Rooms for Two

So, when we moved in, we loved how almost all of our house was painted with the exception of the overly wine-themed but tolerable kitchen, and the *gasp* wallpaper in Lily's room. Ella's room is painted with these really cools stripes in bright, fun colors. Lily's room was khaki wallpaper. Now, I'm an only child so I can only speculate, but I believe at some point Lily might complain if her room was left so dull compared to Ella's. I've also heard from various people with siblings that we might want to spruce up Lily's room at some point because Ella's room was so cool. SO, I have been wanting to remove the wallpaper and paint in there for pretty much a year now. Well the opportunity came on the 26th.


A before shot of the wallpaper

I half-joking said to Andrew now might be a good time to do it because we had my mom and Dave to watch the kids while we worked. Well, he thought about it and actually said he thought it was a good idea. I was kind of surprised but we jumped right in. We visited Home Depot, bought a chair rail, paint and other supplies. And rented a wallpaper steamer. As with all these types of projects, things take longer than expected or end up being harder than first thought. So what Andrew estimated being a three day project has turned into a 5 or 6 day project. But that's still a pretty quick turn around.


Patched and Primed, ready to go!

In the meantime, Ella has requested on multiple occasions that we turn her room into a Tinkerbell room. At first I ignored this because she's only had her fish-themed room a year. But then again, I chose that for her. And since again, I'm new to the sibiling thing, we decided to just spruce her room up a bit, since Lily was getting a new room. So we got Tinkerbell bedding (a great deal on a bed-in-a-bag from Costco), some decals for the walls, and we're going to put up crown molding painted in a Tinkerbell purple. We also bought her a new bed, trundle and nightstand yesterday and rearranged her room. Lily will be getting Ella's old bed (or I should say MY old bed--from about eighth grade!) as we retire the crib to the basement. So really in the course of 6 days, we have redone 2 rooms. Although, the crown molding in Ella's room will probably wait until next weekend when Bubba and Grand Pat come for a visit. :-)


Starting to paint and finishing up the difficult chair rail

Lily's room turned out fantastic with a lavendar on the top of the walls and a bright dark pink (called Strawberry Freeze) on the bottom of the walls with a white chair rail in-between. It will sort of be a Disney Princess room, but not overkill on the Princesses. So hopefully she'll think its as cool as Ella's room. Oh, and as my young cousin (a fifth grader) informed his grandfather at Christmas, "We don't say cool anymore, we say sweet now." Sorry to inform young Mike, but that is not a new phrase. As I recall in my old age, I said that as a kid in middle school. What goes around, comes around I guess. I digress...anyway, hopefully both Ella and Lily will think their rooms are "sweet" and it will last them for awhile. :-)

And a HUGE thank you to my mom and Dave for all their work watching the kids and making meals for us the last few days. Especially when they didn't really sign up for all that when they decided to spend the holidays with us. :-)

And Happy New Year's to everyone!
(Photos coming very soon, I promise!)

The Christmas Letdown

I don't mean "letdown" as in disappointing or unexciting. I mean letdown as in, time to recuperate, relax, regroup. We spent all month getting geared up for Christmas. It was especially fun this year with Ella so into it and having a full understanding of the holiday (we even began to tell her The Christmas Story and that Christmas was celebrating Jesus' birthday--not just about presents). However, after 5 or 6 days straight of celebrating, family get togethers, and present opening. We were exhausted! We have spent the last five days recuperating and not even leaving the house much. :-)


Celebrating with the Comandes

We started the festivities by flying to Racine Dec. 20th. We flew not wanting to risk a minimium 6 1/2 hour drive in bad weather. We enjoyed visiting with Andrew's parents and brother and sister-in-law as well as the Comandes and a few of the Isaacsons. About halfway through gift opening, Lily was so overwhelmed she had to leave the room and relax a bit. This was somewhat of a theme throughout the rest of our Christmas festivities. She still had two Santa gifts to open on the 26th because she just couldn't do it on the morning of the 25th. We really enjoyed our visit to Wisconsin. I especially enjoyed my annual trip to the salon for pedicures with my sister-in-law Jenelle and our cousin-in-law Gina. We were trying to figure out how long we've been doing it, it's either 3 or 4 years now. But we always have a good time! Especially with coffee and chocolate in the mix.


