Trimming the tree

Olivia has been talking about ornaments and gold stars for a while now so when we bought our Christmas tree she was ready to decorate.


She had a blast decorating the tree, I can't tell you how many times she would stop what she was doing and scream "I'm so excited!"


She was having a little bit of trouble with her ornaments staying on the branches. I noticed that she came up with a solution to this little problem by hanging all the ornaments on the garland.


Olivia has been talking for weeks about putting a gold star on top of the tree. When we asked who should put the star on top of the tree Olivia started shouting "I I I I!!!" She didn't seem to mind that our star was silver not gold.

Thanksgiving

We went to North Carolina for Thanksgiving this year and had a great time. We stayed with my sister and her family and Olivia enjoyed the opportunity to play with her cousins. Olivia has only know high-rise living so the idea of having both a front yard and back yard was very exciting to her and she tried to be outside as much as possible. I kept hearing "Mom I just need to check the weather" as she would race outside.There were a lot of fun things to do and Olivia didn't want to miss a thing.

I think Olivia was able to see some of the differences in the way boys play versus girls. On Thursday I was helping in the kitchen and Olivia was playing with Reed and Max. I peeked into the living room to see how things were going and found Max and Reed stapling the flaps of a big box closed. I asked them where Olivia was...I heard her sweet little voice "I'm in here mom." I asked her if she was ok inside the box and she said yes. I think it's safe to say she's not claustrophobic.

Olivia was going to dress up with her cousins for Thanksgiving, but unfortunately we left her Pilgrim costume in New York. Matt had been in South America for work all week and met us in North Carolina, luckily he had bought Olivia a little red dress in Argentina. She put on the dress and we stuck a few feathers in her hair and she was ready to join Thanksgiving dinner as an Indian.

Joe and Emily were nice enough to drive down and join us for Thanksgiving dinner. I can't believe I didn't get a picture with them. Olivia sure loves Joe and Emily. We were able to hang out with them a few times. After they would leave Olivia liked to keep tabs on them. She would continuously ask me, "What's Joe doing now?" "Where's Emily?"

We were so lucky to be with so much family for Thanksgiving. We had such a wonderful time!

Chit-chat

I love hearing Olivia chatter all day long. It's fun to hear what's on her mind, she is always making me laugh. Here are a couple of things that have made me laugh recently.

-Olivia was looking at her Halloween candy and said "Little boys like to eat candy and little girls like to eat quiche."

-When we sing "Teach me to walk in the light" she requests that we sing "teach me to walk in the mud." I'm not sure why.

-Olivia told me she wanted to get in a boat. So she ran to her bedroom brought out a blanket and laid it on the floor. She stood on top of it and asked me for some oars. I gave her two wooden spoons and asked her if she was in a row boat. She said no I'm in a gondola and she proceeded to sing to me like a little gondolier as she rowed her oars.

I think I say this at every age, but this is my favorite age so far, Olivia is a lot of fun!

Happy Veteren's Day

Olivia thought it would be nice to send the soldiers a package. I asked her what she wanted to send the soldiers, she said she wanted to send them cookies, Lara Bars (her favorite), ice cream, donuts, and the rest of her Halloween candy.

Halloween Party

When Olivia would tell people that she was going to be a cupcake for Halloween it was almost always followed by "...and mommy is going to be a present and daddy is going to be balloons and together we are a birthday party." Olivia was very excited for the whole family to dress up in our costumes for the Ward Halloween party.




Olivia had been waiting for the trick or treating all month. Only 2 people in the ward had cars and everyone else was just standing in the parking lot, so she went from person to person collecting her candy. Next year we will for sure have to go trick or treating door to door.


Olivia with some of the primary and nursery kids.


Olivia had a blast at the party she enjoyed the chili from the cook-off and she couldn't stop dancing, but her favorite part was playing with our costumes.

When one of the nursery kids started ripping my costume apart Olivia was concerned and wanted to rescue my costume, but when I told her it was OK, she joined in the fun of tearing up the box and wrapping paper...definitely her favorite activity of the night.

What to do?

Last night we were sitting on the couch and Matt said "What should we do?" Olivia immediately piped up and said "Let's listen to the prophet." We all thought that was a wonderful idea so we found a talk from President Monson from last General Conference and we all listed to it. Thanks for the good idea Olivia!

Happy Halloween!

Olivia was a cupcake for Halloween. She has been so excited about her costume and had been telling everyone about it the entire month of October. I even heard someone ask her what her name was and instead of answering Olivia she excitedly answered I'm going to be a cupcake! Everyone kept telling Olivia they wanted to gobble her up, so she took a taste of her costume and decided it wasn't so good.

Queens Farm

A couple of weeks ago we took a taxi out to the Queens Farm. Our initial goal was to find a pumpkin patch, but we found a lot more fun than we bargained for. Our first stop at the farm was to feed the animals. Olivia fed some pigs, goats, and llamas.

The next stop was the hay ride, Olivia took a seat in the tractor while we waited for our turn. I think her favorite part of the hay ride was saying "hello" to the animals she saw wondering around.

