New Haircut

Washing Up: Wordless Wednesday!

Christmas Morning

Even though Holly doesn't know who Santa is, or that he brings presents Christmas Morning, we wanted to save some items for her to open when she woke up on Christmas Day. We want to have that as a tradition, at least while she is little, and it was fun to spread out the festivities.This I think is one of her favorite Christmas Presents. It is a M&D Puzzle that has little doors you open and the pieces inside are magnetized so they stick but you can pull them out. She loves opening and closing doors, for one thing.But she also really likes taking the pieces in and out. I am amazed to report that after only 3 days of playing with it, she knows where they all are by picture and by name. If I had her to Car she puts it in the garage, if I say, where is the Turkey, she opens the door of the oven to reveal it inside.Here she is signing open and Tanta Kat is signing it back to her to help her with her "Form" she is a little sloppy and "All Down" and "Open" often look alike. Against my better judgement, Lego's were all over the room before I could tell her to wait. These were from her Great Grandma Pat who mailed them ahead, and she loves them.These I was in fact able to get her to hold off on Opening, I just worry about loosing pieces while in Florida, but Holly was determined and pulled the "Lego" Muno out of the little box window. I think she is still a tad young for them as she puts the pieces in her mouth, but I think with supervision she can play with them just wonderfully.This is a fun little toy from Ikea that she will be able to grow into, though she plays with it already. It is like a crane, that picks up blocks via magnets, and a shape sorter in one. She liked making the crane part go up and down. But she would manually would attach the blocks to the magnetic base.She is starting to get fascinated with magnetic things, we got her these color form type things earlier in the week and she has been playing with them on the fridge, its like a magnetic book, but she likes the fridge better. It is a Fairy tale story and she plays with all the pieces arranging them.Another Mega Block set, this one was Plex's car and I decided to let her open it since she asked so nicely and it had wheels so she could push it around. Later, Opa built it all for her, but she broke it apart.This is one of my favorite things she got, I had something like this when I was a kid, as did my Mom which is why she bought it for her. It is a 16 block set with images on each side, making 6 different pictures, like a puzzle.She will have to grow into it, but for now she can stack the blocks, and she was excited when I changed the scene from the cow, to the duck. Mommy had fun doing the puzzle! And she liked putting them in and out of the base, lining them up.She got some Yo Gabba Gabba books which I think she enjoys, favorite characters in a different format, and another animal puzzle. This one has pegs, which makes it easier for her to use.I ended up packing all the puzzle pieces in Zip Lock bags so I wouldn't lose any and she could bring them to me and ask to "open" and we could play together, low and behold, instead she learned how to open a zip lock bag.This is a Yo Gabba Gabba Percussion set, which I was excited about, Daddy picked it out and it has all kinds of neat instruments, but the two best are the Plex Flute and the Muno "Kazoo" thingy. Both require her to blow which is excellent Speech therapy. Today she made noises with the Plex and was so proud of herself.This was a kinda big present. We thought about getting her the little people farm house with animals, but when we were at the store she showed no interest but instead ran across isles to pull down and play with the Kai Lan tree House. She really wanted this and doesn't have a "Doll House" so this is a starter one.Here Kat is writing Holly a note in a beautiful "Family History" book she gave to Holly and "Mommy" there are places to write down the family tree, and put in memories, as she gets older she can fill it in, for now I will work on the histories for her as a keep sake.Only Holly had presents to open, and she played with all her toys all afternoon, in the mean time the Grandparents, and Great Grandma Bertha Too played on the Wii. They went Bowling, Skiing, Tight Rope Walking. It was so cool, they loved it. I love how it is so accessible, Holly's Great Grandma Bertha is 87 and she is having a blast!

Our park

Just a quick note to let everyone know we still go to Our park every once in a while. It's just so close by and still a lot of fun. Its hard though now that it gets dark so early at 6:30 and is cold, but since its close, we can risk it.I didn't have that many pictures, so it's a quick post, but these few were cute! She is starting to really like the riding toys there, which is fun, its neat watching how she plays differently as she gets older.

