Puddle Jumping

The best thing about 5 days and about 15 inches of rain is........puddle jumping! Grace and her buddy Jacob enjoyed about a half hour of jumping in puddles today while Rosco and Thorr looked on. We followed it up with a warm bath, hot chocolate and Olivia; which made for one happy and tired girl. We've been doing a lot of reading to keep busy during this rainy season and Grace's favorite new books are 'Puff the Magic Dragon' and 'Where the Wild Things Are'!

Natalie's Birthday

We went to our friend Natalie's 5th birthday party today at a cupcake shop in Irvine. How cute is she!!?? Grace got to hang out with a bunch of adorable "big girls" as they ate pizza, made bakers hats and decorated cupcakes. Of course Grace ate half of the decorations before they made it to the cupcake :) Natalie's mom Megan always comes up with the BEST birthday party ideas. Happy Birthday sweet Natalie!!

Picnic with our Friend Athena

Hugs
Ballet Practice

Strike a Pose

Tiny Dancer

Grace started her first dance class this week, Princess Playtime. The class is 15 minutes ballet, 15 mins. tap and 15 mins. tumbling and let me tell you, seeing 8 little 2-year olds plie and shuffle-ball-change is so cute I almost cried. I took pictures of Grace before we left for class because I didn't know how she would do listening to her teacher and not having me glued to her side, so I figured I'd wait until week 2 to bust out my camera during class. I was so impressed with how well she listened and followed Miss Andrea's direction. A couple of her friends from Gymboree are also in the class.

Playdate at Ella's

We had a nice playdate at our friend Ella's house on Sunday. It's always so much fun to eat good food, play at the park, and hang out with our best buddies :) Baby Ella is growing by the day...soon she'll be chasing Grace and Sophie around.

Finding Nemo at the Aquarium

Sea lions are cute
Our little ham, hammin it up

Smile for Daddy

I like to touch starfish, not sea cucumbers

Sharing a moment with a fish

We went to the Aquarium of Long Beach on Monday because Grandma's friend Sue Ellen gave us some free tickets (Thank you Sue Ellen!) and it had been over 6 months since we had been there so we were excited to see Grace's reaction to the fish. She learned a lot about jellyfish and can now tell you you'll get an 'ouchy' if you touch them.

Christmas

"Christmas through a child's eyes" was the theme of our Christmas this year as I look back on all the festivities of this past month. From watching Grace open tons of presents, to reading Christmas books each night before bed, it was so much fun teaching our 2 year old about all the Christmas traditions - Santa, cookies, Christmas trees, ornaments, presents, Jesus' birthday, Christmas lights etc. - now that she 'gets' it for the first tine. I think Grace had a great month enjoying all the seasonal fun and I have dozens of Christmas pictures that I want to share, but I thought I'd keep it simple and post one simple picture that captures the magic....