Santa's First Stop....

This year Aida was so blessed to have Santa stop at Nana and Pop's house first!  We took a quick trip to College Station last weekend to celebrate Christmas with our family.  Nana's house looked so beautiful and Aida had so much fun.  She and Nana baked baked cookies, she played in the SAC with pops and the boys and had tons of fun at with Nana, Aunt Re, Mommy and Daddy at the Christmas Light display.  Aida must of been a very good little girl because she got so many fun presents.  She loved the baby doll from GG, and the books and sticker book from Aunt Paige and Uncle Drew, but most of all she LOVES her first CAR!  Thats right...this little princess has her first pink Mustang, 2 seater, convertable with a working radio and horn.  This car is too much!  She loves driving all around the neighborhood in it.  Thank you Nana, Pops, Aunt Re, Uncle Ryan, Uncle Drew and Aunt Paige for the car...she LOVES it.  Here are some highlights from our fun weekend. 

Nana and Aida

Opening my presents with Aunt Re.

Opening her presents...

Having fun at the Christmas Festival with Aunt Re...Look at that little face as the Elf....

Driving her Pink Mustang...

I love this picture of all of us.  Here we are the Christmas Festival on a hayride, signing Christmas carols.  It was cold and drizzly but that didnt stop us from having fun.  Such a great picture of "the girls." 

Uncle Drew teaching her how to steer....

Looking like she is ready to back up like a proffesional!  She LOVES this Car....too much fun.

The best part about the weekend was having Aida wake up in the morning and ask for Nana first thing.  It was so neat to see with her Aunts and Uncles and Grandparents.  We are so lucky....

Merry Christmas! 

Love,

The Alford's 

Aida and GG....

Very few little girls are lucky enough to know and love their Great Grandma.  Aida is blessed to be one of these very lucky little girls.  This Thanksgiving, Aida was able to spend some very special time with her GG Carolyn.  She loves Carolyn --she knows her name and she has her picture in her room.  I love these pictures of Aida and GG.  These really show how beautiful both of these young ladies are.  Aida has so many things to look up to in her GG.  Carolyn is increadibly smart, well read, a conversationlist, caring, wise, very loving to all of her grandchildren and great grandchildren, spunky, opinionated, beautiful and A BAYLOR GRADUATE!!!  I hope Aida looks back on these pictures when she gets older an appreciates how lucky she is to know such a special woman -- GG!

My favorite picture.  This one is so sweet...special kisses for a special GG. 

We love you Carolyn!

Getting Ready for Christmas...

Today we worked on getting ready for Santa's big visit.  So we pulled out all the Christmas decorations and got to work.  Aida really enjoyed it and she was so excited all weekend.  Before I forgot all of the wonderful details I wanted to make sure I wrote them all down here...

Here are our most memorable Christmas Tree Decoration Weekend highlights....

1. For some reason, Aida needed to take a bath and a shower both Saturday and Sunday.  I think it was because she worked so hard helping us decorate.  I hope she always enjoys taking a bath and a shower so much -- I am sure there will come a time when this will stop.  Did I mention she also likes to play in the bath for what seems like forever...she would stay in there for hours if we would let her. 
2. She decided she wanted to do most of the decorating work naked.  No matter how hard I tried, she had no interest in clothes.  You would never know that it was freezing outside because she was all about all about running around like a jaybird in the house. 
3. She took all the cup towels out of the kitchen drawer and decided to cover Sassy in all of them at once.  She was trying to be so sweet to the dog and the dog sat there and let her cover in all of the towels.  It was sweet.
4. She was really excited about her first Advent calendar.  This was a huge hit this weekend.  Once she learned that there was candy behind each day -- she was sold. 
5. She learned to say "Jesus" this weekend.  It stared with the advent calendar and her little people nativity set -- she also loves the song Away in the Manger.
6. She sings "twinkle twinkle little star, her abc's, old macdonald, and the barney song.  It was the perfect addition to the decorating fun.
7. Alex and Aida had to make at least 5 trips to Home Depot, Walmart, Sonic and the grocery store.  But Saturday morning, she got up with Alex really early and headed out the Home Depot for the first stop of the weekend.  Aida participated in her first Home Depot kids class.  She made me a beautiful wood wagon.  I love it.  She came home so proud in her orange Home Depot apron, with a certificate, a pin, and her wonderful wagon.  I think Alex made it all but she was really proud of her wagon and I will cherish it forever. 
8. She loved setting up the lights outside with Alex.  I will post a picture of their hard work later but she got all bundled up and headed outside with her daddy to lend a hand.  She would come back inside every few minutes and say "outside mommy' and then she would take my hand and walk me down the sidewalk to show me how beautiful it looked. 
9. We kicked off the weekend with a movie night on Friday.  We watched Snow White, ate popcorn in bed and she fell asleep in our room and we let her sleep the entire night with us.  We never do that and it was so much fun.  We all loved it. 
10. She also learned to say B.S.  This is not her fault but ours.  Alex was passionately talking about the bcs bowl series and he said something to the effect of "that is B.S." and a little voice next to him said "B.S."  so we need to both be so much more careful about what we say around her. 

