Merry Christmas to you and to yours!

We had a wonderful Christmas here at the Isrel home this year. We opened presents, had breakfast and then had lunch with family here at our house. It was a wonderful time with family and friends. This year was magical for us as it was the first year Payton is experiencing the magic of Christmas. We hope everyone had a happy holiday as well and here's to a wonderful year to come!

Merry Christmas!


Payton in her dance skirt from Nanna

Susanna and Ricky

Feeding her baby from Santa

Sara and Sara (nanna Stevens)

Father and Daughter...aww

'T was the Night before Christmas

Christmas eve we went to Nanna and Grandpa Stevens for the traditional Cuban feast of pork with black beans and rice followed by delicious flan. Payton enjoyed playing with Shelby the dog as usual. On the way home we went through the McAdenville lights, then opended our PJs and went to bed!

At nanna and Grandpa Stevens

with Shelby

With YaYa(sara) and Poppi (luis)

After Santa came

Holiday Baking

Christmas eve eve Payton and I decided to try a little Christmas cookie baking. Payton helped some but mostly wanted to lick the batter of course....who doesn't? We made green sugar cookies with peppermint sprinkles and peanut butter with Hershey kiss cookies. Payton lost interest so I only made one batch and learned I am not the best baker (notice the sorry cake below).

Payton stealing a lick

mmmmm...good.

Me and my sad, sad cake

Texas Roadtrip

I took an opportunity this month to venture to Texas. This was my first time meeting my youngest niece , Astanti. It was a very short visit but I loved hanging out with Katie and the girls. The weather was a little crazy. The day before I arrived in Dallas the temp was in the high 70s, the next day? In the 20s and snowing! This made for interesting trip but the girls are both so adorable and smart too! Asanti is very sweet and quiet and Lexani is such a smarty and social girl. She promised to give kisses to Nanna in Washington for me!


Asanti, Katie, and Lexani

Adorable Asanti...what a smile!

Paytons 1st Dance Recital

Payton did very well at her first dance recital, we are so proud of her! Unfortunately our camera battery was not charged and I did not get much video. I did get this one picture of her on stage (note how she is NOT crying)! She went on stage, stayed there and even danced a little! We may have a pro on our hands.....


Payton on stage

Before the recital

Kissing Daddy

Parading around

Today Paytons dance studio was in the Mt. Holly parade. This was Paytons first time being in a parade and she really enjoyed it. I wasn't sure how she would do on the float without me but she was cool with it. She called the floats cakes. She kept saying "Look! Cake! Look! More cake!" It was pretty cute.....


Payton with her dance mates

Long shot of the float

Ready for Christmas!

Well, the weekend after Thanksgiving was quite cold and rainy here. I was very excited to decorate for Christmas and got right on it black Friday (I skipped the shopping). While the inside was finished we were not able to do the outside due to the nasty weather so we took Payton to see Santa instead. She really did not know what to think of him and was about to burst into tears. The photographer is great though and distracted her for about 5 mins and slowly moved her CLOSE to Santa's lap. lol! I think the picture turned out cute but this was just a quick smirk due to the photographer opening a sucker.

Our tree

Payton in her rain coat

Payton and Santa!

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving day we went to Grandma and Grandpa Stevens house. We had a nice time watching football and eating turkey of course. Here are a few family photos and a sweet video of Payton playing.


The family plus Joey

Joey, Suzie, Ricky, and PayPay

PayPay on a Pumpkin (the things mom makes her do for a pic)

PayPay on Grandpas rocker

She's so sweet...


Giving her "knocks" as usual...and it's still cute!

Story Time Turkey

Today at story time we made a turkey craft project. Payton really enjoyed the glue stick. Artist in training!

working her glue stick magic

Inserting feathers in the turkey

Turkey (missing his feathers)

Playdate!

Monday was the start of our weekly play date at Eliana's. We had a great time! Payton needs to work on her sharing skills so perhaps this will be good practice. Payton obviously enjoyed all of Eli's snow globes and assortment of toys as I had to pull her out of the house screaming! See you next week girls!

Payton and Eliana

Paytons Playland

Payton outgrew her toddler bed pretty fast. I would check on her at night and she would have limbs hanging off the bed every which way. This is due to the fact that the girl likes to s-t-r-e-t-c-h when she sleeps. So being the craigslister that I am I kept an eye out for a big girl bed for her. It took a lot of searching through princess beds and other girlie things until I found this really COOL bed. She loves it!(what kid wouldn't)? She eventually does go to sleep and even seems to sleep better now. Score!

Shakin her sillies out

Here is some more dance stuff. I can't usually watch her but they had parent observation day and we got to bring our cameras! It was too cute but Payton did spend a lot her time just standing there...I know she is learning things however, because all of a sudden she started doing moves at home like plies and saying "plie..". Also she claps "up..." then "down..." and marches in place "march, march". I was very excited!

Twinkle Toes

Payton has some new shoes she wants to show the world! We picked up these little silver sparkle shoes at a steal and now she won't take them off. She even wears them to bed! What can I say? The girl loves shoes and I have to agree with her these are quite chic.

Payton in her sparkle shoes


A close up of "the" shoes

Tommy and Jennifer...3 years and many more to come!

Nov. 12th was mine and Tommy's anniversary. It has been three years now! These three years have been so eventful and so much has happened it almost seems like forever! We are enjoying every minute of it though and look forward to many more to come. We celebrated with dinner at Lotus sushi bar and intended to see a movie which we NEVER do but absolutely nothing was playing worth paying for! So we bought a couple DVDs and went home for a movie night in.