The Polar Express

Over the holiday, Gabriela memorized the entire book of the Polar Express, with no instruction or persuasion. During Christmas, if Gabriela wasn't humming or singing Jingle Bells, she was probably reciting pages of The Polar Express.She just loves the story. I knew she had memorized the first few pages, but one day she just kept going until she finished the book! I couldn't get a video of her reciting the entire book, but I did get a long stretch, which also shows that Gabriela can be a tad bossy. Sorry, Natalie. (it takes Gabriela a little while to get going on her book reading, but she does it)

We put all the other Christmas books away, but we had to keep The Polar Express out.

Cousin Time in Santa Barbara

Okay, so I realize I still haven't blogged about Christmas. I'm having a slow reunion with my blog.  First, here are some pics from Santa Barbara. We visited for a week after Christmas and the girls had lots of good times together. 

Auntie Adie got lots of love and snuggles from Gabriela.

Natalie and Gabriela loved realizing that they had matching bathrobes. Gabriela's was a Christmas present from Auntie Adie and family. 

Gabriela went bowling for the first time ever with her cousins.  How clever is this set up for little bowlers?!?  This combined with the bumpers in the lanes made bowling easier for this little munchkin. In fact, her first turn ever, she managed to bowl a spare!!  All by herself.  It might help that Great Grandma Chaney and Nana both are known for their mad bowling skills. 

At noon, the lights go down, the black light turns on, and the music starts playing.

Gabriela is obviously serious about eating her pizza!

 

The next day, Uncle Ian brought doughnuts home for the girls.  Gabriel

Gabriela's New Dress

I worked so hard to make Gabriela this little dress over the weekend, and never would have been able to complete the job without my sister, Theresa, my SIL, Kristie, or my mom.  Thanks girls for helping me stay focused, for telling me when I was doing it wrong (even though I didn't want to hear it) and helping me along the way.

 

Gabriela loves her new dress, although even though I made it one size up, it's still pretty short on my tall child. Next time I'll make it longer, or do like Kristie and make an under skirt to coordinate with the dress, because right now, I'm thinking it fits more like a tunic.

Here's Gabriela in action.  She loves her new dress(y shirt), and I'm proud of myself for sewing something special for her. Yay me!

January in CA

It's a little weird getting used to January in California. Last weekend we were at my parents' house where it was 70 degrees all weekend long.  In winter's defense, there was a two week stretch where the highs were in the 40s. Everyone was miserable and bundled up to the max.  Last weekend, however, was beautiful. We went for a nature walk in my parents' yard and found some fun things like 

 these beautiful trees that my dad planted 11 or 12 years ago. They are ginormous and much prettier than that slouchy other variety in the background.

 Are you kidding me?!?!  Fruit tree blossoms in January? What is this world coming to?  Did I mention the daffodils are all blooming too??

 Dandelions!

 a quick ride on Papa's tractor while it was off, because it's "too loud" otherwise, according to a certain two year old.

 an abandoned bird's nest

.

and a giant mushroom!

A jack rabbit also hopped in front of us and raced down the field across from my parents' yard. We saw some cool birds, explored some holes in the dirt and wondered who lived in them and walked through Papa's grape vines.  

The next day, Gabriela noticed the hole in the sink and said, "I wonder who lives in this hole"  nobody, I hope.

New Dolly!!

I was so excited when I won a super cute prize from HolleAnn's Blog 
I have good luck on her blog, this is the second time I've won an awesome prize.

I couldn't wait for it to arrive!  Gabriela is a huge fan!  She loves this baby doll so much.  But the best part? She gave her a real name.  All of Gabriela's other dolls so far have been named "Baby" or "Baby Doll", but this one takes the cake.   Her name is...

wait for it....

JOHN.

Yep, John.  At first I thought she said Dawn and I thought what a sweet name, but I was quickly corrected.  John comes along with us wherever we go.  Gabriela takes her for nature walks in her baby doll stroller, brings her on the trampoline with her, and reads her stories and tucks her in the bed.

Thanks, HolleeAnn for such a sweet giveaway. Gabriela loves her to pieces.

Fairy Winter Wonderland

A couple days after Zoo Lights we took this little munchkin to Fairyland in Oakland for some more Christmas fun. We bundled up, packed some snacks and hot cocoa and were on our way.

 It started out like any normal trip to Fairyland. Gabriela went down the slide.

 We went on the Jolly Trolly train ride, twice. with no line.

 Daddy thought it was a good idea to let Gabriela go down the giant slide that is for kids 5 and older.  It was a great idea.  She LOVED it, and went for another round!

 She also took a spin on the mini Alice in Wonderland themed merry go round.

 And then we saw Santa. Gabriela told him her name, she showed him how old she was and told him she wanted a present for Christmas. And she thought it was totally cool that Santa had a tiny candy cane to give her.

 Once it got dark, we walked around and checked out all the Christmas lights at Fairyland.  We also watched a Cinderella puppet show and enjoyed our hot cocoa. I wasn't sure how much Gabriela got out of the show, since she doesn't know the story of Cinderella and hasn't seen the movie. But the next day she said, "Cinderella's friends aren't nice! Cinderella is sad she can't go to the ball."

 Lane was still on his fancy light picture kick.  Here's one more.

 We went to a little Christmas sing along show.  They invited the kids up on stage to shake jingle bells and dance. Gabriela was so sweet up there.

 Gabriela was happily shaking away to a little song that started out with "dashing through the snow" but when it got to the chorus, she turned around as quickly as she could, had the widest, brightest eyes, and couldn't believe that these guys knew her favorite Christmas song!!!  Unfortunately, we didn't catch that exact moment on camera, but this is still pretty sweet.

 Later that night, Gabriela instructed her daddy to take a picture of her. She stood in front of Tweedle Dee (or Dum) and gave him this giant camera smile. So silly.

Next, we walked to a different stage where there was a dance party with Santa and other dressed up characters. Gabriela was thrilled to dance with Santa Claus.  After the dancing and singing, we all walked together to the front of Fairyland where they had their Christmas tree lighting ceremony.

 Fairyland's winter wonderland was a really sweet, low key holiday celebration - perfect for our little elf.  Gabriela had a blast!

Zoo Lights

Whoops, I've gotten a little behind on posting...
We went to Zoo Lights at the Oakland Zoo for Christmas lights.  The zoo was all decked out with tons of lights, and even a show of lights that changed to the music.  Gabriela spent the evening making goofy faces...

 So glad we got to visit with Nate's family.  These kids are best buds. I love that they are getting to be such good friends.

 The kids went on a few rides after we all checked out the lights.  Gabriela was such a big girl on the airplane ride with Chaney!

Lane was in charge of documenting Zoo Lights.  He spent most of the time trying to take crazy pictures of the Christmas lights. They turned out pretty cool.