Ballerinas and Gingerbread

The last few days before Christmas saw a flurry of Christmas activities for our family. We visited the Victorian Christmas fair in Nevada City, were dazzled by the Zoo Lights display at Oakland Zoo, were entertained by a production of the Nutcracker and checked out the giant gingerbread house at the Fairmont Hotel. Phew, what a lot of Christmas fun! Of course, on top of all that there was last minute shopping, wrapping and decorating. It's amazing we weren't all Christmased out by the big day.

We've already seen the Victorian Christmas fair and Zoo Lights so let's have a look at the Nutcracker and giant gingerbread house...

Looking very much like Christmas at the Fairmont Hotel

My Littlest Ballerina

Another day, another first...

In stark contrast to Sunday's skateboarding, on Monday Lola took her first ballet class.

And did she love it? Absolutely.

Dressed in her leotard, skirt and ballet slippers she pranced around the studio on tippy toes, arms in the air, spinning here and there.

When it came time to follow instruction from her teacher she was super serious and concentrated very hard. Ava has always been the same too. Ballet, ice skating, cheerleading... what ever she's doing there's always a serious look on her face that tells me she's concentrating as hard as she can on getting it right. Lola had the same serious face throughout the whole class but I knew she was having a ball.

Here's my littlest ballerina enjoying her first class...

Little dancer

Updated Calendar

Last February I put up a post about the daily "calendar" that I had made for Ava.

Ava's "calendar"

This calendar, which is more of a daily schedule, shows what the day has in store for Ava i.e. preschool, swimming, playing with friends... I made the calendar just before Ava turned three in an effort to stop the repetitive "What are we going to do today?" that she would come out with every single morning.