six days till christmas?

we went to the beach today. the girls were a little hesitant about the sand. they needed a little convincing...

addie agreed that it looked like fun right away...

ella on the other hand, took a little longer to agree...

before long addie dug right in with aunt rachel

while addie played and laughed ella stayed very serious and preferred to talk about the ocean...

and of course wanted to be held

austin loves the ocean with his girls and couldn't have been happier all day!

baby angel waltz of the flowers

that was the title of the little number adeline danced in at her first ballet recital on thursday night. she did such a great job, we could not be more amazed and pleased with how she did. i thought there would be some tears but was so glad the only tears were mine when i saw her dancing her little heart out.

getting hugs from miss cammy and erika before the big show! they were so sweet and brought the dancer some flowers. she's been looking at them everyday and reminding me who gave them to her! she loves them and loves her cammy! she was also thrilled to see some of her other friends from high school group there, thanks sarah, corey & franklin.

this was the moment of truth as she watched the final number before hers. wings on, she watched the girls intently the whole show and couldn't believe how good the big girls were at dancing.

it was so cute to watch the girls dance. one of the highlights was when adeline stopped dancing and yawned as big as she could. the crowd roared with laughter.

as adeline crawled into bed after the recital she said, "i love ballet momma". we love you, our tiny dancer!

this fun week...

this week we had a lot of fun. ella got to wear a big girl scarf (thank you laura stone!)...

the girls ate lunch outside with the neighbors and had a wonderful time...

the girls wore their matching christmas outfits (thank you norton girls!)...

and had a very fun time at our annual norton christmas tea...

we had our first annual "pajamas & pancakes" family christmas movie dinner which was invented by adeline!

sweet little ella was so tuckered out after all the fun :)

jolly old saint nicholas?

tonight we went to pasadena with austin's parents and on our way back to the car the girls saw santa in front of a big tree in his sleigh. there was a tiny cute little girl in her little beanie sitting on santa's lap, smiling and laughing, her parents cheering. adeline said, "oh that's fun, can we sit on santa's lap?" adeline has never been interested in santa, much less sitting on his lap, so we agreed. once they got on his lap their laughter turned to screaming, they drew a large crowd & scared a few of the children waiting in line. when i reached for ella, she turned to santa and between her sobs said, "thank you. bye-bye". once the girls got off santa's lap and stopped shaking with fear and caught their breath, the photographer reviewed the photos and realized his flash had overexposed the photos, he said he would be willing to take them again, but there was no way those little ladies of ours would be getting back on santa's lap. all that to say, this is the best he got. my favorite is the sheer terror on adeline's face & the fact that ella is crying too hard to open her eyes. this was a first and i can say with some certainty that it was also most likely the last.

a great question

this week after watching a christmas cartoon adeline asked me when she's going to build a snowman. yikes! i hated to tell her that it wouldn't be for a very long time so instead we got creative!

the girls did such a great job making their tiny snowmen and couldn't be more thrilled with their little projects

& when we were done everyone's socks were still dry! i guess fake snowmen have their perks after all.

It's beginning to look a lot like...

so thankful...

for our sweet girls

even when they aren't so sweet!