Christmas morning picture overload!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!  I've been absent from blogging while we have been in Arizona, and I have loved it, but I have so many good pictures of Christmas morning that I couldn't help dropping in to post them.  Our whole trip has been wonderful, but I am looking forward to coming home in a couple of days too.

My brother-in-law took TONS of pictures of Violet on Christmas morning, and here are some of my favorites:

Starting out the morning with a drink of chocolate milk!

Violet and Aunt Kari Sue matched!

More chocolate milk...

A sweater from great-grandma Audree:

Violet's present from Glenn and I:  Her first hockey stick!  She knew just what to do with it!

We have already read this Dora book to her about a hundred times;  thank goodness it is short!

Blocks!  I have enjoyed building with these more than Violet has so far!

Violet's newest words:  Bubbles!!!! and POP!!!

Chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast!

Violet colors at last!

I love to color, so I have been eagerly awaiting the day that Violet will show some interest in coloring.  A few days ago, for the first time, she actually sat and colored for about ten minutes, and I was so excited!  It was really cute to watch because she chose each color so carefully, and though it might not look like it, added that color very purposefully to her picture.

the final product!

(I might frame it)

Violet says the animal sounds

In case you can't understand her, Violet can say the sounds for dinosaur, bear, cat, dog, bird, and fish!  Also, she obviously didn't want us to be video taping her, hence the "NO NO NO NO NO NO" you hear a few times.  

in case you are having trouble viewing that one:

The best Christmas present so far...

Nothing like free parking at the beach to start your Saturday off right!

We went to Manhattan Beach on Saturday morning to get our pictures taken, and had some fun afterwards too.  We didn't know before we went, but there is a cool little free aquarium at the end of the pier.  Violet loved touching the starfish and making fish faces at the fish in the tank.

It took us about twenty minutes to walk back down the pier because Violet was so obsessed with looking over the edge:

On our way back to the car, we decided to stop at Wahoo's for fish tacos, which was a delicious treat.  The best thing was that it never rained!  We were worried about taking pictures on Saturday because it rained for two days before, and it rained Saturday afternoon, but the couple hours of dry skies overlapped with our trip to the beach.  Lucky us!

Family Pictures!

We finally got family pictures taken on beach, which is something I've wanted to do since we moved here!  My friend Brittany is getting very good at using her fancy camera, and agreed to take pictures of us as long as we promised to have low expectations.

Well, of course they turned out beautifully!  Violet was very nervous at the beginning, but by the end had relaxed a little.  Also, there were so many cute candid pictures of Glenn and Violet together.  I wish I'd held her for more of the pictures so I could have some cute ones with her!  Oh well, I'll just remember that for next time.

Here are my favorites:

(this is the one I will probably get printed big and framed)

(love Violet's face in this one.  She looks so earnest.)

(I wish this one wasn't a tiny bit blurry, because I love it SO much!)

bugs, cheese, and more

(just helping her old man with the dishes)

Have I mentioned lately how smart our little person is getting lately?  In fact, Violet said her first phrase a couple of days ago.  It was, appropriately, "I want cheese".

Yesterday, I heard Violet in her bedroom yelling, "BUG!... BUG!...BUG!" and sure enough, when I went in there, she was enthusiastically pointing at a nice big cockroach on the wall.

Other new words she has been saying lately:  moon, knee, airplane, tweet tweet, plus about 20 others.  Glenn and I are going to sit down together soon and make a list for her scrapbook.  Everyday we put it off, that task gets a little harder!  I seriously think Violet has learned at least one new word a day for the past 6 weeks.  It is amazing to get to watch her learn so fast!

The Beach in November

The days have been warm here lately, so on Saturday, we decided to take a trip to the beach!  I've been to this beach in Marina del Rey a few times, but Glenn never had been before Saturday.  It is called Mothers' Beach because it is so great for kids.  Since it is in the marina, there are no waves, and there is a big playground right on the beach.

Violet had a great time, and it was fun just giving Violet all of our attention for a couple of hours with no computers or tv to get in the way.  

Thanksgiving

Our Thanksgiving was wonderful.  On Tuesday when Glenn finished with school for the week, he mentioned, "Do you realize we could be driving home right now and we'd be there for 5 whole days before we had to come back," I started to be a little sad about our decision to stick around here for Thanksgiving.

But we had such a great time yesterday, and now it will just be even more fun to go home for Christmas (by the way, our Christmas break starts in TWO weeks!!).  We had dinner at our church building, and we ended up having 30 people there for dinner!  Everyone brought something (or five things!) and we had SO MUCH FOOD.  

(I cooked and carved the turkeys.  I wish you could just admire my excellent carving job in this picture, but we didn't take the picture until half of the turkey was gone.)

There were quite a few kids there, and Violet played with them all day long.  We were there for about 5 hours, and I barely saw Violet (besides checking on her occasionally to make sure she was still there, of course).

I am thankful for Glenn, Violet, my health, their health, our big loving families, our ward here in Los Angeles, that Glenn is doing so well in school and enjoying it so much, my computer, the weather here in CA, that my turkey wasn't raw yesterday, and Maggie. 

Cousin love

Melts my heart every time.  I can't wait for them to meet at Christmas!

Our artist

Violet's Aunt Kari Sue gave Violet sidewalk chalk for her birthday, and it has recently become her favorite thing.  Just look at that concentration!

Bye bye, Violet!