Final Christmas picture of the season

The weekend before last, we took our Christmas decorations down. Natalie helped. Of course, she had to wear the reindeer antlers one last time:

And with that, I promise not to post any more Christmas pictures - until next Christmas...

Painted finger(nail)s!

Last weekend, Natalie told me: "We haven't painted my finger's yet." She told me that her friend from daycare often "paints her fingers". After a little further conversation, I deciphered that it was nail polish she was referring to. So we raided my drawer and came up with three different colors:

Look, how pretty!

Best of 2009

Recently I looked thru some pictures from the last couple of months, and I noticed that there usually was about one picture per month that really stood out to me. So I figured I'd do a "best of 2009" in pictures. Some are funny, some are goofy, some are cute, and a few might even be called beautiful.

Here are my favorites, listed by month:

January.
Trying on a pretty dress.

February.
First sunglasses.

March.
Eating oats.

April.
Easter egg hunt in the back yard.

May.
At the zoo.

June.
"Driving" Mommy's prize car.

July.
Just hanging out...

August.
At the beach.

September.
At the park.

October.

Halloween party at daycare.

November.

Decorating Halloween cookies.

December.

Happy Birthday, you goofy girl.

Edible snowmen

Here's a craft Natalie and I made between Christmas and New Years. Of course, we had to taste the ingredients while we made it... I'm not sure what was more fun, making them or eating them!

Edible snowmen!

Natalie, the photographer

Natalie got a camera for her birthday. A real, digital, "kids tough" camera where she can take real pictures. She had so much fun with it. She opened it as the last present on her birthday, kinda late in the day, so she only had a couple of hours to play with it on the first day. After she went to bed, we downloaded pictures from her camera - all seventyone of them!

It was so much fun to see her pictures. There was, well, half a mommy, then three quarters of mommy, then:

Yay, Mommy!

Then there was half a daddy, then three quarters of daddy, then:

Yay, Daddy!

Some of the pictures were really cute, like the pictures of her toys, and of her food, and of Dora the Explorer on TV. It was really a bit of a view into the world of Natalie. Some items apparently have more importance than I would have expected, like this one:

Daddy's foot!

But what amazed me most was how beautiful some of the pictures really were, like this close-up of our Christmas tree:

Very Christmassy, indeed!

A few days later, we let her brint it outside while we were walking from our car to the museum. Some of those pictures were almost postcard-worthy:

City streets, seen from Natalie's perspective.

And here's one more I just had to add, because I really like the mood it's portraying:

Oh, Christmas Tree!

A day at the museum

I had some vacation I needed to use up before Christmas. Karsten also took a day off, and we went to the Children's Museum with Natalie:

Doctor Natalie!

Flying on an airplane - with the seat belt on, of course!

Working the crane with Daddy.
Maybe it should be "three geeks" instead of "two geeks and a girl..."


Look at the trains!

The last picture is my favorite. She climbed up in a tree-house maze that she couldn't figure out how to climb up into before. She's getting to be such a big girl! From the new vantage point, she could see the trains running on tracks under the ceiling. I love the curiosity on her face.

Snow!

We got a lot of snow in December:

Ehm, a little help, please...

Of couse, we have been playing outside a lot. We even made snow angels:

Who knew that snow angels could be so much fun!