Santa came to our house!

Jerome took our special request to Santa, and he decided to visit our house a little early! When we woke up on Sunday morning, Santa had left presents under our tree. Mommy & Daddy were downstairs, and heard the pitter-patter of Neela's feet... then "Mommy, Daddy, Santa brought us LOTS of presents." Down the stairs, across the kitchen, then the same message - followed shortly by... "When can we open them?" The answer... "When Kylie and Brooke wake up." "Can I wake them up?" "No, why don't you watch Frosty the Snowman?"

Kylie will wake up, and not get up until someone gets her, so Mommy went to find Kylie. She was awake - and so was Brooke. We all made our way down the stairs in our matching PJ's, and started opening our gifts from Santa. Since Brooke was too little, Neela and Kylie opened all her gifts - and opened Mommy & Daddy's gifts, too!

Neela points out all the presents...

Kylie makes her way downstairs...

Mommy & Brooke checking out the presents...


Brooke tries on the big girls' princess headband

Santa Brooke (sideways!)

Brooke & Daddy

Kylie's new computer

Neela's blue flower (in her princess dress), and Kylie brushes Neela's hair with her new hairbrush (and holding her ponies)

Opening our floor blocks from Mommy & Daddy

Opening our Princess Vanity & Keyboard from Santa...

(Notice Kylie's "Rescue Pack")

The "Rescue Pack" was another adventure! Mommy & Daddy took Kylie, Neela & Brooke shopping for gifts for each other on Saturday. At Wal-Mart, Daddy & Kylie went to the big kids toys - and found "Rescue Pack", while Mommy, Neela & Brooke picked out a new carseat toy for Brooke. Then, Neela, Mommy & Brooke found - guess what? - a "Rescue Pack" for Kylie, while Kylie & Daddy bought rattles for Brooke. After hearing all about the "secret" from Mommy & Daddy, Neela climbed in the car and told Kylie "I got you a Diego Rescue Pack!". When we were wrapping, Neela came down to the basement - and Kylie said "I got you 'Go Diego Go', but Mommy put wrapping paper on - it's under the paper!!".

What were their favorite gifts?

Kylie: "My hairbrush and ponies"

Neela: "My princess dress"

And, Brooke just keeps getting more and more engaged! She managed to sleep for 12 hours the night after Santa's visit - and is doing more catnapping then sleeping during the day now. She's drinking 6 ounces at a time, lifting her head up during tummy time and on her back, and thoroughly enjoying her bumbo.

Christmas through the eyes of children... What a joy, and it's only beginning! We have a countdown calendar on the patio door - and when we get to 0, it's time to go to Grandma & Papa's! Do you know how many times a day toddlers can ask to take down a Post-It so 0 gets here faster??

Dear Santa...

Dear Santa,

Neela wants a blue flower and a backpack.

Kylie wants a hairbrush, ponies and a backpack.

Brooke wants a rattle (and diapers).

Daddy wants food, plates, shoes, coffee and coffee cups (says Neela).

Daddy wants yellow boots and candy (says Kylie).

Mommy wants a pretty dress, a big box and red mittens (says Neela).

Cy wants a little bone, because he's only a little dog (says Neela).

At some point, Neela also asked for purple sweatshirts for "me, Sissy & Brooke."

Merry Christmas!

Love,

Kylie, Neela & Brooke

PS: Can you please stop at our house early? We'll be extra good, and we don't want to miss you when we go to Grandma & Papa's house! Jerome said he'd bring you our message!

PPS: Thank you to our friend Pearse for having his Christmas Birthday party at Daddy's fire station, so we could take some more pictures with Santa!

Christmas Cookies!

Mommy & Daddy thought the little chefs would have a lot of fun in the kitchen, so they let us help bake the Christmas cookies this year!

Helping Daddy measure the sugar cookies

Neela cuts the sugar cookie dough

Kylie whisks the eggs

Neela licks the batter from the mint dark chocolate chip cookies

Getting ready to cut out the sugar cookies with Mommy

Neela cuts her first sugar cookie...

Kylie cuts out a candy cane


Our friends, Dominique and Danielle, came to help with the cookies! Here they are helping us put the sugar and sprinkles on the cookies.