Eating and getting ready to open gifts with some of the Isaacsons.

We flew back to MN on the 24th after being delayed for nearly 2 hours at the Milwaukee airport. Upon arrival, we went to B-pa and Gramma Clare's house for a Christmas celebration. Then came home and promptly put the girls to bed. It was nice to have Santa's arrival as an excuse. We even checked out Santa's progress and impending arrival on an internet Santa tracker! Poor Lily though. I've already mentioned how she is scared of Santa. Well, we kept telling her she had to go to bed so Santa could come. Well, she got all upset and didn't want to go to bed. We finally figured out, she thought Santa was going to come in her room and see her. We assured her that Santa just comes, eats his cookies, and then leaves presents in the family room. After that, she was fine and excited. :-)

Leaving cookies for Santa before bed and the gifts that Santa left!

Christmas morning the girls actually slept later than we thought they would and when Ella got up, she didn't even notice the two giant sleds or mini-trampoline in the corner of the family room. Talk about a letdown for those of us who helped Santa get ready and stayed up putting said trampoline together! Once she did notice though, she was pretty excited about everything.


Don't worry Lily's Christmas is almost over. :-)

We spent the late morning (we were late again, but I beat my dad! He's notorious for being late on Christmas, so as long as I beat him, I was satisfied) and early afternoon at Grandma Mazie's to hang out with the Engelhart family. It was loud, boisterous and fun as always! After that, we headed over to my uncle Joe's to visit with my mom's side of the family. We enjoyed a nice relaxing time there as well as another delicious meal.


Ella with Santa at the Engelharts and everyone at Zawislak family Christmas.

Whew! Christmas was over. We were all set to enjoy the rest of the week with my mom and Dave visiting. Until I got the bright idea on the 26th that maybe we should start a home improvement project. Since my mom and Dave were here and could watch the kids for us. See next post for more on this project and pictures will soon be uploaded from Christmas and our new project. :-)

Christmas is a long time!

We're getting close now! Just a little over a week away! The trees are trimmed, the presents bought, plans made. Ella sighed and said to me yesterday, "Christmas is a long time." I'm pretty sure she meant, its a long time until Christmas finally gets here. :-) I told her she didn't have to wait long now. Just a few more days. We'll be visiting Bubba's house toward the end of the week and the present opening extravaganza will begin on Friday and not let up until the 26th. I think the kids are going to be very overwhelmed, overstimulated and overtired by the end of the holidays. But they'll have a lot of fun in the process.

We had a nice weekend. Andrew was in California for Friday and Saturday. He went to his company holiday party and then visited the 49ers for their game Saturday night. The girls and I busied ourselves by visiting with B-pa and Gramma Clare. Ella helped me wrap some presents in the morning. She picked out all the bows. :-) And we had Kelly, Hope and Isabelle over to make Spritz cookie press cookies. Although the girls had fun decorating the cookies with various sugars, I learned I am not adept at using a cookie press. I assured Kelly I make a mean chocolate chip cookie. We'll have to make those next time. It also probably didn't help that I was distracted by talking and having a good time myself. I kept forgetting to set the timer and check on the cookies. I think we'll be making a new batch of cookies to give away to people. :-)

We've started a new activity around here. It seems a lot of our weekends I tend to recuperate from the week and do laundry and random things around the house, while Andrew watches the girls. And Andrew tends to be a bit fixated with football during the day on Sunday (is the season over yet?!). We've decided to do "Family Movie Night" on Sunday evenings. We've viewed Jingle All the Way (we discovered this one was probably not the best choice for 2-4 year olds, more like 9 year olds), Daddy Day Care, and last night we had a special treat. We went to the movie theater to see Alvin and the Chipmunks! It was a really good family movie for little kids. Ella LOVED it! She told us she wants to watch it at home. I told her she'd have to wait a bit for that. She said it was silly how the Chipmunks made such a mess of the house and she thought it was funny when Simon was flying around the fan because his balloon got caught. Even Lily was interested in a good part of the movie too. She did much better than she did with Shrek 3. We would love to hear any suggestions you might have for good (preferably non-animated) family movies for future movie nights!

