Love

Lovely moments from February:

We celebrated grandma's birthday...

 Aliyah had to help blow out the candles--she loves to blowout candles!

 One of Dave's native Brazilian mission companions came to visit the U.S. and learn English for a few months. We had him over for dinner. We have loved getting to know him better!

I love these two with all of my heart. 

Aliyah LOVES "Fancy Nancy" books.

Really she loves all books (a girl after my own heart)!

I will often find her sitting and reading books...

Bowling

For our date night we went bowling…Aliyah loved it so much the first time and talked about it fairly often.  She loved it again, she would get so excited to bowl, push the ball, and run away not caring what happened on the other end...

although I think she did get a couple of strikes…

that makes Grandma proud!

Family History

I had a cool experience during the summer where I was able to find my great-grandmothers records and her mom. So we finally were able to go with my parents during Christmas break to do their work. Mom got to go for her grandma and I went for my great-great grandma. Dad and Dave got to go for other family members.  I have never experienced the temple like I did that day. It was so powerful to be able to attend for our very own ancestors.  

I had mom take a picture of me and Dave outside the temple. She has us sitting their smiling for a long time saying that the camera wasn't working…when in reality she had taken eighteen pictures! 1-8…18! Technology is hard sometimes. 

 

      

Heehehehee…

and they are pretty far away.

Here's me and Mom.

and an instagram shot!

I love to see the Temple!

Christmas

We were able to spend time with Dave's grandpa and extended family Christmas Eve afternoon. It was wonderful to sing songs and hear grandpa talk about memories. 

This year we were with Dave's family for Christmas Eve night. We enjoyed being with family some more! We had a wonderful dinner before acting out the nativity.

Aliyah got to be the angel.  

We began reading the scriptures and acting out what took place. When Aliyah had some little fit and decided to lay on the ground for the rest of the "production." So instead of the angel being above the and calling out glad tidings, our little angel was lying on the floor and crying.  It is reasons like these that we keep doing the nativity…you never know what you'll get!

Our tree.

All Aliyah wanted from Santa was 2 Candy Canes…luckily he brought a little bit more. We have a hard time not spoiling Aliyah. She is just too cute and gets so excited--especially over the simple things.

 We went to my parents house for Christmas day--good people and good food. The holidays never last long enough, but it sure does wear us out!

I love Christmas. It is my favorite holiday, not because of getting gifts, but because of the general feelings of love and excitement throughout the month.  

Aliyah's Birthday

I love that Aliyah's birthday is right before Christmas. I loved being pregnant during the Christmas season--always thinking about Mary.  We were able to score free tickets to see Frozen in the movie theater for her birthday (this was the second time we saw it and the second time in a movie theater.) She loved it, again. She fake laughed when she heard other people laughing…it was fun.

I had Aliyah look at different cakes that I could make her--she kept saying that she wanted a Repunzel cake like last year, but I knew that it was because she didn't know any differently.  So after looking through some that I had picked out (because I knew that I could do them) she picked the one that M&M's on it…her favorite candy right now.  Glad she picked it. 

We had lots of family come and celebrate with us!

Dave and I both made some of Aliyah's gifts…grandma and I made 13 "princess" apron dress-ups. My favorites are Snow White, the pink Ariel, the normal Ariel, and the Anna dress. Best part about it was that my mom had all the fabric (except for Anna and Elsa) in her collection!

Then Dave made this awesome little table and chairs! 

After everyone had left, Aliyah decided to take up photography. She took probably 20 pictures…most of them with her finger in front of the lens. 

What we saw her doing...

 

and what she ended up doing...

Oh how we love this little girl!