Where do I begin?

It's seems like I have a lot to report today and I'm not sure where to begin, so if this post is rambling and not very well organized. That's why. :-)

Let's see, first, we got somewhere between 12-18 inches of snow over the weekend. All Thursday and Friday, I kept hearing people talk about the storm heading our way. But since I never have time to watch the news or our television is programmed to mindless kids shows, I never hear about these things. Everyone was like, "You ready for the snow?" Well, first how does one ready themselves for the snow? I guess some people go to the store and stock up. We didn't really do anything special. In fact, we drove an hour north on Saturday to visit my cousin Cindy and her family who just welcomed a new baby boy, Braeden Carl Roseland! He is a super cutie pie! And it was fun to get to see someone's baby so new, we've always been far away from everyone. I didn't meet their daughter until she was 8 or 9 months old. So it was a real treat to go see them when he was two days old. Congrats Roselands!

We tuned into the Oscar telecast last night along with nearly 40 million other people. I thought Ellen did a nice job and was pretty amsuing. And most of the dresses were nice. I hated Kirsten Dunst's and wasn't real fond of Anne Hathaway or Gwyneth Paltrow's. But many of the rest were quite stunning. Andrew and I did our annual Oscar ballot. Unforutately (for me), he won this year. I think I have pretty much won every other year, so this is quite a blow to my ego. ;-) Interestingly enough, we picked the exact same picks in every category except Costume and Best Picture. He picked correctly in both of those. We enjoyed all the hoopla about An Inconvenient Truth. They interviewed Al Gore on the red carpet and there were several things during the telecast that were about being "green". We were happily surprised when Melissa Etheridge won for Best Song. That was a big upset over the Dreamgirls songs! So anyway, Andrew can now put that he has worked on an Oscar winning movie on his resume! He was like a little kid all night so excited to watch the show.

In other news, the girls are doing fine. Lily is Lily, not much to report with her. She is 17 months old and basically does everything Ella does. We got her off the bottle last week. She was a little upset with us, but seems to have gotten over it now. She's saying alot. She's slightly misproportionate where she's wearing 2-3T shirts but only 18months pants! Long torso, short stubby legs. She's adorable and so sweet. Very animated with scowls, smiles, and silly faces.

Ella is doing great. She loves her once a week playdates with Ari and Jody. She always asks me when we're going to see Ari again. Our trip to the zoo two weeks ago was very fun. They have two indoor wings (the Tropics and the Ocean) and Ella loved all of it. We got to see a dolphin show and both Ella and Lily sat there for the whole 45 minutes completely intrigued and loved every minute of it. Last week, we ventured back to Adventure Peak at Edinborough Park. This week we're having Ari and Jody over for a playdate at our house. Ella's already looking forward to it tomorrow.

We also finally brought Ella to be evaluated by a speech therapist. We've always been concerned about her lack of talking, but it really pushed me when I noticed she was making up her own sign language more than adding verbal words to her vocabulary. The speech therapist told us that Ella has 23 of the 25 characteristics of verbal apraxia. This just means that there's a disconnect in her brain between knowing what she wants to say and getting it to come out of her mouth correctly. She understands everything she hears, she knows how to respond to it, and what it is supposed to sound like, she just doesn't possess the motor planning skills to get her words to come out. So she'll be going to speech therapy twice a week for one-on-one help and she should be talking much better in 6 months to a year. And hopefully completely normally by the time she starts kindergarten. We're very happy that we know what it is and that it is treatable. She'll be so excited and happy when she can actually say things she's trying to say!

So that's about it for today I think. Hope you all have a great week! I will try to get the Super Bowl and other new pictures uploaded this week. :-)

Happy Valentine's Day

Nothing says "Happy Valentine's Day" more than a heart-shaped pepperoni pizza, flowers, and some champagne!

How Many of Me?

A friend of mine had this on her blog and I thought it was interesting so I looked it up. Go to www.howmanyofme.com to see how many other people in the United States have your name.

There are 175,482 people in the US with the first name Holly making it the 340th most popular name in the US. There are 9, 239 people with the last name Isaacson making it the 3,939th most popular last name.

There are five people named Holly Isaacson.

When I put in Holly Engelhart there are only 870 people with the last name Engelhart making it the 30,847th most popular last name. And there is only 1 person named Holly Engelhart in the US. And I'm thinking maybe she doesn't even exist with that name anymore. :-) I always knew I was unique! :-)

There are five other Ella Isaacsons and Lily is the only Lily Isaacson in the United States!