As we get closer to the holidays, we hope you all are finding the time to get everything done, take a deep breath and relax a bit. Enjoy the holidays and festivities, and time with friends and family! Merry Christmas from the Isaacsons!

And another year goes by...

Andrew celebrated his 31st birthday on Tuesday this week. Actually, we really celebrated it on Sunday. That way he could have a full day of relaxation, football, and fun. He opened his gifts Sunday morning. Besides a new jacket and shirt, he received Guitar Hero III (with a wireless controller!). He was pretty excited to receive it and I think we will ALL have fun with it. :-)

Cindy, Shawn and the kids came over in the afternoon to watch the Viking game. Ella, Emilee and I made chocolate chip cookies with Cindy supervising. Andrew and Shawn watched football, side-by-side on the couch, with their laptops open, refreshing the stat tracker every 30 seconds. My dad and Clare joined us for make-your-own-pizzas later on. And we all had a fun evening hanging out.



I think all in all Andrew had a nice birthday! Soon I'll be adding a picture of Andrew and my dad with their chocolate chip cookies complete with birthday candle in it. My dad's birthday was Dec. 1st and we didn't get a chance to celebrate because we were having a blizzard that day. So we added him to the celebration also!

Andrew has been working on a lot of NFL stuff this fall. Recently, he was talking to the Buffalo Bills about Marshawn Lynch. Apparently, when Marshawn gets the ball he goes into a state of mind which he coined "beast mode." It means that at least two or three defenders need to tackle him before he is brought down. Andrew sold them on this idea to do an animation of Marshawn in beast mode with the style of a comic book character. Apparently, it turned out awesome! Here's a link to what fans were saying about the spot after seeing it at the game. And here's what the video looked like:

He's Makin' a List, and checkin' it twice

Last Wednesday, I spontaneously decided we were going to spend the latter part of the morning and early afternoon at Mall of America. My mom sent the girls cute Christmas outfits and Ella had been eyeing them. I figured I might as well give the girls a reason to try them on and wear them. They were so excited they even posed for a bunch of pictures for me beforehand. "To get ready for Santa".



We headed out and there was absolutely no line at the time and we made it right before Santa took his lunch break. Ella was very excited to talk to him; Lily cowered the whole time. But I did convince Lily to get on the rocking horse and she took a couple pictures, but only if I was right next to her. She would have nothing of it when I tried to back out a couple inches so the camera lady could crop me out.



After that, we visited the bookstore, the aquarium and the Lego store. Ella played with the Legos for nearly an hour(!) while Lily and I raced Lego cars and browsed the store. They have some REALLY cool Lego sets out there. I sure hope the girls continue to like them when they get older so I can have an excuse to buy a couple of the more unique sets. :-)

Other than that, we've actually been relaxing a bit around here. Sort of nice before the holidays get underway. We received about 8 inches of snow on Saturday and at least that much again today. It was really coming down out there today! And we still don't have any gas for the snowblower yet. :-( Ella loves playing in the snow this year. She is always asking to go play out there. Lily, again, she's not so sure what she thinks of it all. Once she is bundled up and out there, and you help her walk to where she wants to go, and plop her down, then she's good to go for a few minutes. She thinks she can't walk in her boots and snowpants. :-)


There's some new photos up in the November and December photo albums!

Holiday Book Drive

(I posted this on my book blog, but thought some people who read our regular blog might be interested too.)

