Sinterklaas and decorating

Friday evening, we left out our Dutch shoes and Saturday morning, this is what we awoke to....Sinterklaas had come and left us chocolate letters, pepernoten, tai tai, and a small present for each of the girls!

Hannah was very excited to see that he had come.

Emme could care less that there was a present in front of her, she saw the cookies and that is what she wanted.

But when Hannah opened it and she saw that it was Mrs. Potato Head, she was excited!

And for Hannah....a Strawberry Shortcake playset. She was excited too!

As is our tradition, The day we celebrate Sinterklaas is also the day we pick out our Christmas tree at our local Lion's Club.

Here it is...picked out in record time, maybe 2 minutes. We all agreed and it got the final approval from Hannah as she is our official tree picker outer.

Thought this was cute with Daddy carrying the tree and still holding Emme's hand (she wouldn't let go).

This year, we started a new tradition of making wienerschnitzel with cabbage and semmelknoedel and homemade gluhwein (warm mulled wine)! Hannah helped a lot with the meal, first pounding out the pork and then helping making the semmelknoedel (bread dumplings).

All ready to eat! We invited our neighbor June (the girls' surrogate Grandma, aka "Junie") to help us celebrate!

And then today, we decorated our Christmas tree.

Hannah was an old pro while this was Emme's first year "helping". As fast as she would put them on with me, she would take them off.

A posed picture.

The finished, lighted tree! The girls were excited when it got dark and we turned on the lights. Hannah turned off all of the other lights in the room for the "event".

And last, our big reveal from Daddy who had spent the same time outside decorating the house with Christmas lights. If he had his way, our house would like the Griswold's from Christmas Vacation, but as it stands he has a limited budget to slowly increase the lights on the house each year.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!