Warning…there may be an unusually large amount of photos about to follow…but hey, what do you expect!  It was our first daughter’s first trip to Disneyland!

Grandpa Greg helping Eloise learn to clap!

All smiles as the parking tram pulls into into the entrance plaza.

Now that’s a couple of beautiful looking girls right there!  Eloise is just thinking about what part of the park she’d like to see first.  I guess first things first…let’s introduce her to Mickey Mouse.

The only thing Disneyland is missing is a place for one year olds to take a nap.  It took us all morning to get to the park, find a parking spot, buy tickets and then take the entrance pictures!  By the time we got in the park it was WAY passed nap time and no nap can equal a grumpy grumpy Eloise…luckily there are quite a few distractions that can help a girl forget how tired she really is!  Here are some of Eloise’s favorites.

Bubbles

Diet Coke

Slushies

Pooh Bears from Grandma (even though this one actually put Eloise to sleep for a couple of minutes!)

Waiting in line…oh wait…Eloise doesn’t like waiting at all!  Patience is not yet one of her virtues.

Pestering Cruzer…

Running away from Dad!

Yelling with Dad!

Running with Mom!

Hanging out

Watching the street performers.

Eating treats!  Lot and LOTS of treats!

Meeting the characters.  Including The Mad Hatter!

And best of all…RIDES!

 The Ferris Wheel in California Adventures scared mom a little BUT not Eloise!  She is a thrill seeker and the higher, faster, scarier the better for her!

I’ve been lucky over the years to take a few Disneyland trips…it’s hard to imagine any more fun than the first time I got to be thee with my two girls!

The other thing that we did this year to try and help make the holidays a little more bearable was run away to the beach!  Sun, sand and waves have the ability to be very very therapeutic.  Thanks to Greg and Heidi for a great Christmas trip/present/get away.  I tried to be very conscience of taking pictures of everyone…but it was Eloise’s first trip to the beach and as it turns out she’s pretty photogenic so the equity went flying out the window!

Traveling with a baby is a lot of work!  Thank goodness we were traveling with a lot of people that LOVE helping out.  I caught this picture of Josh teaching Eloise all about airplanes.  It was awesome.

We stayed at the Wyndam resort at Koloa Landing on Kauai.  It was beautiful.  They were waiting for us with passion fruit juice and these rad lays.

We spent a good portion of Christmas Eve and Christmas day at the beach.  Our little girl has been extremely adventerous so far in her life; loved her first shower, kiss from Vinnie, etc.  Naturally, we figured she would love the ocean as well.  That was not the case…I’m not sure if it was the noise or the coming and going of the water with the waves or if it was the cold water…whatever it was Eloise was ONLY happy when she was in someones arms looking at the water from a safe distance on the first couple of days!  On our last day there we did get her to have a little fun in the water…but ONLY when someone was sitting in the water with her!

Now there was another time when she was happy on the beach…when she was stuffing sand into her mouth!  Instead of being the parent that rushed to brush her hands off and keep the sand out of her mouth, I was the father that was laughing and taking pictures!  Luckily, grandma Heidi was able to stop laughing long enough to knock the biggest handfuls away. She didn’t get sick so maybe I’m not that bad of a dad after all!

OK so I warned at the beginning of the post that this post may be a little Eloise heavy…but can you see why?!?!  Everywhere we go this little girl draws a crowd!  (I’ll be writing more about this next week.  I have a theory that I’m floating around my head.  And I promise it’s more than “she’s beautiful” coming from a knowingly biased father.)

Every good trip to the beach needs a sandcastle and then the destruction of said castle!

As the rotating family holidays go it was our year to be with the Hawks Family.  So we loaded up the family and headed to Richfield.  Thank goodness the “Great Blizzard of 2010″ was more hype than substance!  Courtney left for Richfield after work on Wednesday and had great roads all the way there.  I wish we could have had more time there but the time we did spend was flat awesome! 

This was Eloise’s first Thanksgiving and she was the only baby at the party so as you can imagine she got a fair amount of the attention for the weekend.  It didn’t hurt that her mom bought her this beautiful and fluffly pink Thanksgiving dress.  I asked Courtney if Pink was a Thanksgiving color.  I was told that for our girls it is!  I may be biased but this little girl is breathtaking!

I’m a little bit nervous about how much she likes boys already!  She hasn’t met a boy yet that hasn’t made her smile!

Like her dad, Eloise’s favorite part of Thanksgiving was the food!  She is just old enough to try just about everything.  She loved the potatoes, the jell-o and she even liked the sweet potatoes.  But her FAVORITE part of the meal…much to my chagrin was the PICKLES! 

Like the big kids she was also very excited about the post feast nap!  I just wish hers would have lasted longer than 27 minutes!

Thanks for having us over Grandma and Grandpa Hawks.  We always love coming to your house and we can’t wait to come back! 

As the Hawks family we would love to express our gratitude for all that we have!  We are incredibly blessed and hope that we do an adequate job of expressing it.  This year we are especially grateful for families as our little family has grown a lot this year!  We have been blessed with wonderful families and we want all of you to know how much we love you and how grateful we are to have you in our lives!