Christmas Eve

The real first where C4 has "gotten" it. Santa Clause, the reindeer, giving and receiving gifts. She got it somewhat last year, but not quite. Just like Q2 gets it somewhat this year, but not quite.

But 4 seems to be a good age, one where belief is firm, there is no doubt that Santa exists. Which boggles my mind, because in only a couple of years will she begin to doubt and realize that Santa may not exist!

I know better, but children do have silly ideas.

In the meantime, anyway, the girls are enjoying Christmas. I took them to buy gifts for each other this afternoon, and they really were thinking of each other. C4 bought Q2 a bunny (a lovely bunny! She wanted to get her the mumma bunny and the baby bunny, but that was out of our budget. We got the baby.) and Q2 picked a (what else?) dog for C4.

They got home and painted bags for their gifts for each other:



and



We played at the park, we played inside, we had quiet time ... all until got dark, when it officially became Christmas Eve for C4. We went to Watkins Park, where at 5:00 the festival of lights began.



Really nice! My photos were fuzzy and not so good, and the video featured a little too much of the orange road cones and lights out of focus, so check out the previous link if you are interested. They loved it. Hey, I loved it!

We got home, opened one gift (poor C4, she opened one from a school friend, but it was a ... toy car. Her faced showed it all, but she was polite and said nothing, just put it back in the back and chose another gift!), set out food for Santa (cookies, milk, a wee dram of whiskey), and then put out food for the reindeer (sparkles and carrots).



Why C4's teachers thought that putting sparkles out for the reindeer to eat was a good idea I don't know. After the children were in bed C39 went out and vacuumed up the sparkles. If reindeer ate sparkles they'd choke. Then C39 chewed up the carrots (and had a cookie & whiskey chaser).

Just waiting til morning, now!!