The Nutcracker

Grandma, Great-Grandma and I took Ella to her first fine arts experience today, and we all saw the Nutcracker. Ella sat for some of the performance but luckily we moved a few rows up and away from people so she spent most of her time doing "ballet" between the rows and giving me more stress than I deserve :)

Christmas Day & Boxing Day

Christmas has been great this year. Ella, being the sole granddaughter, niece and daughter was spoiled rotten as usual :)The Washington clan arrived before noon and more present mayhem ensued with Ella exclaiming in glee over her new princess piano, "Oh my gosh! I can't believe it!"How many uncles does it take to put together the aforementioned princess piano??The girls went shopping today and went a bit mad. Of course what Grandma can resist a trip to the Disney store and could ever say no to a new Cinderella dress?? Did I mention Ella is spoiled... rotten :)With Uncle Joey licking the whip cream beaters:With Grandma and her new coat and hat set:With Papa and her new pink vest:

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve with Mommy & Daddy:Christmas cookies for Santa with Ella's new Princess Tiana pj's:
Storytime with Papa:Goodnight Papa:Goodnight Daddy:Santa was here...

December at a Glance

This month has been a little hectic and I haven't kept up this blog as well as I usually do so here is the month in photos...

Our little reindeer:Christmas Pictures for Mommy:

Our First Gingerbread house:Our Christmas Decor:

Christmas lights in the hill country, north of San Antonio:

Burrrrr... San Antonio is cold for us!

Message from Santa

Click on the link "Ella's message" below.
If the window doesn't come up the first time, use the "refresh" button on your browser... or
...the back button, return to the blog and try the link again... as you can imagine, Santa's computer must be busy at this time of year :)

Ella's message

Festive Riverwalk

Tonight, we headed downtown San Antonio to see the Riverwalk in all it's Christmas light glory. We went with all our new friends and Ella was happy to run around with both Aidan and Ryan... though there is a noticeable lack of railings along the river which limited how much time the kids actually got to run amok. It was a gorgeous night, not as cold as it's been and we even took a stroll to see the Alamo.

New Friends

We headed to the outskirts of San Antonio to a quaint little town to see Christmas lights with one of Ron's co-workers and his family. Ella and Ryann hit it off immediately and were inseparable... how cute are these two!

Cameron and Sara showed us around main street and the square where there was a country craft fair/market. They even had fake snow blowing out of the square gazebo... Ella was in heaven running around in it.

Cold

It's been a couple of weeks of cold weather... we're cold because we're still adjusting from Hawai'i, but it's also relatively cold for San Antonio. It's been getting down to the low 30's (close to zero for you Canadians) at night and only up to the mid 40's during the day. We've been bundling up in layers and layers, fleece, and staying warm under blankets. Ella loves my scarves and is going through this "model" phase where she poses crazy every time the camera is out... I have no idea what's prompted this but it is amusing :)