Sometimes, Santa comes early

This year, we wanted to give Shae a playroom for Christmas.  She doesn't really have a place for all of her 'things', other than bins in the family room... which end up everywhere and need to be put away every night.

The Sorensen family arrives this week, and we figured that was enough excitement for Christmas, so we put the playroom together early and surprised her this morning.  It's not quite done, but at 1:30am we said it was close enough. This is probably the beginning of many late nights of putting together Christmas gifts for her.

Luckily, she loved it, kept pointing at everything saying 'ooooo, mommy'.  She now has enough room for everything, and will hopefully share the space with her brother when he arrives.

I love how it looks, and who really needs a dining room anyway?  We used it a whopping three times in the three years we've been in the house, so this is a much better use of space.  We have a playdate with some friends tomorrow morning to break it in.

Hard at work with her playdough.

Oh Christmas Tree

Something about a Christmas tree makes the house magical.  We put ours up last weekend and Shae had a blast picking it out.  I couldn't even get her to stay still for a picture.  She kept running around yelling "trees!".

Last year I was worried about her breaking ornaments, but she was so gentle with them.  This year, she broke an ornament within 30 seconds of me opening the box.  We've now kept everything breakable out of her reach, or didn't even put them on the tree, so it looks pretty bare bones this year.  What I love most is every morning when she comes downstairs, she says "ooooo, Mommy, tree!" and runs over to touch it.

For years, literally, Matt has been asking if we can have colored lights on the tree instead of just white, so this year I bought him two strands to mix in.  Pretty generous of me, huh?  I figured Shae would like them too... but I have to admit, I prefer white.