A Zoo Birthday...

Analese's little friend had a birthday at the zoo today. We enjoyed spending the morning at the zoo, feeding the giraffes and brushing the goats.

My Birthday and Christmas...

We spent my birthday (known as my birthday to me and Christmas Eve to the rest of you) and Christmas in Arkansas. It was a lovely trip. We enjoyed spending lots of good quality time with our families. There was a lot of eating involved. I partook of my favorite cheese ball and a chocolate zucchini birthday cake. There were also champagne truffles involved. It was worth the extra working out in my future. I was living the moments, so I really did not take many pictures. Present opening pictures are a little monotonous and dimly lit anyway. My children are spoiled with gifts, but they are also very blessed to have such great relatives. Uncle David is a favorite, because he takes so much time with the kids and gives them so much attention and love.



I can't NOT share this beautiful mother/daughter photo of my sister-in-law and her daughter, my precious niece. She crocheted the dress and headband, by the way.



The upside of Christmas is I got a new Toyota Highlander for my birthday/Christmas! I have not taken pictures of it, believe it or not, except for this one of the dash, which is actually pretty beautiful.



It is blizzard pearl, and I am really liking my new ride.

The downside of Christmas is that my grandmother spent some time in the hospital, and she is still not feeling too well. At least she did get to come home on Christmas Eve.

Christmas Week Fun!

Since we will be in Arkansas over Christmas, we decided to let the girls open their gifts a little early over a few days. Today we let them open the big ones. Mariele got a balance bike. I have not taken pictures of that yet. Analese got the lemonade stand / grocery store. She has been really wanting to have a lemonade stand. I made her a pitcher of lemonade, and at first she was a bit disappointed that I was not letting her sell lemonade on the curb to total strangers. However, she soon realized the fun of practicing and pretending. She charged a dollar for half a dixie cupful, and Lee and I got several refills (but talked her down to a quarter a cup). This toy worked very well with their existing toy food and cash register. They had lots of fun with it.

Adventurers Cookie Exchange...

First, they all made Baby Jesus ornaments. Analese was very proud of her finished product.



Then they had the cookie exchange.




Then they had the Secret Santa gift exchange. I was Mariele's Secret Santa, since she is not old enough to be an Adventurer yet.



They also had the store where they got to spend all of their "cub bucks." "Cub bucks" look like money. They are given out as a merit system in the Adventurers. Analese had 24 cub bucks to spend, and she only spent 9! She could have bought way more stuff, but she wanted to save her bucks. They do another store in the spring, so she will be able to make a haul then if she wants to. I did think it was sweet that she bought some little glow sticks for her sissy. She also bought a crystal growing kit and a light up Santa pen for herself.

The Sweetest Christmas Card...and Cookies!

Here is the sweetest Christmas card I have received. It is from Analese, and was made and given with lots of love. It reads: "Dear family, I love you so much and merry Christmas and I am so excited for Valentine's Day. Love, Analese. {sic}



My sweet little Valentine's Christmas elf and I spent the afternoon decorating cookies for her Adventurer's cookie exchange that will be tomorrow. They turned out better looking than I expected!

Mariele learns to type!

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My Little Ballerinas...

I know I said I was through with barfing blog posts for the day, but psyche! I have one more. This week, the girls started in ballet/tap/gymnastics combo class. The most awesome thing about this class is that both girls have class at the exact same time! The class is divided into big girls/little girls, but the time is the same, which is a dream for my schedule. This was Mariele's first non-parent/child class. I was not in the class with her, but I was on the other side of the glass watching. My heart completely swelled with pride as I watched my baby listening to her teacher and dancing her little heart out. She stayed on her dot when she was supposed to and was just a perfect little student! Here are some pics I took before we left the house. And I'm throwing in a pic from Analese's first time in ballet when she was 34 months old (same age as Mariele is now).

The un-photo documented complete pinnacle summit highlight wonderfulness of our entire trip!

We reached a very important, super fantastic milestone on this trip. David and Annette (bless their souls) offered to take the girls for an entire night while we were in Little Rock. At first, we were unsure. We had NEVER spent a night away from our girls. Seriously. In five and a half years of being a parent, I had only spent maybe four hours at the most away from my children, and that was only on rare occasions. Lee and I were not sure if Mariele was ready for this or not. But we started thinking hard. It seemed like the perfect baby step for us, and we decided to take it! Lee booked us a beautiful suite at the same hotel where we spent our honeymoon night over 12 years ago. Let me say, it was quite fabulous. And the girls did great! I was not one little bit worried about them, and I thoroughly enjoyed my kid-free night. I wish I had taken little iPhone photos of our suite. I wish I had snapped a photo of the room service tray with our midnight snack of french fries on it. I wish I had snapped a photo of our dessert chocolate souffles at the very nice restaurant that we dined in for dinner. But I didn't. All of those memories are tucked away in my mind's eye and my heart. I so want to do this again! Here is the picture I took of the sleepy Sunday morning streets of downtown Little Rock from our hotel room.



Analese adores her Aunt Netty and Uncle David. Both girls do. I hope David and Netty both grasp what a beautiful gift they gave to us that magical night.




This concludes my great blogging catch up. I leave you with a nighttime photo of my Christmas tree in my living room. I hope all of my sweet blog friends have a very merry holiday season.

The girls dressed for church in Little Rock...

Mariele thinks she will drive Uncle David's car.

Baby Aloe and the Fam!

