Choo Choo Turns 1!

I can't believe Tasha is a whole year old! We had a casual party with our family to celebrate.

Tasha with Grandma Shel and Auntie Kelly

Practicing her latest trick, walking! She took her first steps 2 weeks ago and does 3 or 4 back and forth to Todd and I. She still prefers crawling but is working on mastering her walking skills. Grandma Shell made cupcakes which were not a problem for this 1 year old. She jumped right in and ate most of the cake. She also did pretty well with her birthday hat and let us get our pictures before she ripped it off.

Another hat to torment Tasha. This time from Auntie Kelly. Its adorable and perfect for this chilly weather we've been having. Thanks everyone for making Tasha's birthday special!

Christmas

We had ourselves a busy little Christmas. In the morning my dad, Gabriel, Kelly, my brother John & his daughter came to visit, we had brunch with Todd's family and dinner with my mom, Dave, Kelly and our friends The Santos'.

Here's Tasha on Christmas. First in the morning and then hanging out on a box. She wasn't very into opening presents this year so her big sister helped her, but she was very cheerful.

Dave gave Todd the most awesome present this year. A clock made from wrenches and spark plugs all welded to a brake rotor. He even sealed it up in a box so Todd had to unscrew it to open it. It will look great hanging in the shop for sure.

Grandpa Joe with his youngest son and granddaughters Ela and Zoey.

For some reason Ela thought the bows belonged on her pretty face. Here she is with her "twirly sparkly" dresses from Grandpa Dave. They are beautiful and were promptly worn for the rest of the night. We had a wonderful Christmas, it was great to spend so much time with friends and family and remember the birth of our Savior.

Christmas Eve

We spent Christmas Eve with Todd's family this year.

First we had dinner at Ruby's on the pier in Oceanside.

Family pier shot. Check out the beautiful sunset! Just another December day in San Diego.

After dinner we took the kids to the playground where Mimi got to hear Tasha laugh for real for the first time. Since she is normally such a serious child we get pretty excited when she laughs. After opening presents at Joy's we went home to get the kids in bed. Ela put out treats for Santa and his reindeer and made sure I put her blanket "pretty side up" so Santa could see it. Although she was exhausted she had trouble falling asleep. She told me she couldn't sleep because her eyes kept popping open, she even gave me a demonstration. Adorable.

Its Christmas Time

To get festive, the "Mishamaries" helped us decorate our tree and Ela put the star on top. She was super excited and had been asking when Thanksgiving would be over so we could do it. I think she thinks Thanksgiving symbolizes Christmas tree decorating so maybe next year we'll tell her about the pilgrims and indians.
We also went to Escondido Center for the Arts festival with some friends. Todd has been helping Tasha learn to walk and here she actually looks happy about it. Normally she's so happy crawling she will fall to her knees dramatically when we try to get her to walk.

An artist set up a blanket fort that the kids could play in. They loved it and played for a long time in there until we finally lured them out with cookies. Dean and Ela decorating cookies. Everywhere we went someone had a basket of cookies and was handing them out. It seemed to be the theme of the evening which was fine with me.

Can you believe this was Ela's first snow encounter? I felt kind of bad since it was really just a pile of ice but she thought it was cool and was a natural snow ball thrower. Ela also saw Santa and this time she was ready. She told him she wanted a princess doll and anything with princesses on it. It was a fun evening and it is definitely beginning to feel a lot like Christmas to me.

Tide Pool Time

We took the girls to the Encinitas Tide pools this weekend. Ela was super excited until we got there and she realized we had to walk around and look for the "creatures".

The giant crab we found.

We actually found a few starfish. There was a group of 3; small, medium and large and they kept crawling around. Ela was not afraid to touch them either. Although she was not a fan of the anenome, they were too "yucky".

Todd on the other hand couldn't get enough of poking the anenome. We had so much fun and it was another beautiful day in December in San Diego.