Most of these were taken on 37 1/2 Street.
Strange Christmas decorations…
Strange Christmas tree…
Storytime!
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There were flying pigs!!! First the kids had to clip them on and pull them up…
…and then catch them. That’s harder than it looks. Leilani took turns with a bigger boy, they spent probably 15 minutes on that.
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Trains!
The rest of us got to play too.
Leilani’s loves to take pictures. We often take the camera away from her, because she tends to mistreat it, but she takes good pictures by now. She mainly photographs people…
… and things any three year old loves…
…but she also has some very funky random art pictures. Andy thought I should not photoshop these at all, but on most I did minimal correcting and cropping…
…I’m not quite certain what’s up with that, but pretty much every time she gets a hold of the camera she takes a photo of her feet.
(I just include this as proof that some other people who study photography also do this :)
[no links to hi-res in this post]
We heard Georgetown had a great playground, so we had to check it out with Leilani. It turned out to be very similar in design to the Lydgate playground, they must’ve been designed or built by the same organization.
Some things were totally different, and lots of fun too…
…for all ages.
And the decorations were definitely not Hawaiian. From what I understand, these playgrounds are built with input and volunteers from the community, so they end up reflecting the local environment.
Leilani loves to climb and she is getting very good at it (she got on top of the tires by herself).
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She also has great balance now…
…and likes to hang upside-down…
…and right-side-up, too.
Christmas eve after mass, the tree is full of presents.
We did let her open one that had some nice books. Grandma read her one and then she was tired enough to go to bed without too much protest.
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Finally Christmas morning. Oh, the joy of unwrapping presents. Especially since we made her eat breakfast first.
A gingerbread man in the stocking!
Andy gets a present too.
Grandpa Jim tries to get some present-opening tips from Leilani, but he still wasn’t very good at it. Leilani had to help him more than once.
Sonja gets some help too.
So many little presents…
Stamps!!!
Grandma and Grandpa’s tree with several generations of ornaments, but no more presents. Actually, there were some left for David who would arrive later.
The advent calendar was one of Leilani’s favorite things in December, probably because there was a little chocolate each day. She likes chocolate so much that on some days, she tried to ask for another. It was great for teaching her numbers. I think she found every one by herself after we’d show her the digits elsewhere. We brought it to Austin for the 24th, and Leilani wanted to open another chocolate on the 25th. We told her that’s not how it worked, but she insisted on looking in all the little windows again—and she found one! That was her Christmas Miracle.
Among the toys at Grandma’s house are David and Andy’s collection of Smurfs from when they lived in France (where they are called Schtroumpfs). Leilani really enjoyed setting them up on the fireplace. She did leave two in the box though, the hunter and the soldier and declared the box the prison …