After all the fun...here are the results of Aida's hard work :)

The tree in our living room...

The tree in Aida's playroom.  She this is her nutcracker sweets tree and it has all kinds of wonderful ornaments on it.  Including a garland from her daddy's baby christmas tree. 

Our mantle...

The tree in Aida's room.  She has all the decorations that were on my tree in my room when I was a little girl... so sweet.

We hope your holiday season is merry and bright! 

Love the Alfords...

Uncle Michael....

This Thanksgiving my brother Michael came to Texas for a visit. Aida just loves him and he is excellent at playing with her. Here are some pictures of the fun we had trying to get Aida to pose for a picture with him in front of the Christmas tree.

My camera was acting up that day -- actually it was operator error but Alex read the instruction manual and miraculously he fixed it! I of course have been using the camera for over 2 years now and didn't even know where the manual was -- nor did I care really. Thankfully my husband to the rescue. However, this picture is super cute. My brother was trying to get Aida on his shoulders and this is how it started out ---that is her hanging upside down!

More to come with our Holiday fun!

What I am Thankful For....

I have so many things to be thankful for...I am blessed really. I am most thankful for my family. My beautiful daughter and loving husband. I cant think of any better gift or opportunity that I have ever been given than being a mom. Even when it is hard and I stink at it, I have never wanted to trade one second of being a mom for not being one.

I am also thankful that Aida loves school. Today, Alex and my brother Michael and I all went to Aida's school for their thanksgiving celebration. All of the little ones in her class had a Thanksgiving lunch. Here are some pictures of Aida having a wonderful time and really enjoying her lunch. When we got in the car after the party Aida looked at me and said "I happy Mommy." I knew she was and I was so thrilled to hear her say that for so many reasons. I am happy too :)

My camera is acting up right now so forgive this dark picture. Here she is sitting at her table and enjoying her lunch.

Aida and Ms. Jessica. This is Aida's favorite teacher ---mommy's favorite too!

Here she is sitting at the head of the table. Enjoying her lunch and totally at peace. She was such a good girl today.

Eating like a big girl!

The three of us!

Enjoying her cupcake....Grandma made these for the party. They were a big hit.

Today was a big day and a great day...Happy Thanksgiving!!!

The "Punkin" Patch....

We love Texas in the fall ---when it is not raining. We are over the rain in the Alford family but will be wishing its return when August comes. This weekend we went to see the Big Orange Pumpkin patch and Aida had a blast....she calls it the "punkin" patch but never the less, we had a great time. Friday night, we carved pumpkins and Daddy really tried to get Aida to stick her hand inside and pull out the sticky pulp but this princess wanted nothing to do with that. Every time daddy would pull out the pumpkin seeds and stuff Aida would say "eewwee yucky." She loved the glowing finished product but was not that into the process :) We had so much fun.

Mommy made this outfit as one of my first successful sewing projects...I love how cute she looks in it....

Aida loved the "cow" she was really trying to get it to "moo" at her, but the cow was not interested. She would say "sit down cow" and really expect the cow to follow instructions.

Going down the slide with Daddy...we did this like 6 times and it clearly was not enough, she loved it.


Working on pumpkin carving. We had so much fun doing this project with her. Daddy did all the work and I cleaned up during the process but Aida loved it and the mess was totally worth it.

Here she is posing with her finished products...I love that smile. Daddy has mad pumpkin carving skills.

We also got our second bumble bee costume in. This one was my first choice. She looks so stinkin cute in it. She wore this the whole night and really didn't want to take it off to sleep. I love that Jackson is in the picture too...he always has to be right in the middle of whatever it is we are doing with her because he thinks he is a baby too!!!

I hope everyone gets to enjoy their fall days like we are....this is such a great time of the year.

Buzzing Bumble Bee....

