It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

This Christmas, we once again put up the tree, with all ornaments out of reach of Whitney's curious little hands.  Gwen helped decorate the tree and hung all the non-glass ornaments (after one glass santa shattered all over the floor).  Every evening, she would ask "do you want me to turn on the tree?" and then rush to turn the lights on.

We skipped seeing Santa last year - I'm not one to brave the crowds.  However, this year, Gwen was very into Santa and would talk to the little stuffed Santa we had on our mantle, telling him she was good and telling him every time Whitney was bad.  A few days before Christmas, we were walking around downtown Walnut Creek when she spotted a man dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans wearing a Santa hat on the corner asking for donations for some charity.  She kept staring at him and told me "that's the real Santa".  Well, if a random guy wearing a Santa hat was interesting to her, I knew we had to take her to see the real thing.  So, we found out Santa was making an appearance at Blackhawk Plaza and went for a visit 2 days before Christmas.  Gwen asked him for a dollhouse and Ariel the princess.

So, on Christmas Eve, after Gwen went to bed, Santa delivered on her wish - I snuck into her room in the middle of the night to find that, while Gwen was asleep in her bed, Santa had left her a dollhouse complete with Ariel and Prince Eric!   At 7:15am the next morning, I was still in bed and I heard Gwen wake up and go "What IS that?".

After playing with her dollhouse a bit, we went downstairs to open the presents under the tree.  Gwen got lots of princess dolls and other princess-branded toys and books.  Whitney loved her new Woody doll and carried it around saying "WUH - EEE!  WHU-EE!  Uh-oh Whu-ee (when his hat fell off)"

The girls' former nanny, Hong Ping, came for a visit during the afternoon...

And for Christmas dinner, Ah-ma (who was in town for a few days) and I made Christmas dinner (ham, sweet potatoes, sticky rice, green beans, cauliflower and apple pie) and a 9 months pregnant Liz and Brian joined us.  I usually make a turkey for Christmas, but having waited until Christmas eve to do my grocery shopping, the store was out of turkeys and had only a handful of hams left!  Luckily, they had one nice sized (we have been eating left overs every meal for 2 days now) hickory farms that I was able to snatch up!