Wintertime Fun

We've had a lot of fun the past couple weeks, mainly enjoying the "perfect" winter weather (in my opinion!) It's been sunny, and in the upper 20's to lower 30's for a while now, and it's great weather to spend outside.

My dad got an 8 foot toboggan from a coworker a couple of weeks ago and we decided to take it out to a hill a few blocks away last week. Audia LOVED it. Everytime she went down the hill, she said "Wee! Wee!" over and over. She must have made Chris drag that damn thing (it is HEAVY!) up the hill at least 20 times before we finally managed to get her interested in doing something else (namely, playing in the snow at the bottom of the hill). She got soooo upset when we left, and every day now points outside and says "Wee! Sled! Wee! Sled!" I think maybe we'll try to take her again tomorrow or this weekend.

On Sunday afternoon, we had our second Snow Bocce Ball game this year. We had a much better turn out this time around; I think a total of 13 or 14 people showed! Audia, of course, wanted to be in the middle of the action playing Bocce Ball too, but she got over it eventually.

I think John is her new best friend (next to Autumn, of course!); she really took a liking to him! It is so fun to see how social she is with everyone. Everytime someone would arrive, she would immediately bring them one (or 5) of her toys; she is such a giving little girl :-) Trying on John's sunglasses

Audia looked at the back of John's iPhone and said "Apple!"

Yesterday we decided to get out of the house and took Audia to Como Zoo and Conservatory. I absolutely love it there, and it is such a great place to bring Audia because there is so much to see, and we can let her run around without having to worry about her getting hurt or getting into anything unsafe; it's totally kid friendly. She loves looking at the fish and birds and bugs in the Tropical Encounters exhibit, and smelling the flowers in the Conservatory gardens. It's the perfect place to escape for a couple of hours and let her wear herself out :-)

She has become so incredibly vocal the past month or so, it seriously blows my mind. What is crazy is that over the past few days, she's begun to talk to us about things she's done in the past. She still only says one or two words together at a time, but she'll name people or things she saw previously. She was saying "Aumn Bye Bye" ("Autumn Bye Bye") randomly until Tuesday, after seeing her on Sunday! Or she'll say things like "gabba gabba dasy dasy" (Gabba Gabba Dancey Dance) after we watched an episode of 'Yo Gabba Gabba'. I know every mom thinks so about her own kids, but I think we have a little genius on our hands :-)