gift you thought the receiver would like. I love observing activities like this and watching each of your personalities at work. Lexi, you love to look at every toy aisle while making mental notes of things you think they might like, but will not decide until you have seen everything and then hem-and-haw over your decision. William, you like to look but when you find the gift, you know, and your mind is made up. You don’t need to look at another thing.
Other highlights of the Christmas season included: Cookie baking, gingerbread house decorating, listening to Christmas music, Christmas movies X10, looking at toy catalogs, advantage program at school, Lexi’s dance recital, Lego advent calendar and our daily elf visits.
Love,
Mama
Peanut Smiles 