Winter Fun

Here's a random collection of some of the things we've been doing this winter. Olivia got to decorate Christmas Tree sugar cookies from Panera at the library storytime.

A few weekends ago, we went to the Festival of Lights at the Cincinnati Zoo. We made a mini-vacation out of it. We stopped at the outlet mall on the way down, then met Carl for dinner. Carl came with us to the zoo. Olivia had a blast seeing the zoo lights. We got to see some of the animals too, which was exciting. Unfortunately, it's hard to really capture how cool the lights looked. Below is one picture I took that night. We spent the night in Cincinnati and after a nice breakfast at the hotel, hit up Ikea before heading back home.

That same weekend, we went to Olivia's friend Linden's 2nd birthday party. See picture below. :)

Since Olivia enjoyed the zoo lights so much, we decided to also check out Woodland Lights. It's only about 15 minutes from our house (much closer than the zoo) and is 1/2 mile wooded loop with lots of fun Christmas lights and decorations, as well as some carnival rides. You can even see Santa there, but we decided to pass because of the long line. Here's a picture of Olivia and Yusaku at Woodland Lights.

And lastly, just a funny picture of our little goofball wearing Mr. Potato Head's glasses.

Christmas

We had a great Christmas season. Earlier in December, we decorated our tree and made a trip to see Santa. The first attempt to see Santa resulted in Olivia running screaming from the room (although prior to going, she had talked about how excited she was to see him). We were going to just go home, but Olivia decided she wanted to try again. She decided to sit on my lap next to Santa and told him that she wanted blocks and jingle bells. Here are some pictures of the Christmas tree decorating and Santa visit.

Sarah got home late on the 21st, so first thing on the 22nd, we got started on our annual cookie-baking-day. This year, Olivia could be a more active participant in the baking/decorating process. (Here's last year's Christmas post if you want to check it out for fun). She helped pour ingredients into bowls, put red hots on the "wreaths", sprinkle chocolate chips on the magic cookie bars, and ice some sugar cookies. She also got her first taste of sweetened condensed milk, which she thoroughly enjoyed (see pics below).

On Christmas Eve, we went to Mass with my family as usual, followed by dinner at their house. Here's a picture of all of us on Christmas Eve.

After dinner at my parents' house, we came home to hang our stockings and leave cookies out for Santa. Olivia also got to open up some new Christmas pajamas and after bathtime, we read Twas the Night Before Christmas together.

On Christmas morning, we opened presents at our house and then headed to my parents' house for more presents and brunch. Somehow, I don't have any pictures from either of those. After naptime and before dinner, we headed to Yusaku's parents' house to open presents with them.

My parents and sister joined us for dinner at the Kawai's, which was very nice.

I like this picture better than the one below except for the fact that
my mom isn't in it and Olivia looks a little drunk

Everyone except Takashi and not flattering of me, but oh well. :)

 All in all, it was a very nice Christmas. Here's one last picture to finish things off.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was great! Yosuke and Manami got into town late Monday night so we got to see and hang out with them most of the week. My sister got in late Wednesday night, but didn't have to leave til Sunday so we got to spend a lot of time with her as well. Here are some pictures from Thanksgiving (and the week surrounding it).

At Orchardly Park with Obaachan and Ojiichan

Olivia with Uncle Yosuke and Manami at Carillon Park

Cheeseball posing and waiting for everyone to arrive

Yusaku was in charge of the turkey as usual and
it turned out great!

These next few pictures are of all of us resting after dinner. :)

In addition to the excitement of hanging out with our out-of-town family, we got some other exciting news that week. My cousin Leslee and her boyfriend Jon got engaged! We couldn't be happier for them. We got to see them and have dinner with them and their son Quinn at my parent's house the Saturday after Thanksgiving. As you can see, Olivia and Quinn had fun forming their own little band.

Little cousins

Big cousins

We are so lucky to have such wonderful family. We truly enjoyed getting to spend time with all of them during the week of Thanksgiving! For fun, here's last year's Thanksgiving post to compare. 

Eric's Wedding

An alternative title for this post could be "Our First Childless Trip Since Olivia Has Been Born." The last weekend of October, Yusaku and I flew to California for our friend Eric's wedding. It was a whirlwind trip, with us not getting in until late Friday night and leaving early Sunday morning, but totally worth it. 

Ahead of the trip, I had been anxious about how Olivia and I would do since this was the first time in her entire life that both Yusaku and I would be gone at the same time. (I knew Yusaku would be fine!) As it turned out, we all did just fine. I enjoyed having some adult time alone and she had fun with my mom. In fact, when I called home to try to say hi to her, she didn't even want to talk to me! Better that than having her be sad and missing us. Thinking of all the running around we did in such a short period of time (driving to/from the airport(s), having layovers, etc.) and the three-hour time difference on top of it, made me glad that we weren't dragging Olivia along with us.

We stayed at the beautiful La Quinta Resort and made the most of our time there. When we woke up Saturday morning (bright and EARLY), we walked around a bit to check out the grounds of the resort and then had a delicious breakfast. A little while later, we headed to the spa, where Yusaku had scheduled a couples massage for us. It was wonderful! We had lunch and walked around/relaxed until it was time to get ready for the wedding.

Here are some more pictures of the beautiful resort.

And some pictures of the main event:

The Oakwood Crew

Time to Catch Up: Fall

Wow! I can't believe it's been over a month since I last posted. Time has been flying and we've been having fun. Olivia transitioned to her big girl bed (you'll see why in a moment), Yusaku and I took a quick trip to California, we celebrated Halloween and Thanksgiving, started getting ready for Christmas, and enjoyed lots of other fun moments in between. I'll get started with the rest of Fall and save everything else for its own post.

It may be hard to tell from this picture, but she has climbed onto
the top of her crib and is pretending to sleep.

We went to the Columbus Zoo in the middle of October and met up with our friends Kelly and Luke and their kids. Olivia had a blast walking around the zoo with Ella and holding her hand. She still talks about how she went to the zoo and she held her hand all the time.

We discovered a hidden gem of a park, not too far from our house - Pondview Park. Olivia and I went there one day to explore and enjoyed all the beautiful fall colors.

We tried to spend as much time outside enjoying the nice weather as possible and often took advantage of being able to walk up to the playground at the elementary school by our house. The picture below is in front of a huge Gingko tree at Smith School. Checkout the beautiful carpet of yellow leaves and my little cheeseball's face! :)

Here's the one picture I have of Olivia from Halloween. We had just found out that the cause of Olivia's extreme grumpiness that week was Fifth's disease. Despite feeling a little under the weather and crummy cold, rainy weather, she went out and did a little trick-or-treating.

We made an impromptu trip to the Cincinnati Zoo at the beginning of November. We went on a somewhat chilly, but sunny Sunday morning and it was a great time to go. It wasn't too crowded and we got to see several animals out for walks including pot-bellied pigs, a bat-eared fox, and a llama. Pretty exciting!