Best Christmas Present

I know you are thinking, "Where were those pictures taken, because Elaine does not have piano." Surprise! As a Christmas present to our family, Sheldon surprised us by buying a piano. He was very sneaky about it and didn't say anything about it until we were at a Christmas party with friends and he asked some of the guys if they could help him get a piano into our house. It was a little difficult to get it into our little basement apartment. We actually had to take off part of the door frame to our living room. But we got it in, and we love it! Tucker loves playing the low keys and says he is, 'playing scary.' He will also sometimes sing along if we play some primary songs he knows. We just had it tuned this week and it sounds pretty amazing after a good tuning. It was so out of tune it took the tuner guy about 2 hours to tune it. Yay for having a piano in our home!

Olsen Family Pictures

These pictures are all from my brother's nice camera. I was glad he took the time on Christmas to take a few pictures of the kids opening presents.

For family pictures we went to a cool park in Palos Verdes. For just using a tripod to get pictures of all of us, I am impressed with how they turned out. Daniel also has some awesome photoshop skills. In the family picture he was able to get the best face from Halle and put it in the best picture of the rest of us. I really need to learn how to use photoshop, you can do so many things with it.

I just love these photos of Tucker and Halle, they seem to represent their relationship so well. He is always so good at making her laugh.

I love this picture of Tucker and Terrell taking a break between pictures to eat M&M's. Snacks are must to keep Tucker happy while we take pictures.

Tucker looks like a little glowing angel popping up behind my parents in this one, too funny.

 Tucker busting out some dance moves.

Rachel has much more experience in jumping pictures, it took me a few times before we were jumping together.

And a few fun pictures from our trip to the park. We are so missing the warm weather. We tried to go to the park this week, but all the slides and swings were wet. 

December 2011

I have not been very good at blogging lately. I used to blog during naptime, but now that naptimes are getting shorter that leaves less time for blogging. So December is just going to get one big post. One fun thing we did in December was go to Temple Square to see the lights. We didn't make it last year and Tucker loves Christmas lights. It was really crowded since it was a Friday night, but we still had a lot of fun. Halle eventually fell asleep all bundled up in her stroller.

Sheldon's family always has big Christmas parties. We were too sick to make it to Mills family party but we made to the Stevens (Sheldon's Mom's family) party. There was lots of good food and Tucker founds lots of new friends to run around with. Tucker also played the longest white elephant gift exchange ever! He was a good sport and was happy with the yo-yo he ended up with.

And of course we had an excellent time in California for Christmas. We were down there for a week and a half and loved every minute of the beautiful, sunny warm weather. California always has great weather, but it was unusually warm for this time of year. On the way down to California we drove it all in one day for the first time and it went surprisingly well. We left in the afternoon and only had to stop two times and then the kids slept for the last couple of hours and we got there before midnight. We spent a lot of time with extended family, played outside, played games, and in general just enjoyed relaxing with good people and good food.

I didn't get too many good pictures opening presents, my brother took some good ones that I will post later. I was too busy trying to keep Tucker from opening up every present in less than 10 minutes and making sure that Halle didn't eat all the wrapping paper. It was fun opening presents with Tucker, because he would get so excited for every single present. He would always gasp and say, "What is it?" Apologies to my family since Tucker opened up everybody's presents.

We took a few Olsen family pictures while in California. I will post the awesome pictures my brother took  later, but here are a few of my behind-the-scenes pics.

 What cute baby legs!

We made it to the beach and the weather was absolutely perfect. I have been to the beach in June/July where the weather was not as good as this. Sheldon and I always get a little too excited when we get to the beach and head straight down to the waves, but we always forget that the ocean can be a little intimidating for little kids. So Tucker and Halle both started crying when we got to the water and we had to backtrack all the way back to the cement. They both had fun playing in the sand, but Tucker sadly never wanted to get in the water and Halle would just cry if we took her too close to the waves. Someday we will live closer to the beach and my kids will love to play in the water.