colleen writes: Christmas Greetings

December has to be my fourth favorite month besides June, July, and August! I just love the Christmas season--especially getting the house decorated, shopping for gifts, cookie baking, and spending time with family and friends! This is Gabrielle's first Christmas in which she really "gets it." (At least the part about Santa coming down the chimney and Rudolph...and the gifts!) We are working on celebrating the true meaning of Christmas too, and that is really fun as well. Gabrielle loves singing Christmas Carols. She knows all the words to Rudolph...She sings all words except for "red" so it's "Rudolph the Nose Reindeer."

We had a birthday party this month, a Christmas party at a friend's house, a snow day, we visited a new baby, baked cookies a few times, had our first dentist appointment, went to pre-school, skated with Santa at Rollerama, and made reindeer food with Aunt Laura, Cadyn, and Aili. We celebrated Christmas Eve Eve at Grandma and Grandpa Sextons, hosted Christmas Eve dinner at our house for a lot of family, celebrated Christmas morning at Jammie and Grandpops Sulkowski's, Christmas evening at Aunt Tui and Uncle Joe's, and Great Nana's birthday party at Aunt Pat's the day after Christmas. WHOA! Sound like a lot? It was! It took us all about 3 days just to recover from all the excitement. Gabrielle is one lucky little girl-she got so many cool gifts...I can't even begin to name them. (They deserve their own blog post!)

Gabrielle also got a new big girl bed and a new chest, night stand, blanket chest, and "princess" chair. She is making a slow transition from crib to bed which is totally fine. It's hard to say goodbye to your comfy crib. We won't need the crib for awhile anyway:) Overall, she really likes it--especially jumping on it.

Latest Gabrielleisms:
"I used to eat carrots when I was a little bunny."
"Poppy is frustrated, mad, and ticked." (As sweet as Gabrielle is, she does love to test even the most patient man I know:)

Thanks for reading. Wishing you a very happy and healthy 2011 from all of us!

Cookie Baking with Mama