The Park

Winter in LA means weather in the low-70's-- beautiful, sunny days.  It's wonderful.  This of course means that Eloise and I can spend a lot of time at the park.  I've taken a bunch of snapshots over the last several months.  Since this blog is mainly to be a journal for our family, I would be remiss if I didn't include how we've been spending much of our time.  I never want to forget these simple moments with my sweet girl!

Christmas with the Smiths

For Christmas this year, we spent a beautiful time at Hansen's parents.  We felt so blessed to have the whole family together.  We weren't great about getting our camera out for most of the fun events of the week, but here are a few snapshots of the fun.

Christmas Part 2: The lights!

I can safely say that Eloise's favorite part of Christmas is looking at all the "LIGH-LIGH's!"  She would scream with glee every time we passed a Christmas tree with lights, or a lovely decorated home.  Needless to say, she LOVED the decorated temple. We made two trips to the LA temple this year to let her see all the beautiful lights.  Hansen's parents were with us for the first trip (we didn't get any photos of them, what were we thinking?!), and then my parents were able to come the week after Christmas and we made the visit again!  Eloise was thrilled both times!

She was happiest when she was wandering around alone...

Not so happy when she was picked up for a picture with Mom and Dad.

And finally, I'd love to mention that Grandpa Smith helped with these trees this year.  Aren't they beautiful?  Rees is a counselor in the singles ward in Santa Clarita.  This was their assignment and I think they did a great job!

Christmas Part 1: The Tree

Our family had a wonderful December!  I'll try to catch up on all our fun happenings within the next blog post, or two.

We kicked off the season by picking out our Christmas Tree.  Eloise LOVED wandering around the tree lot.  In fact, the whole Christmas decorating experience this year was such a pleasure for her.  It's so fun to watch her discover all the magic and wonder of Christmas.  

A tree just her size!

After picking out the perfect tree, it was time to go home and decorate!  Eloise got to break out one of her special Christmas 'jammies' for the event. 

Throwing the ornaments was just as fun as putting them on the tree.

She took her job very seriously...

Posing by the finished tree

We couldn't resist snapping more shots of her by the tree on a following Sunday.  I love this little Scandinavian Christmas dress I found for her last year: