Merry Christmas!

Of course a few days before Christmas Sophie gave me a scare and got sick with a high fever and slept most of the afternoon. Since we spent last Christmas with a sick kid I wasn't in favor of that. Thankfully that passed and in retrospect I think she was reacting to the flu shot she had a few days earlier. 

We closed on our house the Saturday before Christmas so it was a mad dash to get moved in and prep for the holidays. My sweet momma came out to help since at 36 weeks pregnant I was basically useless. She stayed just until a few days before Christmas so we had "mini Christmas" the Monday before. We also had quite the task to find a Christmas tree and the only real trees left in town were the ten dollar 2 foot trees. So we really did have a "mini Christmas" in some ways. 

As always, I love that Daniel's family does a big dinner on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day. It was an especially large dinner this year as all the Engers were visiting. It was kind of fun cooking food for 20+ people--felt like I was feeding an army. Everyone was so nice and chatty that we all had a great time. Sophie started getting bummed out when her cousins all unwrapped their Christmas Eve pjs so we headed home quickly after dinner. Sophie unwrapped some new (to her) Christmas jammies which was the best way we could coax her out of her Queen Elsa pjs that she requests every night. Thankfully since then Sophie has opened up the possibilities of wearing different pjs. Daniel also had me open a present which was a camcorder/video camera (I can't decide what to call it) which I am really happy about. Every kid loves watching videos of when they were cute and adorable and I want to capture how ridiculous cute Sophie is now. We love the way she talks and plays and I can't wait to capture when Sophie meets Emery for the first time. There's something wonderfully classic about having those family videos to look back on. 

I felt like I cooked all Christmas week, but there were just some foods I couldn't live without (i.e. sticky buns Christmas morning). Sophie did get up surprisingly early Christmas morning, but she was still adjusting to sleeping in her new room--which is by far the cutest room in the whole house. We still had fun watching her tear into all her gifts, to each she promptly requested we opened immediately. With her wild imagination, she got lots of figurines and dolls that are now scattered across the house, but are always being played with. Grandpa joined us for breakfast and then we headed to his house to open gifts and then over to the Engers. 

We got great snow Christmas week so Sophie headed out sledding on Christmas day with her cousins. She did have one little fall out of a sled, but did great otherwise. It was 15 degrees or something like that so she did eventually get really cold and we have learned that she is not a fan of that. 

Back to December

 Well technically this was the end of November. We had a great Thanksgiving at the Engers. My parents drove out from Boise and Spencer came down from Rexburg. It's kind of nice my little family can just blend in with my bigger family. Lots of delicious food was consumed---and hardly any pictures were taken. That weekend we decided to try out the light parade. Apparently its an old Idaho Falls tradition that they brought back. Well it was insanely cold. I thought I bundled us all up really well but Sophie had a most impressive meltdown waiting for the parade. They ended up starting late and we gave up. We took our sobbing Sophie back to the car. She cried all the way home about being so cold. Not trying that one again.

 Sophie really has loved the holidays this year. She loved decorating Grandpa's tree and showing off all the decorations to anyone who came over. She loved all things Santa, but we tried to reinforce that it's Jesus' birthday that we celebrate. She was pretty into that since all of her cousins had been having birthdays and she can't wait for hers either. December was just craziness between Christmas parties, concerts (Sophie loved cheering Grandpa on at his Christmas choir concert), shopping, and planning more holiday fun. January now seems so slow to everything we had going on before. But we had lots of fun too.

Oh, and also we bought a house. Kind of a big deal and even more wonderful than it sounds. However that deserves it's own post...

Dancing Queen

We made it through dance class! In December Sophie had two dance performances. I seriously stressed out about her just melting down and refusing to do it. I tried to convince family not to come just because it's a fifty second dance. Sophie even cried the first time I put her in her costume so I was sure we were doomed to failure. 

Not at all.

Sophie did amazing. (As amazing as you'd expect a 2.5 year old to do) Our first performance was at a Christmas Expo with a whole bunch of people. It was terribly organized and way overcrowded. Thankfully the day before, Sophie and I went with Erin and Kira to watch Kira dance so Sophie was all excited about doing her hair fancy and dressing up like Kira. The day of Sophie's performance it was sheer chaos where they were performing. But to my delight, Sophie marched up on stage and she and one other little gal were the only ones out of the class of five to dance and be up there alone. Sophie surprised me by remembering most of the choreography and just being her happy self in front of tons of people. She really isn't shy sometimes and it was so fun to watch her dance and be so proud of herself. She was bubbling with joy afterwards and we took her to Coldstone to celebrate. She wore her tap shoes until we forced her out of them and continued to wear her costume for the rest of the day. The worst part of that whole performance is that Sophie's cousins had come to watch her dance and because the stage and everywhere was so crowded and people refused to move for anything they couldn't even see her. I promised them at the next performance they were coming with me to sit right in front of Sophie. 

Her next performance was at the Elk's Lodge and it was nearly as overcrowded and chaotic as the first performance. Again Sophie was so excited. She did well being up there but pretty much did the same dance move the entire time. It was still cute to watch and we got a great video of her cute self. Her cousins were able to sit up front with me and everyone left happy.

Dance class has been an interesting experience. In the beginning, it was more work than anything...continually yelling at Sophie to listen, wait her turn, stop this and stop that. There were days she refused to participate or put her dance shoes on at all. But the last few weeks I was able to just sit back and she really did learn how to wait her turn and listen to her teacher. It was so fun to watch Sophie doing stretches with her class or practicing her "princess walks" across the room. She really made me proud in the end. She still talks about class but we are stopping classes for now while we wait for baby sister to come. Hopefully we can find some fun summer activities before we start up with preschool in the fall!