Stepping back on my soapbox....ahem...is this thing on? *tap* *tap* :-)

Barnes and Noble is doing their annual book drive again this year. If you have the opportunity and inclination, please visit your local store and buy a book for a child. This program usually teams up with a women's shelter or other organizations who work with children who are in a situation where their parents may not have extra money to buy them books. The Barnes and Noble near us is doing a great thing this year where you can buy a children's book or an adult book (or both); the organization they are giving all the books to will let the children pick a book for their mom and the mom gets to pick a book for their child. I think that's pretty cool!

I'll be taking the girls again this holiday to pick out a book for another child their age and explain to them that some mommys and daddys aren't as fortunate to be able to buy their children books. This way we can help those kids have some of the books we love so much!

Christmas is on its way!!!

We started decorating the front of our house a few weeks ago. I got some grief from our California friends about how early we were putting up our lights. But you know it does get cold here! ;-) We got almost all of them up before it turned really cold the last week and half. Here are some pictures for you:



Ella and I could hardly wait for Thanksgiving to be over before putting our Christmas trees up. That's right, you read that correctly, we have treeS, plural. Three to be exact! We have our tree from past years in the front window with generic, bought as a set, ornaments from Target. Then we have our deal of the century tree in the family room with our special ornaments that all relate to us somehow or someplace we've visited. The third tree is a little Princess tree we got on clearance after last Christmas. The girls have had a ton of fun decorating and redecorating that tree. They helped put the non-breakable ornaments on the other trees. It was very cute, they were all clustered along the bottom. But of course, anal person that I am, I rearranged them later. :-)



We went to Eden Prairie Center the Friday before Thanksgiving to see the arrival of Santa. We waited outside with a crowd of other parents and children and watched Santa arrive in a red wagon pulled by two real reindeer. All the kids were given jingle bells to shake while he rode by. We didn't wait in line to see him that day, but plan to go one day soon. We did pet the reindeer before we left though. Ella is VERY into Santa this year. While we were watching him arrive, she told me, "I want to see him fly, Mom." I told her that Santa only flew on Christmas Eve when he had to deliver all his presents. She also informed me that she was going to ask Santa for an Ariel Glitter Barbie doll and the Curious George Christmas book. I told her those were both very good things to ask Santa for (and easily findable for those little elves helping Santa make his purchases. ;-). When you ask Lily what she wants from Santa, she just says she's scared. She doesn't want to have anything to do with Santa, but informs us that it is okay for Ella to see Santa. Lily also calls Santa by the name of Ho Ho Ho.




So now that the house is all decked out, we're looking forward to more holiday fun the rest of the month!

It's Arts & Crafts Time!

Ella LOVES arts and crafts and Lily is getting to the point where she likes them more and more. Ella's preschool sent home a fun family activity that we tried two weekends ago. We found a bunch of broken crayons around the house, sorted them by color and put them into a muffin tin. We used my silicone muffin cups even though it said just put them in the muffin tin. I wasn't sure how they would come out of the tin so we used the muffin cups. Needless to say, those will be our crayon muffin cups from now on (which I sort of figured would happen). But we had a ton of fun sorting the crayons, watching them melt in the oven and then we let them cool overnight in the fridge. In the morning the girls were very excited to see the finished product and to try them out.






The girls and I also attended a Thanksgiving craft party on the Wednesday before Turkey Day. It was at a place called Kidcreate Studio. We had attended a birthday party there before and enjoyed it so I thought this would be a fun Thanksgiving activity. It is a bit overpriced for what you get, but the girls did have a fun time and I now have a great idea for a craft to do for one of their birthdays next year.

For creating fun, easy, and creative crowns:
Place a piece of clear packing tape of the table sticky side up. Be sure it is long enough to go around your child's head when finished. Have the child place feathers, sequins, leaves, anything that is reasonably flat and goes with whatever theme you are aiming for. Confetti would work great too. Once finished decorating, place an additional piece of tape over the first, lining up the sticky sides together. Press the two pieces together to seal the masterpiece. Measure it around your child's head, tape the two ends together, and Voila! You have an instant crown!



