Jingle bells, gingerbread, and advent calendars

Tis the season for loving on your friends & family...and for catching up! I have a few minutes since Amelie fell asleep in the jogging stroller after our very FIRST jog together! (Now I have no excuse to stay in and lay around.) We've been very busy around here getting ready for Christmas. Our tree is beautiful and gets redecorated on a daily basis. Renato made our front and back yard a Christmas wonderland by setting up millions of beautiful lights, (we actually blew a fuse last night...National Lampoon Christmas, anyone?) The stockings are hung, well 2 of them at least. Madeline keeps removing hers from the mantle and we've yet to buy one for Amelie. And the creme de la creme, we finally have an advent calendar! I bought a reusable wooden manger scene calendar with cute little door-like boxes. Madeline has learned how to climb onto the couch and search for candies...I keep finding little foil wrappers all over the place. She's becoming quite a sneaky one!

Tonight we're going on a holiday light train with friends, I'm very excited about that! We have some other fun activities up our sleeves as well. Both Nato & I are suckers for all the festivities and we'll definitely be pushing the girls to enjoy them as well!

Other news...
It's been 7 months now and Amelie is not crawling yet, and probably never will! She has discovered that she call successfully roll to whatever destination she chooses, and she's pretty fast! Amelie is also growing her cherished first teeth! There are two little pearls popping up on the bottom, so cute AND so painful! She's very vocal and very happy most of the time, yet has started having some troubles sleeping through the night and being in her room alone. We have some doctor appointments for her ears next week and are anxious to hear some news.

Madeline is doing very well and is extremely vocal and emotional ALL of the time. She's a little sponge, remembering and repeating virtually everything we say around her. She's also begun to memorize books word for word. You should hear her with "Scuppers, the Sailor Dog," (HOLLY!), "In the teeth of a gale, a sailor was born, Scuppers was his name..." verbatum. It's hilarious!

Well, I have so many stories to tell, but I also have 2 baskets of corrections, a sink full of dirty dishes, 3 baskets of clean and unfolded clothes to put away, and a billion other things to do. I made our Christmas cards today, and you might get them in time for New Years!

*By the way, resolution #1 is to update the blog bi-weekly. (I think that's managable?!)