Olivia visiting Santa Claus

Pat and I took Olivia to visit Santa Claus at the mall. We had to stand in line for about 10 minutes and she did real well doing that. She waved at Santa and he would wave back, and she waved again at him a few more times. She had a funny expression-didn't know who exactly this big man in a red suit was. We really thought it may work for her to sit on his lap being it really didn't frighten her to see him so close and the 2 kids ahead of us did such a good job. But, no such luck. She screamed I think before her cute little red dress touched his lap. I think she was on there maybe 30 seconds-long enough for the gal to only get 3 pictures taken. But, we never laughed so hard (sorry Olivia-it was at your expense) at how cute the picture turned out! Afterwards we took her to the carousel and she sat on the horse for about as long as she sat on Santa's lap and then Pat had to hold her the rest of the ride. She even threw her Santa hat off right away-I guess she's not too happy with him!

Havin fun!

Olivia's buddy Brayden came over today to play while his dad Chris and Pat are watching football. They have so much fun and play so well together. Here they're in Olivia's favorite place-the empty book shelf . And then the car rides-they laughed and pushed each other into about every piece of furniture and box in the living room!

Day at the Park

Yesterday we took Olivia to the park to feed the ducks and play. It was such a nice day-we had to take advantage of it before we move to the "tundra". I don't think we'll be able to go to the park in just sweaters on December 12th again. She had so much fun. Her favorite was the tornado slide-she even went down by herself. I of course was a little nervous-but she had no fear doing it and absolutely loved it!

No fear

Here's a few pictures of our little Dare Devil. She seems to have no fear of anything and is actually pretty good at it-no bumps or bruises (yet) from falling. The first few pix Olivia is standing on her zebra toy-something she does quite often while watching TV. She also loves to climb on our moving boxes/totes and stand up on them. We have a baby gate blocking the kitchen from the living room that we also use for the dogs and Olivia is bound and determined to climb over it. She can get both feet off the ground and hang on it-pictures to come when she does!

The bottom picture is just a picture of her crib. In the front you can see where the hinges and bar goes across for folding the crib down to be used with infants. Up until last Friday, it looked like this. Friday night we caught her with both feet on this hinged bar ready to climb over! And not a worry in the world (for her). However it scared the crap out of us! Now we have it turned around so the front is now against the wall and the very tall side with no bars across is in front. Makes it hard to get her in and out when we need to, but until she's ready for her big girl bed, I guess this is what we have to do. Obviously the manufacturers weren't thinking of this when they made the crib.

Legos & Bookshelves

Here's just a few pictures from today. Olivia doesn't quite understand why there's bookshelves, dressers, and boxes in the living room, but she is loving it! She's also just rediscovered her legos and stacks them on everything. She even pouted last night when we were going to take them away from her right before putting her in her crib, so we just let her sleep with 3 of them. This morning, we could hear clanking and clicking coming from her monitor, and sure enough-she woke up and immediately started to play with them. I'm thinking she'll be needing a bucket of them from Santa.

Happy (late) Thanksgiving!

I know it's a little late, and doesn't even seem like Thanksgiving was just last week with Christmas around the corner, but just wanted to say Happy (late) Thanksgiving to everyone. I haven't posted anything for awhile-we've been so busy finishing up at the office, and getting our moving plans going. We spent Thanksgiving with our good friends the Klines, and had a wonderful meal. Olivia especially loved the black olives and cranberries. We also had Mike take some family pictures at the park by our house-hoping for one good last one with the mountains. But, little Miss Independent wanted nothing to do with it. We'll try again maybe this weekend, but here's a few of the 30ish that were taken.