Nope, not Christmas yet...

Sorry, I know there weren't many photos of Hazel in that last entry, but I had to post something to get started. I wish, of course, that I'd been posting all along, because I'm having trouble remembering the weeks before Christmas. I know we continued to sing Christmas songs non-stop. She loves any and all Christmas songs, except for Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer. Her favorites this year included the John Denver & the Muppets album and all songs from Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, which she watched for the first time. And yes, she has amazingly memorized almost everything she's heard and is quite bothered when I can't remember all the verses to every song. She's also very concerned when she hears a different version of a song with slightly different lyrics. Her favorite individual song we all can still be found humming - "Santa's Workshop" sung by The Christmas Jug Band on my Restoration Hardware random country Christmas compilation called A Sleigh-full of Twang. Daddy and I are quite fond of it too. I don't even remember listening to that album before this year, but apparently we've had it for six years.

Ok... let's get to the pictures. Our countdown to Christmas included many presents which Hazel prepared daily for all her dolls, stuffed animals, Baby Jesus and Daddy and myself. Speaking of Jesus, I had to laugh when she decided to put her Baby Santa Snoopy in her plastic wagon and proclaim him Baby Jesus and our living room Bethlehem. She had him sleeping in her room but complained that he was being too noisy, so Daddy moved him to the hallway. She again called Daddy in to complain that Baby Jesus was still being too noisy, so he had to be relocated downstairs. Must be something wrong with my hearing - I didn't hear anything. Ok, back to the story. Hazel also hooked up lots of sleigh rides and sled rides and dogsled rides and whatever else these outings were.

A quick ride with Monkey on her horse, Browny Whitey... or Whitey Browny... both names are correct.

And another horse ride in Christmas mode. That's a big metal ornament that she's giving lots of love to here, and then she also enjoyed rolling it around and around the house and smashing it into everything. It made such a lovely crashing sound.

Hazel had her own tree to decorate again this year. I gave her every non-breakable/fragile ornament we had, and she must have had forty ornaments on that little tree. She undecorated and redecorated several times, so I'm really glad her tree distracted her from our big tree.

She thought I'd unpacked Raggedy Ann from a Christmas box, but that's been in one of her toy bins all year and she just hadn't noticed it. Suddenly it was her favorite belonging this day. I haven't seen her with it since.

Just a close-up of some of her decorations. The gingerbread cookie was only there for about a minute. She borrowed one from our tree for her tree and then shortly thereafter wanted to eat it. Gee, I never saw that coming. :)