Present Time

Of course, opening presents was a good ice breaker for Elodie!  She strategically opened the gifts in order of smallest to biggest and got a good range of loot!  Thanks everyone!

This one looks good!

Reading the card

I can open this one all by myself

i wonder what's in here?

the new daddy can't keep his eyes open!

Birthday Party Begins!



Even though we kept the party small this year, El was still kind of overwhelmed with it all!  She definitely warmed up by the end of the day, but since the party started as soon as she woke up, she was super stunned to see everyone and all the decorations...

Waiting for the Birthday Girl to wake up from her nap

Still a little groggy...

Party Hat

Party Hat for Baby Lena too!

Decorating Cupcakes

On Saturday, we had a small birthday party for Elodie.  Just the Leibenhaut side of the family came (we wish the Tyre side could have come up too!)  Still, we went all out.  The next few posts are about her party day!  First thing, we decorated the cupcakes.  Elodie was so excited to do this and knew it meant her party was happening soon. And even a few days later, if you ask her what the best thing about her birthday party was she'll say "the sprinkles."

carefully placing the sprinkles

tasting a few...

oh, what the hey, lemme just eat the whole thing

who cares that it's only 9 am mommy! this was good!

finished product

Fishing with Daddy

Last weekend at Grammie and Papa's, Elodie went fishing with Daddy in his fishing boat!

In the garage!

They caught a shark!

Elodie knew just what to do with it.  After catching it in the net, they put it in the cooler compartment on the boat.  Usually, they just throw them back, but she wanted to show the shark to Mommy :)

Little Gymnast

We've been going to the Little Gym on Sunday mornings since September, which Elodie loves, but has only just recently become more adventurous on the bars.  We noticed for months that Elodie seemed to avoid any activities that required arm strength!  Over time she has become much more interested in following the teacher and the group activities but usually she still likes to just do her own thing.  Well, in the last couple weeks she has become quite a little monkey on the bars.  Which also translates to her being more adventurous on the playground and at home (making us nervous!) 

Here is a little video clip of her in action on the bars with a little boy from the class who I think is named Miles.

Last Sunrise in Lanikai

So I'm sure some of our readers may be sick of our Hawaii pictures already, but this is the last one, I promise!  We keep having hard drive problems at home, and fear we have lost all copies of our photos over the year, so in case that does happen some time, at least we'll have the blog! 

Anyways... on our last morning in Kailua we walked down to Lanikai Beach for sunrise.  By this point Elodie was a pro at the sand, and the ocean and we had a blast!  Aloha Hawaii!  Til next time!

One of our favorite videos:

Saying Goodbye to her Friends

We walked to and from the beach so much on our trip so Grammie took some pictures of Elodie saying good bye to her little neighborhood friends.

the fish mailbox - trying out the paci

the little green guy

big hug