Cookie Decorating the Icelandic Way

Cookie baking and decorating is a common tradition during the Christmas period both in US and in Iceland. Our friend, Gyda, who is also the Social Chair at the Westgate organized a cookie baking and decorating activity for kids at Westgate this morning. They prepared the dough and the kids got to cut out their cookies. While the cookies bake in the oven, the kids did some coloring and running around the lounge as usual.

Here's Gyda baking the cookies that the kids had cut out while Hordur prepared the icing to decorate the cookies after they came out of the oven.

Here's Justin getting bored and playing with the camera, supposedly doing a self-portrait.

The girls watched as the icing was being prepared.

Finally, the wait was over. The cookies went straight into their mouths after they were done decorating.

Thanks, Gyda and Hordur for a fun morning :)

Guitar

Sonya and Clara got red packets from Justin's parents for their birthdays. We brought them to ToysR'Us this morning, taking advantage of the Thanksgiving sale to use the money from the red packets get themselves new toys.

Sonya chose a pink plush pony (not surprising at all, right?) and a coloring kit. Clara wanted to buy all the plush animals and babies in the store. We got her a animal doctor kit instead. In addition, we also bought them a kid-size guitar. Sonya was not very enthusiastic initially until I got the guitar properly tuned and played Twinkle Twinkle Star. Clara just wanted to turn the little knobs for tuning the strings so I think we would need to tune the guitar very very often with those itchy little fingers looming around.

Time to get some books to play some children songs on that guitar. It has been so many years since I played the guitar.

Thanksgiving Cycling

It is Thanksgiving and everything is closed. It was either to a park or cycling at the carpark again. Sonya chose cycling (actually she really wanted to just watch tv).

As you can see from the photo, Justin has removed one of the training wheels from Sonya's bike so that she can polish up her balancing skill while still having a training wheel to fall back on if needed. She did quite well. I think she has already got the idea of shifting the handle bar around to keep her balance.

She's really enjoying herself on the bike :)

As for Clara, we "borrowed" a scooter from the Westgate playground thinking that she might be able to move around on it more than on her tricycle.

I think I realized that the problem is not the equipment but just her character. Like the tricycle, she lost interest in the scooter after maybe 10 minutes :(

While Sonya took a break from cycling, Justin took her bike and became an oversized kid :)

Clara was just finding ways to entertain herself. She decided that she wanted to wear the knee guards but soon took them off again.

Then she wanted to have a try at the bike and Justin pushed her around for a while which made her really happy :)

Sonya, of course, need to try that too :)

Clara got bored again and I suggested she showed me her wide range of expressions.

It was a very nice morning but it ended with my husband attempting to "kill" me (See photo above) :)