Trip to Utah

Our plan to fly out to Utah Christmas day was significantly delayed because of a blizzard that completely shut down New York City. We didn't end up leaving until 5 days later. Each day that passed Olivia would grab her suitcase and say I'm ready to go to the airport. She was always so disappointed when we said she would have to wait. It's a good thing Olivia was so excited about the airport because we ended up staying at the airport for almost 24 hours trying to get out. Olivia was such a good sport. I am grateful Olivia has such a wild imagination, we spent our time in the airport swimming through swamps, grinding wheat and being every animal imaginable- it made the waiting in the airport quite enjoyable. When we were finally heading down the jet way to get on our plane Olivia kept shouting "I'm so excited!"

Olivia sure had a great time in Utah, she was so excited to see everyone there. She especially enjoyed playing with Ella. There was a lot of hugging, jumping and laughing.

Olivia had fun with her cousins, and also enjoyed being with her aunts, uncles and grandparents.

Olivia discovered a new favorite activity. Emily and Olivia would take turns playing the piano while the other person danced. Olivia loved it!

Fortunately, we were able to squeeze in some time to see a BYU basketball game. Olivia was quite interested in the game, but was even more interested in watching Cosmo. She thought Cosmo was great and really wanted to take a picture with him, unfortunately we weren't able to.

Utah was great, we sure loved our time there!

Christmas Morning

We had a nice Christmas morning. Every time Olivia opened a present she wanted to play with it for a while before opening the next present. I think the doctor kit from Santa was her favorite. After presents were opened we played doctor on and off all day long.

We bought a microphone for Olivia since she is always singing. She was so excited about how loud it made her voice. She immediately put a show on for us.

Olivia was excited about the lip gloss in her stocking. Unfortunately the lip gloss kept ending up in her mouth, but I guess that is to be expected with cake batter flavored lip gloss.

Olivia put great thought into picking out my gift. She was so excited to give it to me, she couldn't help but telling me what it was before I opened it. She picked out lime flavored gum.

More Christmas Fun

We went to Rockefeller Center to see the big Christmas tree. Olivia was so excited to see the enourmous tree. Grandmother was in town, so she was able to join us.

A second shot at sitting on Santa's lap. She still wasn't sold on the idea, but she was much more eager to sit on this Santa's lap because she noticed he was handing out candy canes.

After seeing Santa we headed out to the Santaland set up on the piers. It was absolutely freezing. Olivia didn't seem to mind, she loved the inflatable Christmas decorations.

Olivia made her first gingerbread house. I learned a valuable lesson, you shouldn't order a gingerbread house kit online, it turns out the gingerbread cookies don't ship well. Despite our best efforts the gingerbread house kept falling apart, but Olivia was still very proud of her work.

Santaland

Christmas has past, but I still wanted to remember some of the fun Christmas memories we shared with Olivia. I was anxious to take her to Santaland at Macy's. She loved walking through the North Pole while we were in line for Santa. The marching band of bears was a highlight for her.

Her favorite part were the dancing ballerina bears, she wanted to join them on stage so bad.

Last year she screamed when we even brought her near Santa. I was anxious to see how she would react this year since she had been so excited about Santa Claus. She was willing to sit on his lap, but wasn't convinced she actually wanted to be there.
We have a tradition of Olivia getting to pick out a new ornament each year. We went to check out the ornaments while we were at Macys. Olivia enjoyed looking at all the different Christmas decorations.

I asked her to find her favorite ornament, it turned that every ornament was her favorite. She finally narrowed it down to 3 and selected the green dancing lady as her favorite.

Ice Skating

Olivia has been so excited to go ice skating. Whenever we would meet Matthew in the city, we would stop at the ice skating rink across from his office and watch the ice skaters and she was always so anxious to get on the ice. We finally found a Saturday that wasn't freezing and went to the ice skating rink.
As soon we put on her skates she hopped up and started running around. Matt and I were impressed with how well she was moving around on her skates.

However, it was a different story once we got on the ice, she turned into a rag doll. We spent most of the time with each of us at her side and dragging her around the rink. I was worried that being drug around the rink probably wasn't very fun for Olivia, but I realized I was wrong when she shouted "I'm having so much fun!" She also got excited when they started playing "12 days of Christmas" over the speakers and said "Ooooo my favorite song."

She decided to ditch skating and wanted to just sit on the ice and collect little piles of ice. We decided this was not the safest place for her and decided to call it a day.

After skating we went and bought some hot apple cider. Olivia said this was her favorite part of the activity.