Now, Andrew is a different story. There are 808,415 Andrews in the US. It's the 54th most popular name and there are 25 Andrew Isaacsons!

James is the number one most common first name overall and Mary is ranked 5th overall and is the most common female name.

There you are, some thoroughly fascinating statistics for a Monday morning. Check it out when you have a chance and I'd love you to post in the comments what your name ranks. I'm just weird and these things are interesting to me! :-)

Have a good week!

Project Canopy: Finished

About a year ago I saw "this" at the aquarium at the Mall of America and thought it would be a cool idea to do as canopy over Ella's bed whenever we moved and got our new house. The way that Ella's room was painted when we moved in was perfect for her! It was turquoise and green striped; perfect for an ocean themed room. On my mom's last couple visits we bought fabric and all the supplies and finished the canopy. The first thing I had Andrew do when he got home was hang it because I was so excited to see what it looked like! And if you look at the "inspiration" picture from the aquarium (which I hadn't looked at again until after my mom and I had finished the canopy) we ended up using the same exact fabric they had used! Pure coincidence!

Here it is in all its glory including progress and close-up photos. I'm sure you're all on the edge of your seats with excitement now! ;-)
I have also added a couple pictures to the January album, started a February album and added a few new pictures to our house album. Super Bowl pictures are on hold for the moment because "someone", not mentioning any names, left the camera battery in the hotel in Miami and is waiting for Greg in the NY office to send it back to us. :-)

Fun in the Snow

Well we are still in below zero temps, but it could get up to a whole 6 degrees today. Whoo hoo! It's a heat wave. We had a halfway decent day on Tuesday so the girls played outside while I shoveled the new six inches of snow we received. In October, you got lots of leaf pictures, well now you get lots of snow pictures!

Andrew got home Tuesday evening and we were all happy to have him home again. It's been especially nice for me because he took most of Wednesday off and is working a little less the rest of the week. He keeps telling me everything will be back to normal on Monday. Gee, I sure like this more laid back world. Wish it could stay that way! :-)

The girls and I have befriended a nanny and her charge (Jody and Arianna) at the mall. We met in the play area about three weeks ago and have met there the last couple weeks. Next week we plan to visit the zoo. Apparently there are some fun things to do inside and we can ride the monorail which I think Ella and Lily will really enjoy. Ari is about 6 months younger than Ella and they get along great! And Jody and I have an easy time talking. I seem to get along better with her than any of the moms I've met so far.

Other than that, we're looking forward to having my cousin Cindy, her husband Shawn and their daughter Emilee over for dinner tomorrow night. And we want to give a shout out to Eric, Gina, Hunter and Tanner who welcomed a new daughter/sister on January 24th (three weeks early!), little Mykenna Fisher Isaacson! Welcome to the family!

The Super Bowl Chronicles: Sunday (Part 2)

Sorry for the delay. When I talked to Andrew yesterday morning he was on his way to visit his grandparents in Naples for nice relaxing day. He is finally coming back to the freezing cold this afternoon. Whoo hoo!!

He said he had a great time at the game. They went to a Tailgate party with 11,000 of the 75,000 people who were there, they got hats, food, drinks, etc. He had a raincoat so he managed to stay reasonably dry on top, but his jeans were soaked through by the time they left. They left the game a bit early to avoid the crowds since it was rainy and it appeared the Bears were going to lose anyway.

The graphics they worked so hard on looked amazing in the stadium. He said it was a perfect venue to see them in. And the crowd got appropriately pumped up after watching their Countdown to Kickoff video.

Prince was even more awesome in the stadium than he was on the television. I am very jealous! More than the fact that he got to go to the game! I mean how more perfect can you get than to actually have it raining during "Purple Rain"!

Hmm....not much else to report, I don't think. Oh in case any of you taped it, he was on the same side of the field as the Colts cheerleaders. Nice, huh.

I'll try to get photos posted this weekend! Thanks for tuning in to "Mr. Isaacson goes to the Super Bowl." :-) And have a great week!

The Super Bowl Chronicles: Sunday (Part 1)

I'll just post some pictures for now. I haven't talked to Andrew since the game yesterday. I'll get a full report from him this morning. I was on the phone with him during the opening kickoff when Chicago ran it in for a touchdown. THAT was awesome! Too bad the Bears couldn't keep that momentum up for the rest of the game.

