Big Girl Room

Caroline moved into her "Big Girl" room after Christmas to make room for her "bwotherw" to take over the nursery in a few months. She has done very well with the transition and spends a lot of time playing, reading books and best of all, SLEEPING, in her new space. We finally got the last piece of the puzzle today (her bedskirt) so we thought we'd post a few pics.

Ballet Class

Caroline started ballet class this afternoon. She was very excited and had fun getting into her leotard and tutu before class. Parents aren't allowed in the class so I was only able to get one stealth photo through the window. She really likes her teacher, Miss Mary Ann (who can't be more than 17), and the girls followed her instruction surprisingly well. Should be a fun month of ballet!

Wild Animal Park

We went to the Wild Animal Park which is part of our zoo membership today. It was a beautiful day (60 and sunny) so we decided to check it out. The last time Josh and I went was about 8 years ago when he was doing an away rotation at medical center Balboa in med school and we went in August when it was about 100 degrees. The park is in the desert about 30 miles east of our house, so it is subject to the desert extreme temps in the summer that we are spared by living on the coast.

Anyway, it was amazing. The zoo in San Diego is 100 acres, and the wild animal park is 1800 acres large to give a little perspective. The animals roam in large areas that really do simulate the African environment. We took a tram ride through that part and then walked around some of the exhibits. They keep the lions separate (for obvious reasons) and their area has some glass viewing spots. All the animals were pretty active since the weather is cool and one of the lion cubs (about a one year old male) decided to check us out. That's the closest we've ever been to a lion (or care to be!).

On a different note, Caroline has adjusted really well to her new big girl room and has been sleeping well with very little getting out of bed. She is excited to pass on the nursery to her "bwotherw" as she calls him.

Holiday

We had a busy Christmas week with a few more activities here and then our trip to Indianapolis on Christmas Eve.
We visited the Holiday of Lights display in Del Mar which is supposed to be the largest lights display in SoCal. It was pretty cool and Caroline loved it. Our favorite was the surfing Santa. I took a picture but it didn't turn out too well since he's moving, so I'll spare you my blurry photography.
Santa came a little early to our house (he's so accommodating!). Caroline is very excited about her new "big girl" room and bedding. She slept in her big girl room for the first time last night and it went very well - here's to hoping this is not a difficult transition.



We were off to Indy on Christmas Eve day and although it was a long day of travel, our flights were on time and Caroline was a good traveler so we can't complain. We kept ourselves on west coast time so we had a lot of late nights and slept in, but it made for lots of good family time for Caroline since she was up until 11 p.m. every night. She had a blast with her cousins as usual and they had lots of fun playing with their new Bitty Babies and the band set that Aunt Amy got for Caroline.

Josh and I made it to a Colts game while we were in Indy. The new stadium is great and it was fun to see a lot of records being broken, although the game wasn't much of a contest.






We are back home now and enjoyed some New Year's festivities at LegoLand - our first visit there. They had a Kids' New Year's Eve bash with a lego brick dropping to the countdown (at 6 p.m.) followed by fireworks. We went early in the afternoon to enjoy the rides and check out the park. It was very crowded since this is pretty much the "thing" to do with little ones here for New Year's, but Caroline and Josh got to ride about a half dozen rides and we saw all the miniworld lego displays which are pretty impressive. We'll have to go back again when it's not so crowded to ride more rides.