We had a very nice Thanksgiving at our house with my mom and Dave, Tom and Pat, my Grandma Betty and Aunt Carol, besides the four of us. It was a nice number to have and the food turned out very tasty with almost everyone contributing something. Ella even OFFERED to help wash some of the dishes afterwards! She also helped me clean the house before our visitors came. We're just calling her Cinderella now. :-) We are very thankful for all our family and friends, our beautiful house and MN surroundings, and Andrew's successful job. We had no idea what to expect for this year of adjustment to our new life in Minnesota and we are very thankful that life has surpassed any and all of our expectations!



Hope you all had a great Turkey Day!

Ella's School Report

Here is Ella's school picture. Honestly, I think its pretty good considering she had to sit there posed, with big bright lights and without Mom or Dad there. I had prepped her all morning that she would have to sit and smile pretty like all the other kids. So here's what we got. She looks a little tired I think, but we were at a birthday party that morning. :-) At least she's smiling right?

Andrew and I went to her parent/teacher conference this morning. Overall, she is doing pretty well. This conference is mostly to talk about how she is developing socially and there is another conference in March to talk more about how she's developing academically. There are some things she needs to work on: she's easily distracted (hmm.....Mom, does this ring a bell? Didn't every single one of my report cards say something about that?) :-), she has some trouble remembering directions if they are given far ahead of when the activity happens, and she has a bit of a hard time sitting still. But she has some strengths too! She is very polite and helps her friends clean up after she's done cleaning up her own toys. She is pretty good at sharing with her other friends, and her speech doesn't seem to be an issue at all in the classroom with the other kids. She always tries whatever it is they are doing, and she loves music time. Overall, the teachers said she is always happy and always has a smile on her face which is great to hear!

They asked her a few questions so they could give us the answers. When asked, "What is your favorite thing about school?" Her response was, "We get to make a lot of art." (I saw that one coming!). When asked what her favorite area of the classroom was, she said, "The book area." And when asked what she wanted to be, she said, "A bookstore owner." How great is that!! The teachers said that was one none of the other kids said. And I swear I did not prep her to say that. She definitely takes after me there!

We're so happy to hear she is doing so well and adjusting to school and loving it!

Down to Iowa and Back

The girls and I spent last week visiting Nana and Papi in Cedar Rapids. I was a little nervous about making the four hour drive in the car by myself with the kids. They have been known to be awful on our trips to Wisconsin so I had very low expectations about how well the trip would go. But I learned four hours is much much easier for them than 6.5 hours. I was armed with a couple new movies they had never seen. They ate lunch, watched a movie and promptly slept for a couple hours. Then started watching a new movie and we were there! It was really great! Same thing on the way home.

We had a lot of fun at my mom and Dave's. We spent quite a bit of Sunday outdoors playing in the fall leaves and on the neighbor's swing set. Ella is so funny. I told her in the morning that we were going to take a few pictures outside after Lily's nap. She was all cranky about it at that point. Then when it came time to take the pictures, she was ready. And continued to be ready for a while afterwards. :-) We went next door to play and she kept posing herself and saying, "Picture Mommy!". I actually got some very cute ones. If only she was like that all the time!

We did a lot of shopping while we were there. We played at the mall play area in Cedar Rapids on Monday. We drove a little ways and visited the Coral Ridge Mall on Tuesday where we went to the Barnes and Noble story time and then the Iowa Children's Museum. We went to the museum last year and Ella had a great time, I figured Lily would really be into it this year too. We went to the grocery store, a pizza parlor, the arts and crafts room, a motion room, a hospital, a farm and a visit to Indonesia. The kids really had a great time in each area. After several hours of play, I figured it was time to go home. We were walking out of the mall and Ella said she wanted to play in the play area. Both of them played for another hour! It was 3pm by the time we left! Lily usually naps at 12:30. I can't believe she made it that long without getting cranky.

