Scarlet & Sophia's BIG List of Christmas fun! PART ONE

Dear Everyone,

Happy December! We love Christmas, in fact we have been singing "The 12 Days of Christmas" for weeks already! Here is our list of all the fun things we are planning for the next month. We thought it might be nice to share some our ideas, even though Mama says we might not get to do ALL of them, because there are SO many.

Decorations: We have already decorated our tree and this year we have a new tree in our room that is just our size. We also made paper snowflakes with our aunt, put up Christmas window clings with Daddy, and hung the stockings up by the fireplace! Here is a picture of us by our little tree with Leesia & Lilly! We decorated it all by ourselves and it turned out beautiful!

Wrapping Gifts: Yesterday we all wrapped gifts for our cousins and some of our friends. We have a big mountain of them! They make the tree look so much prettier! Here are all of our gifts so far, but there are many more to come. Don't you love picking out gifts and wrapping them? 

Christmas Crafts:

We tried a new craft this week....Christmas playdough! It would have turned out great if Mama hadn't tried to improve the recipe (she always does this!). We colored it red and green and added GLITTER and PEPPERMINT oil. It is very Christmas-y, but very messy! Lots of fun though!

Sophia with GREEN GLITTERY play dough

Scarlet with RED GLITTERY play dough

Soon we will share more ideas for Christmas fun, so don't forget to check back!

XOXOXO,

Sophia, Scarlet, Lilly & Leesia

Dear Grandpa Mark & Yaya,

Ho Ho Ho!!! It's Christmas Cookie season! Mama says we will be doing lots of baking over the next few weeks, but we just made some Christmas sugar cookies this week to practice. Mama let us add lots of sprinkles and then we made tiny cookies for Leesia & Lilly also! It was fun and the cookies were yummy!

Mama might have to back to the store for more sprinkles at this rate.

10 minutes is a long time to wait when you are only five years old.

Look at the cute doll-sized cookies!

Leesia said the cookies looked, "Splendid"

Lilly said they tasted, "Sublime"

Sophia agreed

Scarlet had one just one more

Tomorrow we will share our BIG LIST of Christmas activities so everyone can have some good ideas to do during December. We can't wait to try them all. Grandpa Mark & YaYa, we wish you were here! We hope your Christmas in China is very very Merry!

XOXOXO,

Scarlet & Sophia

Happy Thanksgiving

"O come, let us sing unto the LORD: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms. For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In his hand are the deep places of the earth: the strength of the hills is his also. The sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land. O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker." Psalm 95:1-6

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Dear Everyone,

We are so excited that Thanksgiving is tomorrow! We have been waiting for weeks and weeks, and now it is finally time to see friends and family and share lots of yummy food! We have been helping Mama lots in the kitchen. Today we made Chocolate Beet Brownies, Carrot Cake, Pumpkin bread, and sausage balls! The whole house smells yummy!

We love to make crafts, so last week we made turkey handprints and a Thanksgiving tree. It was really funny putting paint all over our hands, but the turkeys looked really cute. We took a branch from the yard, pulled all the leaves off and cut out paper leaves for it. On each leaf, we wrote something we were thankful for. The tree made a nice centerpiece this week!

Here is one last picture of both of us with Leesia & Lilly and ALL of our other stuffed animals and dolls. We were having a huge Thanksgiving party...it was great.

Thank you for reading and enjoy your Thanksgiving!

XOXOXO,
Scarlet, Sophia, Lilly & Leesia

Dear Scarlet,

Happy Halloween! This has been a busy week. We got to visit the pumpkin patch to pick out our two little baby pumpkins and a BIG pumpkin for Daddy to carve. Didn't he do a great job on the Kitty pumpkin, just like we asked him? We dressed up like pink fairies for Trunk or Treat, took a hay ride and saw a marionette circus show! It was so much fun!


The best part of Halloween is that Mama says after Halloween we can talk about Thanksgiving and after Thanksgiving we can talk about CHRISTMAS! But until then....HAPPY HALLOWEEN to all our friends!


XOXOXO,
Sophia

Dear EVERYONE,

We have some BIG news. We are going to be BIG SISTERS!!! Mama is going to have a new baby next spring! When Mama and Daddy told us the news, we were REALLY surprised! Once we started thinking about it, we were very happy. We don't know if the baby is going to be a girl or a boy yet, but Mama says that we are going to be very very good big sisters. We have some toys to share with the baby, and books to read to the baby, and we are going to help Mama so much.

