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The joys of being a parent

Dallas World Aquarium

We've lived in DFW for over 3 years now (that's a whole nuther post) and visited Dallas World Aquarium for the first time on December 9th.  It had much more than just your typical aquarium animals and the kids really enjoyed it.  Not much else to say about it so I will just add photos of our trip.

Daddy and Soleil

Finn looking at some of the fish

Flamingos and Finn laughing at them!

Madeleine and Finn loved the Jaguar

Madeleine really enjoyed the Owls as well

Campbell and Finnegan played chase with the Otters

Checking out the flamingos again

Soleil fell asleep in a weird position!

Texas snow!

It didn't last long but we got some!!
December 2nd, 2009

Trimming the tree

Decorating the Christmas tree always brings anxiety for me.  The kids usually fight over who hangs what and I ultimately end up getting crabby about the whole thing.  This year we (Jeremy and I) still put the lights up, because it is kind of tricky to get lights on a 9ft tree but that's it.  We got the boxes of ornaments from the garage and told the kids to go for it.  It has never been so relaxing during decorating time!!  I am thrilled that we just handed over the job to them and they did a fantastic job decorating the tree.  Letting go is hard sometimes but in this case it paid off!!

Madeleine helping Finn with the garland

All the kids working on the garland together

Soleil was supervising

Campbell putting up an ornament

Owen choosing an ornament to hang

The mood was so much lighter this year

All of our fantastic kids after the job was complete, still smiling :)

Visiting with Santa

Our Santa tradition in Texas involves North Park Mall in Dallas.  The Santa there is great, we go for a scheduled story time and then visit with Santa.  Unfortunately for us we aren't the only family that visits this Santa as part of a family holiday tradition and for that reason we need to get there early to get tickets to see Santa.  Normally we would all go down together and wait in line for the ticket, but this year Jeremy decided to drive down there early, get the ticket and come back home to get us.  He left home at 9ish, the tickets were being distributed starting at 10am, he got our ticket right around 10 and headed home to get us, we were number 14 in line.  After getting all the kids ready and in their photo clothing we headed down and arrived at North Park at around 11:45, 15 minutes before storytime.  The kids found a seat and waited for Santa to make his appearance.

Here are the kids waiting for the story time

Santa tells two stories, Finn wasn't so into the first one but the second one got his attention because it was about a Dragon! 

Here is Santa telling his story with his dog Widget

After the story we went and got in line for our visit.  We had to wait about 30 minutes which was interesting with a 3 year old and a 2 month old but we made it.  The wait was worth it when we saw the smile on Finn's face when he got to visit with Santa.

A little different than last year

We got some pictures with Soleil and then the kids talked to Santa when she was done visiting, she didn't last long!

The kids had specific requests this year.  Finn was a bit shy so Madeleine asked for his Lego train set for him, Madeleine asked for Gwen (an American Girl Doll), Campbell asked for a guitar and Owen asked for a keyboard, with stand and headphones :) 

We'll find out soon if they are on the good or naughty list.

It's Christmas season....my favourite time of year!