Wednesday we visited the Cedar Rapids Public Library for a story time about Owls. It included books, songs, and finger games. Ella had a great time! Lily and I walked around and looked at books for most of it. I had an enjoyable kid-free dinner with my friend Molly on Wednesday night and got caught up with her. Thursday and Friday we did a bit of shopping and just played around the house. We returned home excited to see Andrew Friday evening.

All in all, it was a really fun trip. Thanks Mom and Dave! And hope you guys are getting your house back in order. :-)

PS. New photos up in the Oct. & Nov. photo albums.

Catching up...again

I can't seem to keep up with "Keeping up with the Isaacsons". :-) A lot of random things to report on. First, October 28th we went to the Vikings/Eagles football game at the Metrodome. Andrew's company created a new opening video and several new graphics for the team this year. He has a contact on the inside who got us field passes and awesome seats in the Legends Club. And since they've been season ticket holders for about ten years, we thought we would take along my cousins Cindy and Shawn. We all had a fantastic time despite the fact that the Vikings are hopeless this year. Shawn was like a little kid in a candy store down on the field before the game. He kept getting chased by security guards during the warm-up for stopping in the end zone to take pictures (you're supposed to keep moving). We all indulged in free catered food and drinks too. Definitely the way to spend a few hours watching a losing team. We also got to meet some of the cheerleaders and Ragnar the Viking mascot guy. There will be more pictures in the October album soon!

The next weekend Andrew went to Buffalo and met up with Benjamin for the Bills/Bengals game. They had a great time hanging out in the control room for the game. I think the most exciting part for Andrew was that he had 9 football games on a screen so he could keep track of his fantasy football team. ;-) You can see photos from their outing at Ben's website here.We had a really nice weekend at home this weekend. Ella has started swim classes through the Parks & Rec. I signed her up for Saturday mornings so Andrew can take her. It's a fun Daddy/Daughter thing for them to do. They go get breakfast first and then head over to the pool. Ella really seems to be enjoying it. So far the instructors have just been getting the kids used to the water.

We took the kids to see Bee Movie Saturday. It was pretty entertaining for all of us. Unfortunately, Lily is still a bit young to want to sit and watch the whole movie so she and Andrew ventured to the lobby a couple times. I liked all the pop culture references and it was pretty funny for adults as well as kids. Then we came home and rearranged the living room and started (finally!) to hang some stuff up on the wall in there. It's really starting to look finished in there now.

On Sunday, we headed over to Grandma Betty's house to visit with her, my Aunt Jean and Aunt Carol and Mark. Carol and Mark made a really delicious lasagna (thanks again!) and we watched the first half of the Viking/Packer game. We tried to take a picture of the four of us in front of our house in honor of the football game. The girls are not thrilled in the picture, I think its just because they are sad that the Packers are going to kick the Vikings butt. Whenever I look at it, that old Sesame Street song "Which one of these is not like the other?" comes to mind. ;-) I had fun giving Andrew crap for his shirt on the way to Grandma's house. I told him I had to get it all out before the game because we all knew the Packers would wallop the Vikings.

After getting home from Grandma's we set out to start putting up our Christmas lights. We got about 2/3rds of the way done. Good thing, I think that was our last nice warm day for a bit. As soon as we finish, we'll post a picture. I refuse to turn them on before Thanksgiving though. It really bugs me how it seems that Thanksgiving doesn't even exist anymore. The day after Halloween (if not before), all the Halloween/Harvest stuff is gone from the stores and holiday decorations are already up. Poor Ella thinks its Christmas already. I keep reminding her we have to celebrate Thanksgiving first, then Christmas. She can't help but be confused when Santa has already made his mall debut!!! What the heck?! Remember the time when you watched the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade and the first sign of Christmas was Santa at the very end? Jeez.