Of course, we made a VERY BIG mess with the round ball sprinkles (Kylie dumped out the whole bottle), and the green sugar (Neela dumped out the whole bottle).

Neela, Danielle & the Green Sugar

Kylie, Dominique, the red sugar and the round ball sprinkles

Brooke even watched for a while...

Mommy is so thankful Dominique and Danielle could help - we actually got everything baked in one day! YUMMY!

Getting Ready for Christmas: Santa, PJ's & the Tree!

We are getting so excited for Christmas this year! We've been helping Mommy & Daddy do all kinds of fun things to get ready.

We saw Santa at the 3M Club Christmas Party at Tartan Park - Kylie warmed up to Santa, but Neela WOULD NOT sit on Santa's lap!

We danced with Daddy during one of the songs from the Splatter Sisters.

Kylie had a reindeer painted on her hand by a Christmas clown...


...and Neela got Christmas lights!

We all got matching PJ's to wear for Christmas - even Mommy & Daddy! Of course, we love to match Mommy & Daddy, so we wear them a lot more!

We also helped Mommy put up our Christmas tree - and hang as many decorations as we could on the bottom branches of the upside-down tree.

Kylie hangs the Steelers' ornament

Neela hangs her "N"

Kylie hangs her pink snowman from her first Christmas

Neela's pink snowman

All done!

Good-bye Pumpkins!

The change to true fall weather brought the end of our pumpkins! We were very sad to lose the pumpkins with our names, but also loved helping Mommy clean-up all the "baby pumpkins".

Neela on her BIG pumpkin

Neela on "Baby" Brooke's pumpkin

Kylie & her Cindarella pumpkin

Helping Mommy clean-up pumpkins (or are they maracas??)

Our last "drive" before winter!

Brooke's First Thanksgiving

We traveled to Sioux City to spend Brooke's 1st Thanksgiving at the Estochen's! She does very well in the car - sometimes better than her big sisters :-)

Brooke & Mommy

Mommy & the Girls

Brooke & Uncle Chuckie

Kylie helps Grandma set the table...

... and so does Neela!

We were BIG HELPERS all day! We helped Grandma make the deviled eggs and the relish tray. We tried the relishes, but didn't care for most of them:-) We watched the Macy's parade - and danced a lot to the music on TV. Kylie went with Daddy to pick-up Big Grandma B., too!

Big Papa wanted to take a Steelers family picture for the Steelers Digest. Unfortunately, Neela had just fallen asleep when they decided to take the picture - so she's missing. She has seen the picture - and keeps asking where she is, and why she isn't with everybody. We might have to do a "redo" at Christmas!

The Estochen Family - including John, Trudi, Dustin, Erika, Hunter, Adi, Amber, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Marcy, Darlene, Brad, Jenny, Kylie & Brooke... and missing Neela, Renee, David, Cory, and Kara's family...

Brad, Brooke, Hunter, Big Papa & Dustin

Brooke, Dustin & Hunter

The day after Thanksgiving, we helped Grandma put up her Christmas tree - in the cute shirts she bought us for Christmas! Daddy did his shopping - both online and in store, and everyone else just tried to enjoy the day before it got cold!

We colored on Grandma's driveway with chalk and played hopscotch, too! The neighbor had some awesome Christmas lights - so we walked down the street to check them out - EVERY NIGHT! Neela and Kylie enjoyed "shaking their bootie" to the Christmas music blasting at the sidewalk, as well as SpongeBob Santa, the snowball throwing penguins, Santa Snoopy...

Kylie also managed to pick-up a nasty cold, and so did Daddy. We left on Saturday afternoon, but not without a quick stop at the Palmer Candy Store. We each got our own bag of candy, so we didn't really eat our supper in the car :-) We got to play on the slide at the rest area, too - and, in Dora fashion, we will tell you our favorite part of the trip was the slide :-)

Happy Birthday Daddy!

We helped Daddy celebrate his "Happy Birthday" with cards and new shoes! Of course, we gave them to him early in the morning - since we told him we finished coloring his "happy birthday cards" the night before his birthday!