Christmas Eve

Granny, Nana, and Ty came to see us at Oma and Opa's house for Christmas eve. In my family we grew up with the tradition of celebrating that evening, rather then Christmas morning.So we started the night with a big Christmas feast. My mom made my Oma's traditional German meal, "Schwein Braten Saur Craut und Knödel" Which is a Pork Roast, Dumplings, and Saur Craut.My dad pulled out the bubbles for Holly to play with while we were chatting and cleaning up. She loves the bubbles, and knows she has to ask Opa for them.Everyone wanted to see Opa's train room, since we didn't have a train "under the tree" per say, we thought it would be festive to check it out. Holly loves the train and could watch it for a long time.It is such a cool mountain town, but Granny wasn't holding onto Holly tight enough and there was a Hollzilla who caused a train wreck, it got a little derailed when she grabbed the engine off the track "ooops"There was a huge pile of presents all around the tree. For the most park Holly has been leaving them alone, but now that she knows there is stuff inside, she tries to open The "Left overs"Here is Holly with her Great Grandmother Bertha, who joined us for Christmas Eve. It was amazing that she sat still long enough for me to take her picture, what a sweetie!Then we started to open presents. We gave Bertha one to open, so Holly could watch and get the hang of things. She was very intent and curious about what was going on.We got this set of Train DVD's for my dad, I think he liked them, at least I knew he didn't already have the, so that was a good thing.The first present, Holly needed help opening. Tanta Kat was happy to oblige, her and Opa were the little tree elves handing out all the presents, and this one was from Tanta Kat.This is the Yo Gabba Gabba Viking Bath Set. From the "Going on A Boat Ride" episode, one of Holly's favorite, and since she loves the water and baths so much, this will be such a fun and great toy.This was sort of a theme this Christmas, and before you knew it Holly was unwrapping presents all on her own. She caught on really easy, and was very excited to see what was inside each one.It is a lot of work to open so many presents though, most of that whole table was for Holly. So she took a little break for a Yogurt Juice, which Granny was happy to help out with.This was a huge surprise, my dad was able to keep it secret from even my sister. it is a new camera, she had been saying she did and didn't want one, but she needed one, hers was 10 years old.She was so excited and Happy with it. Next Holly opened up this box. Kat had been taunting her with it all week. You see, when you dropped it on the floor it started to bounce up and down.Finally she got to open it and see what was inside and she was every so surprised and happy to see her Gabba Friends, Brobee, Muno, and Toodee. The Silly heads, wiggle and bounce when you tap them.Bouncey Bounce Toodee was her favorite of course and she immediately began to chase her all across the house. Tanta Kat wanted her to open more presents, but she was pretty occupied.So Tanta Kat decided to open another present of her own. This one was Wooden hanging chimes. They make such a pretty sound, very different from metal ones.But soon Holly was back up on Mommy's chair and she had another present in her lap and was ready to open it. She needed help finding an edge to get herself started but once she did she got the tearing thing just fine.Rip, Rip Rip, Tear, Tear, Tear off went the many layers of wrapping, Tanta Kat did a really good job of it to make sure that there was a lot of paper for her to take off.Holly was so good at unwrapping presents that she helped everyone. She unwrapped several of Mamma's, I got a lot of really cool cloths, some Capris pants, and several tops, I am excited about my new wardrobe.Bertha got some new cloths too, well a Snuggie, anyway. She is always cold, so now she has a Blanket with sleeves! I have one from years ago called a Slanket@!Mizar and Pyro got Ruth's puppy Onyx a Christmas present too, a new doggie bed. She really liked it. Daddy got to open presents too.From my parent's he got this cool milk frother, it is to make the yummy crema on top of the espresso's. It will be fun to play with when we get back home.Here the little one is unwrapping yet another present. She got Brobee Pajama's and Tshirt, she got a set of Gabba figurines, Gabba Mega Blocks.. Can you see the theme here?Here is my cute little elf, she is so excited watching Holly unwrap. She totally gets Christmas, we were afraid she would still be too young and not understand, but she totally does.She got several very cool Puzzles from Oma, we love them all. This was one I almost bought myself, so I am glad I didn't. Joel loved it because he wants Holly to learn how to read real time.This is a game, the Plex "Clean It up" game, there are little disks that somehow go into a trash can, and Plex it like a Slot Machine, you push his arm and the icons spin and one gets chosen and you match them.She did really liked the paper too. It was shiny and crinkly, reflective and fun. Plus she knew that once she got it all off the box she would get to see the cool new toy inside.This was one of her favorite gifts, a Muno Guitar. I was really excited about this one because when we play Rock Band she always wants to use the guitar, but now will have one of her own.We decided to save half of the presents for Christmas morning, we didn't want to totally overwhelm her and also wanted to give her a chance to play with all the new toys she already got. She was so happy.