Our little town had a Christmas parade, tree lighting and Santa. Grace was happy the whole time waiting for Santa, even in the cold. But once it was her turn to actually sit on his lap....well, she wasn't too happy about it.
We spent Christmas in Utah, so before we left on the 23rd, we let Grace open one present. (Mostly because we didn't have room for it in the suitcases with everything else for Christmas!)
A new baby stroller! She loves pushing her dolls and stuffed animals around now!
We went and spent a week in Utah with Nathan's family for Christmas this year. Grace did really well on the plane ride, she slept most of the way there.
As soon as we got there, we bundled up and went with the family to go look at Christmas lights. Here's Grace all ready to go:
Grace had a great time getting to know her aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents better. There were 17 people all staying at Nathan's parents house, so there was always something fun going on!Here she is with her aunt Crista:
She loved her grandparent's big love sacs:
When everyone was playing Mario Kart on the Wii, she wanted to join in, so she got to play with the old controller and loved feeling like a big kid!
The worst part about our vacation was that we all got sick! Grace had an ear infection and the early signs of strep throat. We were all feeling pretty terrible Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and finally decided to go to an urgent care the day after Christmas. I (Emily) had a really high fever and ended up having strep throat. They tested Grace and Nathan too and their tests came back negative, but they both had the early signs of it and Grace's ears looked bad so we all got put on antibiotics. Pretty crummy timing. Grace had been doing pretty well during the days, but was sleeping terribly at night. Once the antibiotics kicked in though, we all felt MUCH better and were able to have more fun the last few days of our trip.
These next pictures are on Christmas morning and you can tell poor Grace does not feel well. She slept really badly the night before, too.
Grace is really into Elmo lately. She got Elmo pajamas and an Elmo puzzle from some of her aunts.
Somehow, despite feeling sick, we managed to get dressed up to go to church on Christmas:
Then, we went and had dessert at Nathan's grandparents' house.
We flew home a few days before New Year's so that we could go to Emily's brother's wedding that was held here in Portland.
Here's Grace and all of her cousins on Emily's side of the family:
We are so glad to finally be done with sickness in this house! It feels like Grace has had a cold since Thanksgiving, but she's been snot-free for over a week now! :) She's been doing great since we've been home and back in our old routine.
Some of her favorite things lately are:
- Elmo
- Pushing her stroller around
- Storytime at the library
- Milk (she's always loved milk, but I really have to limit her or she'd drink it all day long!)
- Church; at our church they have a nursery class for 18 month to 3 year olds to play in so their parents can attend the regular meetings and Sunday School. She started going in November and she LOVES it. It's 2 hours every Sunday and they play with toys, sing songs, have a snack, play with play-doh and bubbles. It is really her favorite thing. Almost everyday she asks, "Nursery day?" (If I tell her no, we don't go to nursery today she next asks, "Storytime?" I think storytime is her next favorite place to go!)
- Play-doh, which Santa so nicely left in her stocking.
- Reading books, she has about 5 that she asks for over and over. I pretty much have them memorized :)
- Listening to music and dancing. During December when we had Christmas music playing a lot, she got really attached to the song Jingle Bell Rock. It's now one of her favorite songs and she asks for "Jingle Rock!" all the time. Which was fine in December, but now that Christmas is over, it's getting a little old ;)