One of the highlights of the trip was getting to love on little baby Aloe, who is the newest and only girl cousin. I can't believe how mature Mariele looks sitting next to baby Aloe. Mariele is supposed to be the baby! What happened?





We took a family group picture, of course with Lee and all of his siblings, their spouses and offspring.

Sometimes We Get Overtired from Having Too Much Fun!

The girls played HARD and were not willing to stop and rest until meltdowns occurred, and then it was still a struggle. They did not want to miss a thing.

The Excitement of Worms!

I am so behind in blogging that I am going to have to catch up with little chapters, so here is the first little chapter of our trip to Arkansas: The Excitement of Worms!

We stayed with Uncle David and Aunt Netty. Uncle David has a worm composter in his backyard. He feeds the worms scraps from the scrap bucket, as well as paper shreds from the paper shredder. I learned something new. Worms eat paper. Who knew? The girls were SO excited to go and feed the worms. It was dark when we had arrived the night before, so David promised them that when it became light outside, they could go and feed the worms. Guess who woke up at first light trying to drag her sleepy and confused baby sister out of bed to feed the worms? We had to convince her to go back to bed for a while, and she did. The anticipation was very great! Mariele even wanted to feed the worms the good grapes that we were all munching on. She was walking off with the big bowl of grapes, and we asked her where she was going with those grapes. Her response: "Me going to feed gwapes to worms." We saved the grapes, and finally made it outside to the worms.





They even got to hold the worms. Uncle David really is the most awesome Uncle in the world, by the way. Look at the pure and happy bliss on Analese's face as she is holding a worm.

Morning with my Little Sweetie...

Since Analese has been having so many Daddy clingy issues, Lee decided to take her to her Adventurers meeting this morning. Mariele and I stayed home and went for a walk. We stopped by the playground on our way home. It was about 83 degrees and 92% humidity. Very sticky out! It was nice spending time with just Mariele. That is a very rare occurrence, but I think we both enjoyed it, as I'm sure Analese enjoyed the bonding time with Daddy this morning. Mariele asked for pigtails this morning, since Analese was wearing them today also. I took some photos that reminded me of some photos of Analese. Here are the pictures of Mariele today. She is 34 months old. Notice how SHORT her hair is still.




Contrast with these photos of Analese taken when she was 32 months old. She had a bit more hair, and may have been a little taller, even though she is a couple of months younger in the pictures.

Almost to Thanksgiving...and other randomness

I know I have fallen out of the regular blogging habit. Hopefully it is a temporary, end of the year busyness thing. Time will tell. Life is busy, but we are chugging along each day, becoming more and more efficient with the schoolwork and extracurriculars. Analese and Mariele are both going through a phase (led by Analese, I think) of not wanting to sleep in their room. There were middle of the night tears, and grumpy mommy and daddy. I finally told them, woe to whomever wakes me up in the middle of the night. Their solution is to come into our bedroom quietly, without waking us up. I heard them scheming last night. Analese was saying, "Now, Mariele, we have to go and sleep on the schoolroom couch. We have to be very quiet and not wake up mommy." The schoolroom is a converted sitting area that is part of of our master bedroom suite. The schoolroom couch is the boundary between master bedroom and schoolroom. To their credit, they did not wake us up. Mariele climbed in bed with us at some point in the middle of the night, but Analese slept on the schoolroom couch. I don't know how long this phase will last. It's always something.

This morning, we were experiencing major Daddy clinginess. This did not bode well when Daddy left early to go set up sound equipment at church. Analese mourned the whole time I was getting her ready about not being able to go with Daddy. They looked adorable too, in their cute outfits and boots. I wanted a picture, and I begged Analese to give me a three second long smile, and promised her that she could sulk and frown the rest of the day. This is the best I got, although Mariele was perfectly willing to cheese it up.



Yay for Thanksgiving coming up! Yay especially for next Saturday night when the kids are having a sleepover with Uncle David and Aunt Netty so we can enjoy our first ever kid-free night at a hotel EVER since having kids.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

If you can't beat em'...

Feed 'em. At least, that is the attitude we are taking about the squirrels in our yard. Besides, it gives us some great breakfast entertainment to watch the squirrels having their breakfast. We have a great view of the show from our breakfast nook window.




Our cat, Tabatha, is a lazy hunter. There is no hunger as the motivating factor. She is resting in the playset, completely oblivious to all of the squirrels scurrying around her.

Indoor Campout Sleepover...

Yes, I know I am the queen of the blog slackers lately. Here is a cute photo that I could not help but share. Analese has really been anticipating her "indoor campout" sleepover, complete with s'mores. They are having a blast tonight.

Halloween Round 2...

Lee had to work, so I took the kids on a group trick or treat. They made a haul with the candy, and now I'm glad it is over. Now I need to work on making the candy slowly disappear without actually eating it.

Halloween Part 1

Our Halloween festivities began on Saturday evening, when we manned a trick or treat station at a local YMCA. Their costumes from Disney were kind of gross, and I had not yet run them through the hand wash setting on my front loader washer, so I pulled some old costumes out of the dress up drawer for them to wear to the party. It was a lot of fun. This YMCA has all of these tree houses and the trick or treating took place on the boardwalks that connect all of the tree houses. Each treehouse had a game inside. The girls really liked the sweet tooth walk, because they were allowed to keep playing until they won a cupcake. Mariele loved the Y character. I guess the Y is not as scary as Goofy, Pluto or Donald Duck.