Our last stop was the pumpkin patch. Olivia selected the perfect pumpkin. It was a nice round pumpkin with the perfect rounded stem so she could carry it as a purse. I was actually very impressed with her ability to select such a perfect pumpkin amongst the hundreds that were at the patch. I waited in a very long line to buy the pumpkin, while Olivia and Matt played around the patch. When I was finally next in line, Olivia came running up to me with a tiny pumpkin the size of a small apple and said she wanted to switch pumpkins. I reminded her of the pretty pumpkin she already found and reminded her of its purse feature, but she said she liked the small one better.

After a fun day at the farm we headed home. Olivia took the opportunity to serenade us all on the taxi ride home. The taxi driver couldn't believe Olivia's singing and asked for her autograph, he said he was going to keep it and sell it on eBay in 20 years. :)

Once is not enough....

Ever since Olivia was able to say a prayer by herself we have been saying 3 prayers on each occasion. It doesn't matter if it is our morning prayer or prayer over food multiple prayers are always said and they are usually all said by Olivia. She loves to pray over and over again. If anyone else is ever given an opportunity to pray she starts up with another prayer as soon as they say "amen." Similar behavior has recently been shown with Family Home Evening. We had Family Home Evening on Monday, but then every day since then Olivia has requested that we have Family Home Evening, so we have. Yesterday we had Family Home Evening in the morning and than again at night. Last night she said "okay I'm ready for Family Home Evening. We're going to start with a song, I choose." Matt was out of town and so she was conducting FHE just like he does, it was very funny.

Things we love

Since our camera was stolen I have stopped recording many Olivia memories, but there are so many things that I want to remember that have passed by. I wanted to sit down and type out a few things about Olivia at this stage in her life that I love.

1. I love that she LOVES to help and she takes it very seriously. Last weekend we were building a bookshelf and Olivia was very excited to lend a helping hand. She was in charge of giving Matt the correct screws and nails he needed and she even used the electric drill to tighten the screws. There was one part of the building process that Matt thought would be safer if Olivia wasn't involved, so he told Olivia her job was to sit on the chair and make sure everyone was ok. Olivia immediately ran over to the chair and hopped on. She kept saying "is everyone ok, is everyone ok." It was very cute how seriously she took this task.

2. I love that she gets SO excited SO easily. There isn't much that doesn't make this girl excited. Olivia is very very excited for Halloween. She squeals with delight if she sees or hears about anything related to Halloween (the color orange, hay, bats,...). We have an advent calendar to count down to Halloween and do Halloween activities each day. Olivia was so excited to begin the countdown to Halloween we had to do a countdown until we could start the advent calendar.

3. I love that she taps her finger on her chin and says "hhhuuummm" when she is thinking.

4. I love that when you talk about certain food she will get a big smile on her face, rub her hands back and forth and say "he he he he!" She usually gives this response when you talk about cookies or ice cream. However, it is starting to broaden to other foods as well. Last night at dinner I said "Here's your fish Olivia" and I was surprised to see her start to rub her hands together and a big smile spread across her face.

5. I love her thoughts. Olivia has a lot on her mind and she is always talking. I love to hear what she has to say. Last week I was cutting Olivia an avocado and she asked if she could see the pit, so I gave it to her. It was slimy and green, she looked at it for a while and then said "This pit looks like it's from Mars." Later that night I was putting her to sleep. Olivia popped up from her crib and said "Where's my Dad," Matt had been out of town for a couple days. Before I could answer she asked"Is Dad on a mission?"

A trip downtown

We took a trip downtown and headed to South Street Seaport. This is a fun little village, it feels like you have stepped out of the city when you are down there. Olivia enjoyed all of the big old ships.
I stepped away from Olivia and Matthew to ask someone for information when I heard some commotion. I looked over and saw a large group of Asian tourists going crazy over Olivia. It was really one of the funniest things I have ever seen. They kept waving at her and beckoning her to come closer and they got their cameras out and started taking pictures of her. Olivia was a little alarmed by the situation and started backing up.

There has been quite a buzz about a new playground they just built near Wall St. It is called the Imagination Playground. People were making such a huge deal about this playground and how much better it is than traditional playgrounds. I was wondering what the big deal was when we got there it was pretty much just a big pile of blue styrofoam shapes. Olivia tried building a house a few times, but then asked where the slide was.

The Imagination playground doesn't have anything, but the blue blocks so Olivia took matters into her own hands and came up with her own slide. I think we'll stick to the traditional playgrounds.

We decided to end our day with ice cream cones on the piers. Olivia just wanted to hold hers and Matthew had to keep trying to convince her to lick the ice cream. Just holding the ice cream didn't end well and the ice cream ended up on Olivia's shoes. We all had a good time and really enjoy exploring new areas in the city.

Row Boats

We went to Centeral Park to go on the row boats, but on our way found a lot of other fun activities. We spent some time at Bethesda Fountain.



There was a man blowing enormous bubbles. It was really cool and Olivia was mezmorized. He was really nice and blew some bubbles for her to pop. She absolutloey loved it!!!




While we were looking at the bubbles Olivia heard some singing, and rushed over to a nearby tunnel in the park and listened to this family sing.


We finally made it to the row boats. As soon as we sat down Olivia started singing "row row row your boat." She really wanted to row the oars so she she sat with her dad and helped row. We had a wonderful morning at Central Park and decided we should try to come as often as possible.