It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas at our house! The other day Emily helped me finish up wrapping a gift for Robby. She picked out three bows to place on the gift and stuck them down. We then hunted for the perfect hiding spot under the tree among the other gifts. When Robby got home, she promptly told him that he had a gift under the tree and tried to take him to the tree to find it. Thank goodness I had the gift in the box before she started helping me or else she would have told him what was in the box too. Emily hasn’t mastered the art of keeping secrets yet!

We had some fun swimming today. The photos aren’t the best, but they were taken with a camera phone at an indoor pool. There is only so much that can be done to help that. The water was so warm it was like bath water. Everyone had a blast and enjoyed the water at their own pace. I dunked Julia once and gave her the opportunity to bob her face into the water which she only did twice. She enjoyed the pool/Mommy time a lot! Emily was a fish in the water. She is confident in her floaties and would kick and swim herself around the pool. We need to work on jumping into the pool and getting her face into the water more, but I couldn’t be more pleased with how well she did today. If we could go back tomorrow, I would – maybe soon!

I just thought these were funny. The diving gear was staged for a kid to pose behind and look like they were in the gear. Even with the step behind the gear it just wasn’t enough for either girl.

What a fun time little girls can have at an aquarium. We went with our friends Elena and Maeve to check out a preschool program and explore the aquarium together. The girls wore themselves out playing and checking out the exhibits and fish. Emily touched a Horseshoe Crab, saw the teeth on live sharks, found out that there can be catfish longer than she is, and pushed a million buttons and knobs. Emily’s favorite thing to do was to look for Nemo and Dory, which she succeeded at.

Julia hung out a lot in the stroller and her highlight was getting to steal french fries from her mama’s tray. I always tear everything small so she can gum it well, but she wanted to try at a whole fry and kept stealing them. Then she was making the action motions to try to dip them in catsup like mama was. It was really cute and she did just fine with the french fries. Hopefully for her sake she will get more teeth soon and have some help chewing her food.

God was good to give our girls friends who are almost identical in age that they can spend a lot of time with. Elena and Maeve will not always live close to us so we thought it would be fun to get their photos taken together. Everything was pretty distracting so it was a little hard to get them interested in looking at the camera. That’s kids for you! Emily and Elena spent a lot of time dancing together. Thankfully they paused and looked at the camera for this amazing photo.

The snow may be gone, but we have our memories of it.