The 1st 24 hours of Christmas BREAK!!

Christmas break is officially here!! Whoo-hoooooo!

The girls have been counting down the days on the calendar all month and we did some serious jumping for joy yesterday when each girl got done with school! (For the record-I don't care how silly we look, I am a mom that will grab my kids and shake them and bounce them and make all kinds of weird excited noises in front of other people when celebrating something happy. Which was the scene yesterday at their school.)

We are all equally happy to have a break from school and be home together for a couple weeks. And these first 24 hours of vacation have been put to good use!

We got down to business right away making sugar cookies, a holiday tradition.

We spent the whole of the afternoon and evening stirring, cutting, and frosting. And taste testing of course.

We tallied our first batch at 77 cookies-not too shabby I'd say.

And then after dinner we opened up our first gifts of the season, some special gifts the girls made for us at school, pictures and a puzzle. Then the girls went to bed in the extra bedroom having a movie night and then we woke up early and set off for the orphanage.

We helped some friends deliver some special gifts bought with money donated by a church in the states that supports my friend Rebecca. She was able to purchase big tins of formula, rice, a new filter, two hand made rocking horses made by the garibou boys at Kids of Hope, and a child size table and bench for the kids to eat their meals at.

 And then we just hung out and held our favorite little friends....

...and watched the kids take turns learning how to use a rocking horse. Which was hilarious. And nerve wracking. Mia thought it was so funny to put Emé on the rocking horse. Except he's only, like, five months and can't even sit up on his own yet, so approximately two seconds after I took this photo he made a crash landing. Oh man! Well, now they know, you don't put kids who haven't developed back muscles on a rocking horse! I'm sure the workers and older kids will get the hang of these eventually!

And on the way home we stopped at Bingo and low and behold, they had Disney Snow White pez dispensers! What?! They were even marked half off! What wha?! Disney Snow White pez dispensers and on sale because no one else wanted them?! Merry Christmas to us! Disney in Burkina baby!!