Heidi's First Birthday!

Yesterday we had some friends over for dinner and celebrated Heidi's first birthday. She loved her cake...well, frosting. She did a pretty good job getting into her cake.

This month Heidi has started climbing onto chairs, tables and her high chair tray! (Scares me half to death!) She also got a few new teeth. She has a mouthful. She is quite dramatic when it comes to putting her down or taking something away from her. She cries and walks away or buries her head into the floor and cries. However, for the most part, she is still happy as can be. She loves attention from just about anyone and will walk up to them to get it. She loves to get into anything and everything. I will find random toys in my pots and pans cupboards. She is a funny little girl and we love everything about her. We love our Heidi and are grateful she is part of our family.

Some Things About Boston That I Will Never Get Over: "Carriage"

When we moved to Boston, there was a lot of culture shock. We had to learn how to drive like Bostonians, we had to learn how to pronounce the cities "correctly," and remember that when people are talking to us, they're not really yelling at us, it just they way they talk.

There are a couple things that I don't think I'll ever "get over" while we're here. One of them is "carriages."

A "carriage" refers to a shopping cart or stroller. Nobody says "shopping cart" or "stroller." I just can't do it. Not because I'm better than the people here, because I'm not, but because my brain doesn't think that a shopping cart is a "carriage." I always think of a carriage as something pulled by a horse. I'm not about to think that I'm a horse either.

Post Christmas

On Dec. 30th we went downtown to Faneuil Hall to check out their enormous Christmas tree. We met Joe at work, had dinner at his office and then bundled up the girls for an evening out. We didn't want to go on the 31st because it would have been way too crowded with First Night going on. It was our last chance to see it. We had fun walking around and checking out the Christmas ornament shop in particular.

Big Ol' Tree

Maia

The whole fam

Heidi

Christmas tree shop. I thought this tree was cute. I like how cleaver it was with the blue netted garland and the ornaments. I like the beach ball snowman ornament on the left. We picked up a little ornament (a cute ship steering wheel with garland) to commemorate our first year in Boston. The best news? Everything was 50% off. :)

Christmas 2011

This was our first Christmas being totally away from family. It was different but we still had a great time. I love Christmas with my kids. It's magical and fun. We had a great December preparing for Christmas. We loved making gingerbread houses, stringing popcorn, watching Christmas movies, playing with the nativity set, making cookies for Santa, reading LOTS of Christmas stories, and just being together.

Christmas morning before Maia woke up.

Christmas morning when Maia woke up. ;)

This is how we hang stockings without a fireplace or mantle.

Maia insisted that we make peanut butter cookies for Santa because "Santa LOVES peanut butter cookies" according to Maia.

Notice we finally have a star. A couple days before Christmas I told Maia that Santa was coming really soon. She got a little upset and said, "But we don't even have a star on our tree yet!" We went out and got a star that night so Christmas could come.

Heidi playing with the nativity set

Decorating sugar cookies!

Heidi's cute holiday dress from Grandma Lin

Decorating the tree.

Building gingerbread houses.

Maia's and my gingerbread house (above)

Joe's gingerbread house. Joe is a true graham cracker artisan complete with walkway, bushes, icicles, chimney, and a taffy snowman.

Great Christmas.

Thanksgiving in KY

For Thanksgiving, we went out to Kentucky to see Joe's brother and his family. Joe's mom flew out to be there too. It was a lot of fun. We got to do lots of fun things like play laser tag and volleyball. Joe got to play basketball and football too. For the kids, the highlight was going to the children's museum and being with their cousins. We wish the cousins lived closer.

Children's Museum in Cincinnati

I love Maia's cute cheeks in this profile shot. She's doing what she loves- drawing.

Dress-up with Olivia and Isabelle! Best week ever!

Heidi started walking more and more over Thanksgiving, taking lots of steps before falling.

Fall Visit from Voof and Grace

Joe's dad and step-mom came out to visit us in the fall. It was fun to see them. While they were here it snowed! It was the strangest thing. It hasn't snowed since then. Anyway, we had a good time. We walked around Harvard Square one day for a couple of reasons. 1) We wanted to visit Harvard campus, mainly the Harvard Law School building where Joe's grandfather went to law school and 2) We wanted to visit Brattle Hall Theater where Joe's grandmother was performing when she and Joe's grandfather met years and years ago. It was a fun little family history lesson for us. We have since been back to Harvard Square and we think of them every time.

These next few pics are of a church that piqued my interest as we walked by. It was even more interesting when I read about the church. The cool thing about Boston is that everything has a story. And believe it or not, there are a lot of things here. ;)

On another day, Grace and I went up north to a certain sewing/fabric store. The area was beautiful. We had fun NOT finding gas stations and pizza joints. The story behind this picture is that we passed this pretty lake on our way to (not) finding a pizza place and then I wanted to get a picture of it later. Well, we couldn't remember exactly where this place was, so we drove forever. We finally found it again and got my fall scenic pic for the year. I was happy that I got my picture. We had a good time laughing and not finding where we needed to go.

Thanks for the fun time Voof and Grace!

Halloween 2011

Halloween was fun this year. Maia loved carving pumpkins with daddy and going trick-or-treating with her friends. I was brave and made Maia's Strawberry Shortcake costume.

We also went to the ward Halloween party.

Here was a fun costume from the ward party that I had to share.

Catching Up: Boston in the Fall

One of our favorite places in Boston is Boston Common. It is a gorgeous community park/garden. There is a nice playground, a carousel, a "frog pond" that turns into an outdoor ice skating rink in the winter, a pond (shown in the pic below), and lots of trees and plants.

The park is located across the street from Beacon Hill- a nice and ritzy area to live. I loved this porch so I took a pic of it.

This street below is Acorn Street. Supposedly it is one of the most photographed streets in Boston, as rumor has it. What you're not seeing is the other side of the street because it's not pretty.

In the whole park, this was the only tree that still wasn't green in October! It was a late fall this year. It was weird.

The pictures below are 2 trees from our apt. complex that were just gorgeous. The leaves turned at the very end of October, early November.

Hopefully the trees next fall will pull it together.