My Cute Girls!

Thanks to Uncle Patrick, Aunt Jackie and Cousin Shawna, the girls received darling coordinated outfits for Christmas. They got all dressed up for a birthday party a couple of days after Christmas. These are certainly some of our new favorite outfits!

Five Months Old

On December 30th, Eloise turned five months old. She is a great baby, but we are still working on fine tuning her sleeping schedule. She is now rolling both directions (back to front and front to back) and she is even starting to scoot around the floor. She loves playing with her toys and watching her older sister.

Riding Bikes with Sadie

After Christmas, Claire and her friend Sadie had fun riding their new trikes and scooter around the tennis court behind our apartment. The girls were so cute and had so much fun rolling around with each other. There were a couple of near misses, though!

Breakfast with Santa

For the second year in a row, we went to the restaurant at Carney Park to have breakfast with Santa. It's a cute event and not totally crowded, so Santa has time to visit a little with each child and give him or her a present. Claire loved seeing Santa and unwrapping both hers and Eloise's gift.

The Santa was quite humorous and I'm so glad that Claire is too young to notice the craziness of this Italian Santa...

Making Christmas Cookies

Click here to see a video of Eloise getting into the candy canes.


We had a lot of fun during the Christmas season doing all kinds of Christmas-y things. Claire especially liked helping mommy make cookies. On one particular occasion, even Eloise got into it by trying to sneak a candy cane!

The Lovely Lights in Sorrento

On December 23rd, we took a quick day/evening trip to see the Christmas lights in Sorrento. They were spectacular and I didn't get many pictures because my camera wouldn't have done the lights justice. We also enjoyed the small Christmas market and a great dinner. It certainly put us in the festive mood!

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care...

This Christmas was really the first year that Claire started to understand Santa and she really enjoyed all the fun "extras" that Christmas brings (decorating cookies, opening the doors on the advent calendar, seeing the Christmas lights, etc.) I'm not totally sure that she understands that these things aren't permanent, but we'll deal with that next week!


Even though we are far away in Italy, Santa did manage to find us and leave presents and many friends and family sent us wonderful gifts too. We waited to open everything on Christmas morning and nothing was put out until Christmas Eve Night. All in all, it was quite a haul for both Claire and Eloise.


Claire was really excited about seeing that Santa had filled her stocking. That part of the day was a big highlight!
Mommy was very happy to find matching jammies for the girls, too!

Opening presents on Christmas morning truly was a marathon. It literally took us all day to unwrap the gifts and by the end of the day, we still weren't done. There were still a few left over for the next day. The vast majority of the gifts were for the girls, and because Eloise isn't too into unwrapping yet, the burden of the work fell on Claire. Which, she happily embraced.

When Claire would open a present for Eloise, she would happily bring the gift over to her, unwrap it in front of her, and then place the gift on or near here. Here is a pic of Claire opening one of Ellie's gifts. This was a box full of baby toys that were Claire's (that we put away ages ago) that Santa found to give to Eloise.

Then, when it was Claire's turn to open a present for herself, she would unwrap it and then want to play with it for at least 30 minutes, so that is probably why it all took so long.

The girls got a ton of wonderful toys from Santa and family and friends.

Here is Eloise with some new blocks from Grandpa Richard and Grandma Deborah.

Here is a picture of Claire trying out her new Dora trike from Grandpa Otto and Grandma Roberta.

Here Eloise is enjoying her new squeaky giraffe toy from Grandma Roberta and Grandpa Otto.

Eloise and Claire also got matching tutus and butterfly wings from Grandma Libby and Grandpa Paul. Too cute!


Now, I'm pretty sure that Santa brought these blocks for the girls, but I guess they'll have to share.


Santa also brought Claire a Rainbow Brite doll, which might possibly have been more of a gift for Claire's mommy.... so I guess we all won!

Overall we had a great Christmas and I'm sure next year, Claire will be really into it and Eloise will probably really enjoy the boxes and wrapping paper.

Merry Christmas to all!