Olive the Chef

Tonight Olive decided to treat her Monsters to a delicious meal of cookies, coffee and birthday cake. She was very busy cook and waitress as she distributed fresh napkins, forks, spoons and "microwaved" everyone's coffee and cookies. The whole time she was talking to her customers saying, "Here you go Monker," and "Oh, Monker!" (The third to the last picture Olive wanted to hold the "Monker's" hand.)

Olive the Artist

As you can see we are exploring Olive's artistic side as of late. Today we did some chalk art on Olive's new easel. She normally favors marking pens over chalk and crayons, but made an exception today. You'll also notice she is wearing her 'dusting gloves' from her Dirt Devil play set. Ya gotta love a kid who loves to clean. In addition to her tu-tu, she is using her drum as a seat.

Olive the Rock Star

Olive has started a music class here at the Canyon. There is lots of singing and dancing and clapping. Her favorite part of class, though, is playing the instruments. In fact, I think she thinks its a drum class. This has prompted Daddy to bring out his guitar so that we can bring music class home. Olive has enjoyed watching Daddy strum and has started to ask to strum a bit on her own. Look out Sheryl Crow!

The many faces of Olive (revisited)

We have done similar blog posts to this one a few times over the last few years, but it's more fun now because Olive will do requests. These are her responses when asked to portray the following emotions...

Sad...

Pouting...

Surprised...

Excited...

More Pouting...

Thinking...

Confused...

Cheesy...

Normal Happy...

How Olive rolls

Lately, Olive doesn't like leaving the house without her cool sunglasses.

Messes

As you can see Olive likes to make them and clean them up.

Christmas Day

Today we have had a nice Christmas at home! Santa came last night which, as you might imagine, was pretty exciting. He brought Olive a pretty pink kitchenette and we have been busy playing with it all day. She got lots of "kitchenette accessories" such as food and pots and pans from the various Grandmas and Grandpas, so that was quite convenient! We have also been having lots of tea parties with Minnie Mouse since she is the perfect size for Olive. In fact, I just heard Olive tell Will that "Mouse" needed to get on her tricycle for a ride around the house.

Hope everyone out there had a wonderful day! We miss you all and Merry Christmas!

Party Time!

One of the great things about living in a small place where most people are away from their families on holidays is that there are friends that are available for a Birthday party on Christmas Eve! We had our friends Betsy, Brian, and their girls Kylie, Meghan, and Matty plus our other friend, Robin, come over to help us celebrate Olive turning 2. It was a very nice morning and Olive had fun playing with the girls and opening gifts. We played with her new toys and participated in a rousing version of "ring around the Rosie." Happy Birthday, Olive!