Girl Day!

This weekend is child free church retreat weekend. Lee offered to let me go, but I jumped at the opportunity of a quiet, relaxed weekend at home. Lee is at the retreat and the girls and I are having a blast together. We started off the morning braiding hair. A little background - there is a girl in the dance class with beautiful waist length, shiny, chestnut brown hair. This child was just blessed with a great head of hair. Before class, her mom always twists it into a single braid that hangs down her back. Well, come to find out, Analese covets this girl's hair. She asked me to braid HER hair for class. And as soon as I did, she pranced around feeling like the most beautiful princess ever! Here is the braid that I promised her this morning.



The hilarious thing is, Mariele asks for a braid also. She does not have quite enough hair, but she will not accept no for an answer. This is true of a bun also. This morning I gave Mariele some "Pipi" braids.



Analese wanted me to braid my own hair. It's pretty obvious I can't see what I'm doing back there.



They are enjoying a creative morning painting.



Here is a cute pic of Mariele from a few days ago wearing Daddy's shoes.

Highlights from the week

Potteryland and pedicure.








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Analese's Adventurer Class

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Princesses dressed for church

My friend, Yng Yng, is a very talented seamstress. So talented, in fact, that she sewed all five bridesmaid dresses for my wedding nearly 13 years ago! She made the yellow dress with matching hair bows for Mariele for her birthday. It was a complete surprise for all of us. I had no idea that she was working on it! There is some growing room in the dress, but Mariele insisted on wearing it to church today. We are having very spring-like weather here, so the dresses worked today.

Mariele with her owl and Grandpa

Happy 3rd birthday to my Mariele!

Mariele had a wonderful birthday yesterday. In fact, she is having a great birthday weekend. These photos of her on her birthday morning, riding her tricycle around the house while she snacks on an orange are just typical Mariele. This is her three year old personality shining through. She is such a happy and contented, CONFIDENT kid. She has a quite the backbone, and will stand up for herself in a heartbeat. She is also very loving and affectionate, always wishing to snuggle. Her favorite food is a bean and cheese burrito. She requests this morning, noon and night. I do try to offer her a variety of foods, but there is a short list of foods that she likes as of now. Her speech seems to be improving, slowly but surely. She is a petite, lithe little dancer. She absolutely loves ballet! She had a great day, opening gifts from the family in the morning, and having a party with her friends in the evening. She even got to swim in the warm, toasty pool. Don't look too closely at my owl cake, but I did fluff out some frosting flaws and put a nest of berries around it. It was completely yummy, too.

The girls dancing at their mid-season showcase...

Rainy, cozy school day

Today has been a very rainy day. Poor Mariele has a bad cold and cough and is not feeling so well.


Today was a craft intensive school day. They made counters from craft sticks and beans as an extra math craft. Mariele wanted to do hers all by herself, of course.


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Slow Start to the Blogging Year...

It has been busy on the home front, but a slow start to the blogging year, nonetheless. I thought I would share some of my favorite moments from this week. We visited a friend who has an electric drum set, and Mariele discovered that she is quite the rock and roll drummer girl. Check out the motion in this photo. She was rocking it HARD!



Then, her endless supply of energy just kept flowing while she worked out on the bow flex.



Finally, we joined friends for a dinner at Sweet Tomatoes. I just love the sweet kid hand holding!

Happy New Year 2012

We have started the New Year with pretty weather for enjoying the outdoors. My exercise goals this year have less to do with miles, and more to do with time. (This is probably a good time to mention that I did, in fact, complete the 500 mile challenge for the second year in a row). I would also like to make sure the kids are getting the physical activity that they need daily. Sometimes when I put them in the backyard, they are pretty sedentary. Other times, they play hard on the play set. It just depends. Warm season is easy, because they are always very active in the pool. Today we took a walk and ended up at the playground where I took this nice photo.


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