First Christmas (Dec 25th)

The biggest thrill of First Christmas (at Whidbey) was definitely the colorful, ribbony tu-tu that Ella received from her grandparents. She immediately put it on ("all by me-self") and started to twirl. I can now report that our collection of tu-tu's (gifts and hand-me-downs) includes six very different, very twirly tu-tu's. Ella loves them all.

A Whidbey Christmas

With a driftwood Christmas tree (thanks to Poppa's creative flair) and a sandy beach for digging, we had a very northwestern Christmas on Whidbey Island.

Cousins

For weeks before vacation, Ella was talking about her cousins on a daily basis. Once we were back in their company (after six months without seeing them), Ella could be heard yelling "Robert" and "Matthew" repeatedly throughout the day. She absolutely loved playing with them and we really appreciated their patience, goofiness and love. She really wanted to hang with her cousin, Hero, and the two are becoming closer, as she gets older and, in his words, "you can do more with her"...
We were also treated to a visit from my uncle, Roger, my cousin, Stacey, and her twins, Juliette and Travis, from BC. With the twins at 25 months and Ella at 30, it was great to watch them interact for the first time since they all started walking. I look forward to many more visits with the Mayfield/Lambert crew!

Seattle ho!

We finally got aboard a flight on Monday and headed out west to join the other half of our family, the Alldredge-Shidner-Jin crew. We started off our visit with some time in Seattle and then continued on to Whidbey Island for some beach fun. It was a treat to see Ella's curls return within the first 12 hours in Seattle humidity! And a REAL treat for Ella to get "back on the horse" for her second-ever merri-go-round ride, which is always a thrill.

Snow fun

Now here are those outdoor shots!

The Holidays are HERE!

Although our holiday travel was postponed by two days due to the large blizzard that hit the Northeast in mid-December, that didn't delay the start of our fun. We headed to Long Island for a visit with Grammie and Gop and some playtime in the snow! Ella loved sledding and "plopping down" and making snow angels. She also loved eating the flour and dough of the sugar cookies that we made... You will see these "Christmas Jammies" in a lot of our photos - Ella wore them for about 10 of the 14 days of vacation and often that included a number of daytime hours!! Thanks to our friends Emily and Brian for that gift! Ella described them as having "everything she needed" - Santa Claus, Frosty, Christmas trees and reindeer!

Pre-Christmas

This year's holiday season was especially fun, because Ella was able to get into the idea of Santa Claus and learned a number of Christmas tunes that she sang often. Frosty the Snowman and Santa Claus is Coming to Town were absolute favorites, but she also loved Here Comes Santa Claus, which we sang with a lot of "dee, dee, dee, dee"s, because her mother could never recall the lyrics. Putting ornaments on the Christmas tree was another great adventure. When she dropped an ornament (a kitty cat riding a scooter) and "broke its leg", we decided to bandage its leg with athletic tape and gorilla glue and all of a sudden kitty was feeling much better and skating like a champ on a casted leg!