Are you surprised? Leesia & Lilly couldn't believe it either. They are afraid that a baby will mess up their hair but we told them that you have to learn to be a little bit flexible when you are big sisters. And their hair will be ok.

XOXOXO,
Scarlet & Sophia

Dear Sophia,

Here is the picture you took of Mama, Lilly & me. It turned out pretty cute! We had lots of fun tonight running around in the yard. Mama said we were being kind of wild and she blames it on all the sugar we have had. But we LOVE this time of year! It's our Birthday, Halloween, and pretty soon it will be Thanksgiving and Christmas!!! It's almost too much excitement to take! (almost, but not quite).

Halloween is just around the corner!

XOXOXO,
Scarlet

Dear Scarlet & Sophia,

Happy Birthday! I can't believe that my two baby girls are already five years old!


You guys have learned so much in the last year, and I can't wait to see how much you grow and learn this year as five year olds! Scarlet, you are curious, kind, and clever. I know that you will have a year full of learning and getting even smarter! Sophia, you are sweet, bright, and funny. I know that this year you will be growing in every way and encouraging others as you go. I am so proud of both of you. You have become such sweet and self-less little girls. I was so very proud of you when you chose so many of your toys to share with the two little girls who were moving to a new house. It is a blessing to see how much you love each other, too!

XOXOXO,
Mama


PS To our readers: We recently heard about four year old twin girls who had been left suddenly on their grandmother's doorstep, abandoned by their mother. I asked Scarlet & Sophia to gather some nice *matching* sets of toys to pass down to them along with lots of our too-small clothing. At first they weren't excited about the idea but after we talked about it, they changed their minds and were excited to find some toys to share. I was so proud of the girls when they picked some very nice toys and gave them so generously. I love how they are learning to become self-less and thoughtful children.

Dear Sophia,

The weather this week has been SO beautiful! Mama says to enjoy it because it will be cool soon enough. I had lots of fun with you today pretending that we were camping! We have never gone real camping, but Mama says one day maybe we can go. We built a campfire and roasted marshmallows. Of course, we had to bring our "real" stove, also, because we didn't want to get too rustic.We don't have a real tent, but it was warm enough to pretend we were sleeping under the stars!

Leesia & Lilly love the house that we made for them from an old box! They said it was more fun than sleeping in a tent anyway!


XOXOXO,
Scarlet


PS Mama says she and Daddy have a big surprise for us soon. What do you think it could be?

Back to School!

Dear Scarlet,

We have been so busy, we have really fallen behind on blogging! It's hard to believe that summer is over, and School is back in. Even though we are only 4 years old, Mama said we could start doing school at home. We are having lots of fun so far....my favorite part of school is cutting with SCISSORS! Mama says that is a big step for us, because they are tricky to use. We are also working on letters and numbers and reading lots of books. Leesia and Lilly are having fun at school, too. They even have little backpacks and a tiny see-saw for recess! It is sooo cute!

XOXOXO,
Sophia

Dear Sophia,

Can you believe we made our own ice cream?! My hands got really cold shaking the bag, but it was worth it. The ice cream turned out delicious! If anyone else wants to try it, here is what you have to do:

• 1 cup milk
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla
• ½ cup rock salt
• 1 pint-size Ziploc
• 1 gallon-size Ziploc
• Ice cubes 

Just put the first three ingredients in the smaller bag, and the salt and ice cubes in the big bag. Seal the small bag carefully into the larger bag and shake it around for about five minutes. It should thicken up like soft-serve ice cream! If your hands get cold, you can hold it with a dishtowel.


Leesia and Lilly thought our ice cream was delicious! Next time maybe we can add strawberries!

XOXOX,

Scarlet

PS Look at this picture I found! It's Lilly and me playing with the Bilibos...don't we look hilarious?

Dear Scarlet,

There is nothing better than a summer trip to Chick-fil-a. They have the best cold lemonade and you can even trade in your toy for ice cream. Mama loves it because it is clean and they are very friendly. I hope we can go back soon to play in the playplace. Scarlet, do you remember when we were only three years old? We were afraid to go in the playplace because it was so big! Isn't that funny? We have really grown up in the last year, now we are tall and brave and love the big slide. Leesia and Lilly loved it too! Yay Chick-fil-a!

XOXOXO,
Sophia