Christmas Time!

Roxanne and Tucker on the Blue Ridge Santa Express. My grandparents treated us to the train ride and a night in Blue Ridge. It was wonderful!
Roxanne and Santa on the Santa Express.
Chloe, Roxanne and Ella on the train.
"Decorating the tree," or at least taking a break from doing so.

We are excitedly gearing up for Christmas (and Roxanne and Justin's birthdays). We spent the weekend decorating the house, and bought our family's very first live Christmas tree. It was a fun experience, and Roxanne loved it. She really loved decorating the tree more than anything. She kept putting almost all of the ornaments on the lower right corner, so were were trying to help her find other spots, too. But she was determined...

In other Roxanne news, she is really getting too big for her britches. Here are some anecdotes from recent Roxanne-ness:
*She insists that "ridiculous" is a "not nice word." So every single time me or Justin say it, she tells us in a panic: "You can't say that word! That's not a nice word!" Every time, we tell her that it really isn't a bad word, but she's not buying it.
*She is very very dramatic. This afternoon, she went for a walk with Justin and insisted on taking her singing/dancing Christmas Snoopy. I bought it for her last year, but we just brought it down from the attic, and she loves it just as much this year as she did last year. Apparently, on their walk (with Katie), Roxanne started crying and freaking out, and wouldn't tell Justin what was wrong. He finally realized she had dropped Snoopy, and he told her that a car was coming, so they needed to wait for it to pass before they picked him up. By the way, the dropping things and not telling us, but just crying instead is fairly common. Weird. And dramatic. Anyways, as soon as they came home, Roxanne ran in to talk to me, "I dropped Snoopy in the road and Daddy got him for me but he got run over by a car!" She told me about five times that he got run over by a car, and I kept looking at the non-harmed Snoopy and trying to figure out what she was talking about. Justin filled me in...
*She is very independent, as always, and she has learned to climb into her own carseat and buckle herself in. Usually, if you do it for her, she will scream until you undo it and let her do it again. She's learning to put her shoes on, and we're working learning to get her coat on and off (it has buttons, and she already popped one off by trying to just pull the sides apart).
*Activity-wise, she loves painting, drawing, and reading more than anything else. She will get up in the morning and pull books out of her book bin and sit in her glider and just read out loud. She makes up narratives that don't necessarily match up with the stories, but are usually pretty close because she has them memorized. She also loves playing with "babies," which are any small figurine she owns, like animals, Yo Gabba Gabba characters, etc. She makes them have really elaborate interactions. Usually they involve dragons, and fighting and someone getting in trouble and then getting forgiven. It's like a toddler soap opera.
*She is extremely excited about Christmas. She talks about Santa all the time, and how he is going to bring her ladybugs (these little rubber ones at Fernbank) and new "babies" (see note above). She also wants him to bring her some more Hello Kitties. A girl can never have too many Hello Kitties...

OK, that's all for now! We hope everyone is doing well, and getting ready for the holidays.