Christmas preparations picture and movie dump!

First: yes, we have Christmas decorations here, and we had a very nice time decorating together.

 Elliott is making good progress learning to read with Rachel, who diligently teaches him another reading lesson every day (except Fridays) when Amelia is napping.

 Rachel made an advent calendar from scratch, and one of the fun things to do on it was making snowflakes. Goodness knows we won't be seeing any snow unless we take the matter into our own hands!

Elliott wanted to take pictures of me just like I took pictures of him. He was a bit more shutter-happy than I was.

Amelia likes to have a nice drink of warm milk before bed each night.

Elliott enjoying our felt nativity set, the only one we thought we could get through customs (turns out we could have brought pretty much anything we wanted).

Another night, we made snowmen ornaments out of cottonballs and scotch tape, and decorated them with markers. Hardly worthy of Etsy or Pintrest, but they add some cheer to the tree!

Rachel posted a more thorough account of our visit to the horseraces, but here are the photos again, anyway.

 Elliott's first cotton candy

 Elliott's first pony ride.

 Amelia's first pony ride (not as excited about it as Elliott was).

"The horses sound like thunder!" Elliott said at one point.

 We enjoyed the First Presidency Christmas Devotional a week late.

 And Amelia took her first steps on Dec. 7! This is actually an encore performance just moments after the first.

Merry Christmas, everyone!