Aida is really excited about Halloween this year. Once she realized she got to dress up and she got candy -- you could see the light bulb go off and the look on her face was precious. One of our good friends Sonya organized a Halloween photo shoot for our girls. Here they are in their costumes totally cute. Aida loves being a bumble bee and gets excited just putting the costume on. Here are some Halloween preview pics. We think she is definitely the pretties bumble bee ever :)








This picture is of Addison, Aida and Abigale...all "A" names. We couldn't get the girls to sit together so we enlisted the help of the photographers cat. They all smiled and payed attention at the chance to pet the "kiki." Aida is eating candy in this picture but they are all so precious. Happy Halloween!!!

The Zoo...

Before summer ended and took Aida to the Fort Worth Zoo. She loved the animals and had such a great time. There were so many great things to do at the zoo. We rode the train. We fed the birds. The birds were really a huge hit with Aida. They were all very tiny and she was able to get right up to them to feed them. The pictures say it all. We also watched the gorilla eat his breakfast and the elephant take a bath -- it was a great day.


Posing on the giant "fake" alligator and has a very concerned look on her face.

In the giant bird house getting a kick out of the "birdies"

Look at how close she was able to get to the birds. I don't really know why she was blowing on them but maybe she thought their food was hot.

Feeding the birds

Riding the train...this was fun for all of us. She really enjoyed it.


Aida -- the zoo was so much fun. We cant wait to go back with you.

We love you little one.

Love

Mommy and Daddy

XXOO

Picture Day...

Today was picture day at school. Here are some pictures of Aida in her picture day outfit. She did great on her second day at school. This morning she got up so excited to go to school. She got dressed in a hurry and put on her backpack and stood at the doorway ready to go. She looked so precious. I was certain that she was not going to smile or follow directions for picture day. Because as the teacher described her on the first day "she is a very independent child" I was certain she would not go for any of it. But Ms. Violet was watching in lobby through the video cameras and told me that she did the whole picture routine to perfection. She followed the class in a straight line to the gym. She lined up with the kids against the wall and waited for her turn and she sat on the stool and smiled when it was her turn to get her picture taken. This was such a big deal for Aida -- We are so proud of her.

Here she is in her outfit ready to go to school.

We love you so much Aida Sophia and we are so proud of you.

We Love You

Mommy and Daddy

XXOO

Aida's First Day at School...

http://www.castlemontessori.com/mckinney/

Today was Aida's first day of School....and she did great. We decided to start her in Castle Montessori in their half day toddler program. This school is beautiful. Aida will go to school from 8:30 to 11:30 everyday. All of the academic instruction takes place in the morning along with the cultural and language enrichment activities. Aida will learn language, math, life skills, Chinese and Spanish along with music composition and technology all during her half day program. Alex and I love everything about this school, their philosophy, how they treat the kids, how clean the building is, the classroom size, and the trained instructors. She will even get music instruction from a Juilliard trained music teacher.

All weekend Alex and I were talking to her about starting school and how fun school was going to be. We talked to her about the kids she would meet and play with and all the fun games she would have in her classroom. This morning she woke up in a great mood. She got dressed and was all smiles. Alex took her to school as planned. He walked her in the classroom and she met her teacher. She immediately had to go potty and learned where the bathroom was -- smart girl. Alex stayed in the back but her teachers Ms. Jessica and Ms. Doris were really nice. Ms. Jessica took her hand and got her engaged right away in the class. Aida played and explored the whole room. She washed her hands 6 times in the hour she was in the room today. (We will definitely be donating some hand soap to her classroom.) After about 30 minutes -- Alex snuck out and met me in the lobby and we watched her through the video screen. I was expecting her to have a meltdown once she noticed that Alex as missing but the teachers were so great to her they gently redirected her to an activity and she played for another 30 minutes. After an hour -- she grabbed her book bag and walked to the door and waited for daddy. By the time he got down there, she had a few tears but was really doing great. You could just tell how proud she was of herself when I saw her again in the lobby. We are so proud of her too. Here are some pictures of our first day...

In our first day of school outfit....

In the car and ready to go :)

Ms. Jessica and Aida working in her classroom. You can see Alex's arm in the left had side of the picture. He was not going far.

The view from the video cameras in the lobby. Aida is at the table with Ms. Jessica working on a project.

Here she was working with another little boy in her class too.

A huge relief to be done with the first day. I am sure we will have ups and downs over the next several weeks but overall she did great. Tomorrow is picture day at the school so stay tuned for more fun pictures.

Congratulations Aida on a great first day at school. We are so proud of you.

Love,

Mommy and Daddy

XXOO