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Last week we took a big family vacation to St. John. We rented a house on the Cruz Bay side, on the boarder of the national park. It was an amazing week of good food, snorkeling, swimming, hiking, and generally just unwinding. Sophie loved the sun, sand, water and all of the attention from grandparents, her aunt and cousin.

 Here’s a shot of the house from the driveway. It was made up of three separate buildings, with a pool separating two of them, and a courtyard separating the other two.

 Bathing Beauty

The whole crew on our last day (sigh). 
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Today Sophie’s friend from school Claire celebrated her 2nd birthday at the Little Treehouse in Chestnut Hill. They all had a blast in the tumbling room.

 Sophie and her friend Rachael
 Exhausted from jumping
 And of course there was cake (and lots of it!)
Practicing her balancing skills. She was pretty good at the beam actually. 
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Dave and I flip flop families for Christmas, so this year we were down in Va. with my family. My cousins from Long Island, Brittany & Brandon, and my aunt Pam also came down. They used to come down years ago and it was good to spend the holiday with them again. Sophie got a lot more into it this year, but was a little overwhelmed with all of the presents. She was excited for about the first 3-4 and then started to lose it, and so Dave and I ended up opening up the rest of hers.

 Coming down the stairs to see if Santa came

Santa did indeed come! She raced toward the stack of presents under the tree. And loved the wooden rocking chair from her Great Grandma!
Brandon also helped open her presents.
With Brandon & Brittany later in the day
Reading with Brittany
The whole family!
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We’ve been in our house about 3 1/2 years and are finally getting out bedroom redone. It was time the shag carpet and track lighting came down – sorry 1974.

Here’s a shot of the custom closets going in. Very exctied!

 And the finished product! Benson has already made himself at home 🙂
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This weekend we went to a family holiday party at the Union League and Santa was there. While Sophie was thrilled with all of the big blow up characters, she was less than thrilled to sit on Santas lap.

Batting 0 for 2 in getting her to smile while sitting on Santa’s lap.
However, as soon as we got her sitting next to a stuffed bear, she perked right up. Note to self for next year: bring a teddy bear 🙂 
Our Christmas joy!
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We turned Sophie’s car seat around a few weeks ago and now she’s much happier. She’s also getting better at entertaining herself. Here are two videos I took this weekend. The first is her singing her own rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star – click here; and in the second she’s reading outloud from a book of Eastern wisdom (so deep) – click here. 

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Sorry for the delay in getting these pictures up. We had a great Halloween with a whole weekend of activities. On Saturday we went to a Halloween party at the Union League and Sophie the butterfly had a great time!

 Her and Dave under one of the huge blow-up decorations
 They had a DJ and all fo the kids were on the floor doing different dances. Sophie wasn’t entirely sure about what was going on, but had fun anyway.

Then she decided to get in the middle of the circle for the Hokie Pokie. Not a wall flower this one.
Unfortunately the pictures I took on actual Halloween were accidentally deleted 🙁 We did get some video though, so will try and upload that soon to the YouTube Channel. We went trick or treating on our block and two others and after a few houses Sophie got the idea of what it was all about pretty quickly. Although we got her to say “trick or treat” inside our house, she wouldn’t say it when we knocked on people’s doors. She also wanted the instant gratification of eating the candy right away, so we came home with a lot of candy bars with bite marks. All in all a fun night.
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This weekend we all took Friday off for a little “staycation.” Friday we went to the Camden Aquarium, Saturday pumpkin picking at Linvilla Orchards and Sunday to Morris Arboretum. What a great time all around!

Here Sophie is enjoying her very first candy apple (candied, dipped in chocolate and rolled in nuts – how can you not like that?). We took a hayride through the different fields at Linvilla Orchards. Later we did some veggie picking and got a whole box of tomatoes, peppers and eggplants (and will now be eating a lot of tomatoes, peppers and eggplants).

 At the Morris Arboretum they have this thing called the Squirrel Scramble – essentially a huge net high in the trees. It was pretty cool, but also a little unearving. Sophie thought it was a huge trampoline.
 Stopping to smell the roses.
I’ve finally figured out how to get her to smile for pictures. I just ask her to “show me your teeth.” Hoepfully this trick will last long enough to get through the Holiday picture taking season. 
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Sophie had off from school today so I took her to the zoo this morning. This is the third time that she’s been and she was definitely more into it this time than the others. She knew most of the animals and the sounds they make – although she was getting the sheep and goats confused.

We went to the petting zoo area where she got to brush a goat. I’m happy to report she was much more careful with the goat than she is with Benson. 
She also went for her first pony ride and loved it! It’s tough to get such a good smile out of this kid. Riding lessons in her future perhaps? 
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