Let’s Make Things Look Beautiful….

Hello everyone from still frigid, but now rainy central Jersey. Truly interesting weather patterns we have been having here. Had this week’s rain been snow, we would likely be under a few feet of snow at this point. The weather tried, but could not stand in the way of Victoria’s acting debut this week. Victoria had a speaking role (yes, she had multiple lines) in a school play this week. The theme of the play was related to modes of transportation. In addition to singing as part of the group, Victoria’s lines were in a skit about taking the bus to school. Victoria was practicing her lines for a few weeks now and did fantastic. When it was time for her skit, she showed no signs of nerves (there was a crowd of about 200 people). She stepped up, turned on her microphone and hit her lines right on cue. Her English has been coming along in leaps and bounds recently. For Mom and Dad, this was such a wonderful sight to see…so proud of and amazed by our little girl…

Victoria is showing a lot of positive interest recently in having conversations about Russia (talking about our plane trips, her times celebrating holidays, etc.). So, it was fitting this week that it came up at a doctor’s appointment. Victoria’s Pediatrician is from Russia...in fact, so is everyone in the doctor’s office). So, when one of the doctors mentioned that she was from Russia, Victoria responded “You’re from Russia? Cool!” It was a very cute interaction.

As we have been driving around our area, Victoria has been noticing all of the houses decorated for Christmas. So, she has been wondering when we were going to make our house “look beautiful”. Last weekend, the snow stopped us from picking up our tree, but we would not be denied this week. Picking out our tree and putting up our outside decorations were truly the highlight of the week for Victoria. The cold weather made the outside effort a little tough, but she was absolutely giddy about decorating for Christmas! As we put up the lights outside, she was smiling, jumping around and kept saying she was “so happy!”. Once the tree had time to settle, she was ready to decorate…first the lights, then the ornaments, then she had the honor of putting the angel on top. It’s really difficult to describe her excitement with words. She had fun, we had fun, and now we decorated our tree for the first time as a family…awesome.

Here are some pictures from the week…

All smiles after the play:

With her proud parents:
At the tree farm…she could not stop smiling!
Daddy hanging lights:
Supervising as the lights went up:
Excited that the front of the house looks beautiful:
Smiling from ear to ear as we decorated the tree:
Helping Mommy and Daddy string lights:
“This is fun”…helping to clean up the pine needles:
All decorated…just the angel topper to go:
Up high to put on the angel: