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!

Snow

This month seemed like it snowed a ton more than it usually does during the month of December.  I got to drive in this for a couple of hours (which should have taken less than half of that time)...

While Aliyah did this. 

It probably would have been lovely to watch the snow falling and the quiet of ridiculously slow cars in the warmth of a padded car seat…Meanwhile I was totally white knuckled!

Aliyah was even able to go play with her cousin and friends outside. 

They built Olaf...

 Kind of...

 Grandpa took Aliyah and some cousins sledding.

  

 I love this shot of grandpa pulling Aliyah through the snow.

Oh snow…how I have a love-hate relationship with you!

A Big Moment

Naps in the crib became rough at the beginning of December. So I would let Aliyah have quiet time and pull out her pillow and other sleeping needs incase she fell asleep. Which happened fairly often.

Often enough that I hoped that if we just opened her bed that she would sleep in the bed and not on the floor. It didn't really happen that way. I just had to accept the fact that Aliyah was done taking naps. 

But Aliyah was SOOO excited to have a big girl bed.  She is awesome about staying in her bed at night--and blessing to me I don't have to go get her out of bed in the morning (it's the little things that make me happy!)

 

Daddy is the best to play with. I often find him and Aliyah playing pretty seriously in whatever they are doing.  Dave gets down and plays just like Aliyah wants him to. I love it!

Aliyah's First Dance Recital

I am pretty sure that Dave and I were much more nervous about how this would turn out than Aliyah…probably because Aliyah had no idea what was going on.  We tried to prep her and explain, but she was kind of grumpy the day of the recital.  I could see a number of scenarios happening: a) she would cry the whole entire time on stage b) she would cry and run off stage c) she would just stand there and not do anything d) she would try to take off her costume (something she kept trying to do as soon as we had gotten it on her), or e) she would be awesome.  

Why did I ever doubt!

She was amazing.  She did ALL of the movement..she even sang with the music! Dave and I were so surprised, but thankful!  We are proud of our little sugar plum!

with Mama!

Temple Square

We went to Temple Square couple of days after Thanksgiving.  We decided to ride Trax from Sandy to downtown, had dinner at Crown Burger, and then went to see the lights.  Good thing that trains are exciting for kids, because it was a bit of a long process to get from Sandy to downtown, but fun nevertheless and especially when there are cousins to play with!

Cousins listening to the message in the North Visitor Center.

( not one of them is looking at the Christus!)

It was a wonderful way to start the Christmas season.  

October!

We were able to go to our annual BYU game. It is fun to support our nice--Aliyah loves going on the field to see her and eating ice-cream.  Go Cougars!

One of our date nights this month was to go see the witches at Gardner Village in West Jordan.  Aliyah loved them.  There were a few particular ones that she remember--this one flying on the bike and the one sitting on the toilet in the outhouse (she mentioned that one for a couple of weeks after!)

This is Aliyah's common request--to have Repunzel hair.  She will use her baby blanket and want us to put it on her head at night.  Pretty good imagination right?

Library fun.  I love going to the library--for me and for Aliyah!

HALLOWEEN!

Aliyah wanted to be Cinderella for Halloween-fortunately her cousin had an old dress-up that she could wear.  She loved being dressed like Cinderella and she loved getting candy (but she would only eat the suckers..more chocolate for us!)

We went trick-or-treating with cousins!