Once again the petting zoo was a huge hit! She loved feeding the goats, llamas and bunnies. And she gave them all a few pats here and there too. So it was worth the trip just for her to be able to visit the petting zoo. Other than that, we walked through a few barns, mostly the steers and cows, and she thought that was pretty. Then we all headed to Great Outdoors for lunch, taking a pass on the greasy Stock Show food. It was a fun hour or so, but that was enough for us!

Afterward we got to have lunch with some of our Dallas friends who we don’t get to see nearly enough, so it was a good day.

By that point we had a pretty remarkable timeline of about a fifth of our little girl’s life. The pictures thin out from there, so it looks like Maya really grew up fast, but we hit the high points for the rest of 2011 to fill out our little project.

With that, hope you enjoy Maya’s year in photos.

(Or take a look back through the weekly updates.)

Maya loved putting ornaments on the tree, but the month our tree was up, she also loved taking them off. So off and on they would go. Amazingly only one ornament broke this year, and it had nothing to do with Maya. So she was good at being gentle!

We took her to visit Santa in Sundance Square again this year with another family who we’ve gone with the last couple years. And the kiddo was so brave! She was excited to be going to see Santa, and kept excitedly pointing at him while we waited in line. When it was our turn, she walked right up the steps to his sleigh and sat down beside him. She was really stoney faced the entire time she sat there, but she wasn’t scared or sad and was really happy afterward. She gave him a high five as she was leaving. So she’s kept up the tradition of not giving us any of the “typical” Santa photos with the screaming child! All season she would point and yell, “Santa!” every time she saw him somewhere, so that was a lot of fun to see.

Christmas weekend we headed to Shreveport, where we had a nice time relaxing and eating, mostly! The day of Christmas Eve we checked out Shreveport’s science museum, and Maya had fun there. She made her first snowflake and sat in a chair that took her for a ride up high in the sky.

Unfortunately, on Christmas Day she woke up feeling really terrible. She ended up with a pretty bad cold and cough that lasted for several days, and then of course I caught it from her and am still fighting it off today. So neither of us felt great, but we still had a nice time. Luckily she felt well enough to go over to Sandi’s house that night for the celebration with all of Jason’s extended family. She had a good time playing with Caroline and Camryn, so I’m glad she was able to tough it out for a little bit at least!

We took our tree down this last weekend, and Maya was really sad to see it go! It sat on our curb for a few days waiting for the city to come pick it up, and she kept saying “bring Maya’s Christmas tree back inside.” So I felt bad about that! But hopefully I convinced her that Santa needs to take it back to the North Pole until next year.

Here are some photos from our trip to Shreveport. The terrible thing about this year is I managed to erase our memory card, thinking I had downloaded all of the photos from it. But I didn’t. So all of our Santa photos, along with some others are gone. We have the one Santa photo they printed out for us there, so I’ll scan that in eventually. But of course it’s not as good as the ones Jason had taken. So we’ll just have to keep this etched in our memory! And I’m afraid this batch of photos is pretty bad too! I must not have been too into taking pics this week or something!

I was off work on Friday, so we headed to Shreveport because Jason’s cousin Claire was getting married on Saturday. Maya had a fun weekend with Grandad, and we were happy to be able to catch up with some of Jason’s cousins who were in from out of town for the wedding. And Clair’s wedding was gorgeous! Maya had fun in the “crying room” with Nathan during the ceremony. No crying, but they weren’t staying very quiet in the church! But the ceremony was beautiful and the receptions was lots of fun.

Before the wedding, the Wardlaws came over for lunch. Maya had fun catching up with Nathan. They’d both grown up so much since they last saw each other!

Back at the beginning of November, we were able to go to South Carolina and meet our sweet new nephew, Crews! It was a wonderful trip and we’re so glad we got spend some time with the little guy, and we miss being able to cuddle with him since we left!

We flew out there on a Sunday morning. The flight was easy, and it was Maya’s first trip where she had to be in her own seat. She did a pretty good job, although getting her to stay seated with her seat belt on was a little tricky during take-off! She wanted to be hopping all over the place. But she was happy, so no complaints here.

Sunday we overlapped with Jason’s dad, so that was nice because we were all able to have a day together. I think Maya loved having her family all in one place, and she was especially excited to see Ford. She talks about him often and had been so excited to find out she was getting to go to Ford’s house!

Baby Crews was as sweet as can be, of course. And I really think Maya loved meeting him. She was always worried about him having his pacifier and was really sweet giving him hugs and kisses. It was lots of fun to watch her with him. We all had a good time going to the zoo together, the park and just playing around the house.

We can’t wait until we’re able to see them all again!

Eventually we hopped off the bus and spent the next several hours walking around the older part of town. We also hiked up to the fortress that overlooks the city. It was quite the steep walk to the top! We had intended to take the cable car up, but somehow missed the entrance and by the time we realized it we were almost at the top anyway.

Our second day in Salzburg the four of us headed just outside the city, actually crossing back into Germany, and took a tour of Eagle’s Nest, which was one of Hitler’s getaways. It’s a small house at one of the highest points in the mountains in this area. We drove to the place where you catch a bus up the windy road. Then you walk through a cave-like walkway to an elevator that takes you to the very top. The view was gorgeous from the top. You could see Salzburg in the distance, along with the lake we would head to next. We hiked and climbed on the rocks and enjoyed the view for an hour before heading back down.

Next we headed back down the mountains to a beautiful lake. We took a ferry across the lake, which gave us more great views of the mountains around us, along with a few waterfalls that went into the lake. The ferry dropped us at an area that had lots of hiking trails, so I took a quick hike before we had to head back. From the looks of it we could have spent days hiking there, but unfortunately we were coming to the end of our day already.

We stopped for what ended up being the best meal of the trip on the way back to our hotel. We were in a small, German town that we passed through along the way. There was a restaurant with a packed parking lot, so we figured it had to be good, and it was! We were probably the only English speakers there, so it was nice to know we were at a more traditional place. It was a delicious German meal (even though the entire process took several hours!)