Merry Christmas from the Nation's Capital!

Jay and I received the best Christmas present ever today! We took Anna to the developmental specialist, who we visit every 6 months at this point, and Anna received rave reviews on all of her development! The doctor was especially pleased with Anna's communication and social interaction, which is what we had the most doubts about. She said that it is extremely good to see Anna not only imitating us, but also conversing with us in her own words. It doesn't matter at this point that she isn't speaking actual words, but she is communicating in her own way by pointing, babbling, and making sure to get our attention when she needs to. There were just a couple of tests where Anna ranks more in the 12-15 month development age than the 15 month age that she actually is, which didn't concern the doctor at all. She also commented that Anna shows absolutely no signs of an autism spectrum disorder, which she would expect to see at this stage if she were to have autism. Yay for our little fighter! She is doing so good and we like to celebrate every piece of good news we receive regarding her development!

We LOVE living in Virginia and love being so close to the nation's capital. It has so much to offer and this past weekend we decided that we needed to take the girls to Washington D.C. to see both the national tree in front of the White House, but also the tree in front of the Capitol Building. It was cold out, but the girls had a great time. Emma loved all the lights and had a great time, as did the rest of us! Enjoy the pictures.

Emma was super excited to be in front of the Capitol Building tree. It was much more beautiful than the White House tree. It was brought in from California and was 118 years old!

Can you spot the girls in front of the tree?

LOVE the Capitol Building in the background - this tree was truly magnificent!!

Girls in front of the White House tree

This tree in front of the White House was less than magnificent. Apparently the tree always used was brought down last year in the horrible ice storm that Washington D.C. had.

It did have tons of train tracks around the bottom that Emma loved.

The National tree is also surrounded by 50 trees, one for each state. This was the Michigan tree - I took a picture for all of our peeps back home!

Emma had a GREAT time!!

Hope everyone has a very happy and safe holidays!!