Visiting Santa

One day last week we decided to take Grace to see Santa Claus at the local mall. I had a doctor appointment that morning so we had a bit of waiting to do before Dustin was able to meet us during his lunch break. We made a quick stop at Wal-Mart to pick up a few things for her birthday party and then we met Grandma at the mall. Grace played at the mall playground with her grandma while I did a little bit of shopping. Then it was time to change clothes and go wait for her Daddy to get there. Grace could hardly stand waiting. She was ready to go talk to Santa!

Once Dustin finally got to the mall she ran right up to Santa.
And then she didn't want to leave!!

Happy Birthday Grace

Today is a very special day in our household.
Grace turns TWO!

She is not my little baby anymore. It is hard to believe how fast time seems to fly. Was it really 2 years ago that I held her in my arms for the very first time?

And now she is so full of energy and excitement.


{Just look at that face!}

She is my big girl now and she makes sure to let us know!
She has told us she is too big for the highchair and too big for the little potty.

I love listening to her sing and talk.
And watch as she learns and makes messes.

{She loves to run and play!}

But she is still not too big to be rocked or too big to snuggle up in bed with us in the mornings!

Happy Birthday Grace!!
We love you!!

Christmas Pictures

A few weeks ago we had my mom take some pictures of Grace for our Christmas card.
Grace did SO good! She is at that age where it is very hard for her to sit still for very long. She would so much rather be exploring something. But she sat right where we told her to and she gave us some really cute smiles!

Here are some of my favorites

It looks like she is ready to have fun on that sled!


Such a cute smile

This is probably my favorite of all of them! She just looks so sweet :-)

Such a big smile!!

And here she is just being silly

I posted all of them on facebook and if you haven't seen them there you can click HERE

I think we will need to go back for more pictures soon because my little girl is turning TWO!
I have just a couple more days of her being 1. She already tells us everyday "I'm big girl!"

Thanksgiving

Can you believe it is already the end of November? Time has seemed to be flying by! Already we have been living in the US for just over a month now. We finally got our household goods yesterday. Our house is starting to come together slowly now. I think we have all of the furniture in place and we left a spot for our Christmas tree to go!

Tomorrow we are driving to Missouri to spend a couple of days with Dustin's family. We will be coming home to a messy house but at least all of our stuff is here and we can put the tree up on Sunday!! We also have a birthday party to get ready for. Grace will be turning TWO is just 16 days.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!! This is the first year we have been near family in several years.

2010 Christmas Card

Good Blessings Religious Christmas 5x7 folded card

Get custom photo Christmas cards online at Shutterfly.com.

View the entire collection of cards.

Shutterfly's 50 Free Holiday Card Promo

Christmas is right around the corner!

Out of every holiday Christmas is by far a favorite in our household. Yesterday we had pictures made for our Christmas cards this year. Now that we have a little one (and next year 2 little ones!) I love to have picture cards. Not long ago, I learned that Shutterfly is giving bloggers 50 free Christmas cards! Isn't that a great deal? You can go check it out HERE. So I have been trying to pick the perfect card.

So far this is one of my favorites:

Simply Joy Christmas 5x7 photo card.
I think it would look great with a few pictures of Grace on there!

And I really like this one too!


Charming Gift Wrap Christmas 5x7 folded card.
I love that more pictures can be added to the inside of this card (along with a little personal note!).

And not only do we have Christmas cards that need to be ordered, in a few months we will be looking for some birth announcements. And Shutterfly has those too!



I just love this Dulcet Wreath Birth Announcement. Green and Pink are the colors we have picked for Olivia's nursery so this card would be PERFECT. And I just know we will have several pictures of her to show off!

I can't wait to see all of the pictures of Grace that I will have to choose from for our cards this year! And then I have even more cards to sort through to make sure I have just the right card. One thing is certain, I have plenty of choices to choose from!

Exploring Tokyo

Our second day in Tokyo we set out that morning to explore a bit. It was a rainy day and we were glad we had our jackets!! We headed off to the subway station that was about a 10 min. walk from our hotel. We bought a full day pass. I am not sure if it really saved us any money or not but it was well worth it even if we didn't save money because we saved a lot of time by not having to stop at the ticket machine each time we entered the subway station. It was so easy getting around on Tokyo using the subways. We have now used the subway system in New York, Paris, and Tokyo and I think Tokyo was the easiest. The only hard part was that they are not designed for strollers. We were so glad we were using our small stroller. We went a few places where even it wouldn't fit through the gate and had to be lifted it over. And I don't even know how many times Dustin had to carry the stroller up and down the stairs in the subway.

Our first stop was Asakusa Shrine

Then we hopped back on the subway and visited the Imperial Palace Gardens.

And then to the Tokyo Tower.

And then we decided to stop by Roppongi Crossing before heading back to the hotel.

Once we walked out of the subway we were so glad we stopped because this is what we saw:
So, of course, we had to enjoy a little treat!

Tokyo Disney

On our way back to the U.S.A we got to make a stopover in Tokyo for a couple of days.
On our first day there we headed off to Tokyo Disneyland. Grace was so excited to meet some of her favorite characters.

{At Disneyland!!}

We didn't realize just how crowded it would be. The line to buy our tickets was about an hour long!

We tried to see a couple of the shows and after waiting for a while they announced they were canceling them due to the rain. So we started walking around and ran into a parade!!

Grace really enjoyed seeing Mickey and all of his friends riding by.

We saw the princesses castle but only saw the princesses during the parades. I think maybe this has something to do with the fact that most of them are white and could not be portrayed by the Japanese. During the parades the characters in full costume (Mickey, Pooh, etc) talked in Japanese. The princesses all spoke English.

We found Grace her first souvenir from Disney - Minnie Mouse ears!
And she got to eat some Honey popcorn. I bet her friend Pooh would love it too!

We found Mickey's house which is where she had the opportunity to actually meet Mickey Mouse. However, the line was about 2 hours long. We took turns waiting so that Grace wouldn't have to wait in line for the entire 2 hours. We also found Minnie's house! So we went in there while we were waiting for Mickey.

Grace loved the mailboxes in front of Mickey and Minnie's houses.

We finally made it inside Mickey's house!!

Once we got through his house there was another smaller line to meet Mickey. They let about 5 families go into a room with Mickey at time. We ended up being the last of the 5 families which turned out to be nice because Grace got to spend more time with Mickey than the other kids.

We tried to ride a few rides but the lines were so long that we passed on most of them. Around noon we grabbed a fastpass ticket for one of the rides and our time frame to come back to ride was 9:10-9:50pm. The only ride we ended up riding only had about a 30 min. line and was a train ride which we found a little funny because the Japanese were going wild over the Indians and their teepee's!

We were able to hold Grace up so that she could watch one of the shows. To get a seat you had to be there at least 2 hours before it started.

Since Grace's favorite part of the park was meeting the characters we decided to just head to the entrance area where several of them were walking around.

She met Eeyore, the Three Little Pigs, Pluto, and POOH!

For dinner we stopped at a waffle place and had Mickey waffles!

They were very yummy!!!

Then we decided to find a seat and wait for the electrical lights parade. We took turns sitting in our spot for 2 hours but we had a great view!!

Overall we had a really good time. I am sure it would have been even more fun if we were able to ride a few more rides or meet more characters (it was hard to get a picture with the characters because the Japanese were practically climbing on them!). But Grace had a wonderful time and still talks about meeting Mickey. They had a fireworks display but we were walking to the train station and missed part of it (and Grace slept through the entire thing) but it didn't really compare to the ones we saw our last weekend in Okinawa.