The Year's End

Happy New Year! We have been very busy this last few weeks of 2011 with lots of parties, travels, and adventures. We have celebrated Christmas with cookie parties, work parties, school parties. We danced the Nutcracker in our living room and visited Radiator Springs (which happens to have a nice little zoo.) Here are the little highlights from the end of year.

Factor Mustache

Christmas Trains at Garfield Park

Studying the Nutcracker

Dancing the Grand Pas

Race cars are learning strategies from He Who Can Crack Nuts

Time to fix things...thanks Opa!

 When we flew to Arizona for Christmas, Elias was very excited when he looked out the window to see that we were going to Radiator Springs for Christmas.

Cars 2 Race track..thanks Gram and Grandad

Mater and McQueen meet the Rat King

Santa came!

Rat King is happy Santa left him some cookies

Showing Uncle Derrick how to dance to the Nutcracker
after  jamming out not Uncle Derrick's Phish tunes.

Too much Christmas!

This year was one filled with lots of memories--sleeping and dancing again, the Great Ice Storm, home improvements and getting to play and garden outside, good times with friends new and old, music concerts, and of course the daily shenanigans of Elias. He is now 2 1/2 years old, standing 3'2 and weighing in at 30 pounds. He really started talking  (and making sense in the last couple of months) and he can even count to 10 in 3 languages (English, German, Spanish). He has a will of steel but is as silly as a goose and very lighthearted, even a prankster/jokster. A total ham.  He loves all things race cars (Cars 2 right now), animals (especially African wildlife as seen in the Lion King), and trains. Happy 2011! Here's to 2012.