December 28th

Well, I'm not sure what happened this holiday season.  I had plans for many things, but few were actually carried out.  I have been busy at work and Emma had a great holiday, but I am still disappointed that I didn't make the time to do all of the holiday-related activities that were in my head.  For the past few weeks I've been seeing/hearing about a lot of neat holiday ideas that other people have completed and for some reason I just became stuck instead of using their ideas as motivation.  So, I decided to just put it aside for next year and be grateful that overall we are all happy and healthy which is what counts at the end of the day.

I have a bunch of random pictures below that I kept meaning to post this month, but for one reason or another it didn't happen.  Hopefully I will become unstuck in 2012!

Emma received a Target gift card from Uncle Gym and Aunt Sandy.  It was a great time to buy her a scooter!

  My mom and I took Emma to Disneyland to check out all of the fantastic holiday decorations.  She rode her first roller coaster and loved it!  She wanted to ride it over and over and over again.  I was surprised she enjoyed it because it was really fast and fairly loud.  She has declared it to be her favorite ride now.  We also had a chance to see their Christmas parade and it was very cute.  I still think Emma gets super excited about Disneyland because they have cotton candy there.  Disneyland even had reindeer at the park.  Emma asked me repeatedly where Rudolf was, but sadly we didn't see him.  He must have been resting up for Christmas Eve night.

Our friend Kerri's little girl celebrated her birthday earlier this month.  Kerri puts together really neat parties.  She had a circus theme this year and even had a petting zoo and a pony ride at her house.

This year I bought Emma a small Christmas tree at Target and then turned her loose to pick out her own ornaments.  I had a lot of fun watching her pick out the decorations.  My original thought was that if she had her own tree then she wouldn't feel the need to help me decorate the big tree.  Silly me.  Not sure what I was thinking. 

She took a nap after decorating her tree and fell asleep holding the ballerina monkey.  So cute.