Pre-Christmas with the Phippses

Both Elsie and her Phipps cousins, John and Leah, will be travelling for Christmas this year. So, we decided to get together for a day to have a little pre-Christmas. Leah was dressed in the appropriate attire for opening presents!

We went to the Shedd Aquarium in the morning - nice and early before the crowds!! Elsie and John enjoyed looking at all of the fish. Elsie was trying to figure out how to get into the water.

The kids really enjoyed the Polar Play Zone, where there are many hands-on activities. They were just running around playing in the water at this "exhibit." You would have thought these guys had never taken a bath before by how excited they were.

In the penguin area, they tried on costumes.

Then they slid down the slides just like penguins! I think Leah is encouraging Elsie to go faster in this picture!

Getting ready to go down the slide!

Yearly photo shoot

Over Thanksgiving weekend, we went to the local picture store for our yearly photo shoot (with about 12 other families squished into a room). Elsie did really well when she could see us. When we were all in the photo, she was pretty shy with the photographer. But, all we needed was one good one. And I think I did a pretty good job as pageant mom, fixing the barrettes, straightening out the dress, etc! Cheese!

Thanksgiving!

We hosted Thanksgiving at our house this year for our family and Grandma Jan and Grandpa John. Elsie put them straight to work reading her many books!

We had a great dinner in the Dining Room with the china!! Elsie's favorite part was the cookie for dessert! Oatmeal scotchies...yum.

The day after Thanksgiving, we utilized Grandpa John's help putting up the Christmas lights. Elsie was amazed by all of the lights. She just kept walking around and around the tree calling out all of the different light colors. In fact, most of the pictures I took are just a pink fuzzy ball, since she was moving to fast for my photo skills!

We had a great couple of days with Grandma and Grandpa!

Leafy fun

We have a lot of trees, which we love....until October and November. We are fortunate for 3 free leaf pickups each fall. Two from the City of Elmhurst, and one from Grandma Jan, who uses the leaves for her compost pile!

Messy! Elsie doesn't mind getting messy, but she does not enjoy staying messy once she realizes what has happened.

OK Mom. I'll take it from here!

Helping pack the leaves into the bag!

Where did Elsie go??