Christmas in Columbia 08

Only 11 days until Christmas and we are counting!!!! We have done lots of fun Christmas activities over the last couple of weeks and Sallie is really getting excited!!! We went from asking Santa for a motorcycle and a scooter for Christmas and to a baby doll today. Wow, what drastic differences. We will see what direction Santa decides to go in. Sallie and Ward went on a train ride with Santa Saturday and we also went to the mall to see Santa a couple of weeks ago. She was not really crazy about Santa at the mall but did sit with Santa on the train ride. Sallie has decorated a gingerbread house and made lots of cute Christmas crafts for our Christmas tree. We all went downtown to the Christmas parade last Saturday with our friends. Sallie has learned that Christmas is Jesus' birthday and Jesus was born in Bethlehem. She is very excited about having cake and blowing out candles on Christmas for Jesus. I guess I need to get to baking. Anyway, our house becomes more active everyday and with Christmas approaching it is full charge. Anna is getting happier and more interactive daily and so much fun to be around. She really is a good baby!!! Sleeping has become more of a nightly routine now and she only gets up once in the night now. We have had to put a gate up at the door in Sallie's room due to her being able to open the door now and due to her getting up at all hours wandering around the house and because she has become quite the mischievous little girl. She is into everything now and I mean everything. She uses Anna's bumbo seat as a step stool to get boost herself up to the cookie jar or the candy. She saw me coming when she was doing this yesterday and managed to unwrap 5 Hersey kisses and put them in her mouth by the time I could get to her. I put her down for a nap last week and was upstairs working. I had the monitor on and never heard anything. About a hour after putting her down I walked downstairs to get something and started smelling something that resembled nail polish remover. I went back to the bedroom and she had gotten into my bathroom cabinets and.......painted her "poenails", sprayed hairspray everywhere including her hair and my bathroom floor, taken my hair straightening oil and dumped all three little bottles on the floor, colored my cabinets with eyeliner, and after that I stopped looking. I was in awe!! I wanted to laugh so badly at the look on her face when I caught her but knew that I could not. She could have gotten into the pack of razors and that would have been bad. I picked her up and placed her very firmly back in her bed. She says that I slammed the door but really I shut it very firmly. Everyone asks if I took pics and sorry I did not. I was too mad at the time. Due to this and her wandering upstairs in the middle of the night, her door is now being gated during nap time. Today is the first day so I will post the results. Our Christmas tree is up and we have really enjoyed decorating our new house. If feels like home and all our Christmas decorations fit so nicely in it. I will post lots of Christmas pictures that I have taken over the last couple of weeks. We had dinner with Ward's brother, Carter, and sister-in-law, Beth, and their new baby tonight. Little Ellis is beautiful and Sallie just loved her. I got a cute shot of the three girls. I will post that picture as well. It is so funny to see how babies from the same family look so different.