And I have to say Prince was AWESOME! Not sure about the scarf around the hair thing, but he rocks!

I think all the pics are pretty self-explanatory.

The Super Bowl Chronicles: Saturday

I talked with Andrew this morning. They were going to be heading over to the stadium on the buses around 2pm. He was getting pretty psyched up!

Yesterday, he went over to the control room one last time to deliver the final "Countdown to Kickoff" tape that had been Fed Ex-ed to him overnight from California. Nothing like waiting to the last minute!

In the afternoon, he and the guys played a round of golf at International Links. They played a best ball so no particular scores to report. ;-)

In the evening they went to South Beach and partied it up. The city closed off a whole block and Andrew said it was craziness down there. People everywhere, ESPN and NFL Network were broadcasting. There were games people could play. It was chaos! He said it was a lot of fun. But sorry, no pictures!

I'm sure there will be a much more interesting report from today's adventures!

The Super Bowl Chronicles: Friday

Andrew spent most of the day on Friday in the control room (there's one pic below of their stuff on the conrtol room screen) at the stadium working with the staff to double-check all the animations and answer any questions they might have about it. He met with staff from CBS Sports and toured the stadium, including the stage where the commentators will be sitting on Sunday. He sat in the chairs!! He's sitting with two of the CBS guys in the photo below.

In the evening he attended the NFL Commissioner's Party at a place called Parrot Jungle. The party was, of course, a beach/jungle theme. They had mojitos, sushi, and an open bar as well as other fun things, including real live parrots and monkeys you could handle! He said it was very nice and fun, but he also equated it a very expensive but boring wedding. He said it would have been more fun if us wives could have joined the fellas because three married guys hanging out at a party together wasn't the most rockin' time. Not that he didn't appreciate the opportunity to be there. I thought that was very sweet of him to say!

Thus concludes Friday's update. Enjoy the pics and see you tomorrow for Saturday's update!

The Super Bowl Chronicles: What to look for

Most of what we show here at the Isaacson blog will be related to Chicago because well most of the people we know will be rooting for Da Bears or don't care.

The first image is the Chicago Super Bowl logo.

The second is a headshot that Hornet/Famous created.

And the last image shows the skinny LED boards in the stadium in Miami. These you might actually be able to see on television.

I also wanted to inform the world as we know it, that Andrew has FRONT ROW tickets! Yes, you read that right, FRONT ROW tickets(!) near the five yard line. So its very possible you may be able to catch a glimpse of him on national television along with the other 110 million viewers world-wide. He plans on wearing a lime-green short sleeve golf shirt. So get your TIVOs and DVRs ready! And let ME know if you spot him!

Happy Super Bowl watching!

Little bit of this, a little bit of that

Well we are at T-minus 3 days until Andrew is home again. He has spent the last two and half weeks in California working on the NHL All-star game and the Super Bowl. Thursday he flew to Miami and got settled in. He has asked me to update the blog each day with his activities so for the next couple days please look for: The Super Bowl Chronicles. :-)

The girls and I are hanging in there. We sort of hit the wall today where we've done all our regular activities a couple times now and didn't have much else that I wanted to venture to do on my own with them. So we went to the Mall of America (again.). But this time we did something new! First, we were one of ten people in the state of Minnesota who ventured out in this freaking cold weather. Yes, the car thermometer said -11 as I was driving there. UGH! But thankfully since the other 9 people didn't appear to be going to the Mall, we got Rockstar parking! Then ran down the "enclosed" but still unheated and freezing walkway into Macy's. Both Ella and Lily thought this was great fun. We actually made it to the Rainforest Cafe just 10 minutes before 11am and made a reservation for 11am then walked around the gift shop. We were promptly seated near a fish tank (yes! Automatic entertainment for the girls!) and a waterfall. The girls were a little unsure of what was going on until their food arrived. They spotted a butterfly, monkey, dolphins, snake and alligator. And I ate my food in relative peace. It was a very nice meal. Ella also was excited to get a blue icee in an obnoxious glass that flashes a colored light. I showed her how she could turn it on and off and thankfully, she chose to have it off quite a bit of the time.

We of course then visited the Aquarium, which turns out was the destination of the nine other people out that day. We played in the sand, popped bubbles an entertainer was blowing, played in the sting ray pool, then came home. All in all, a nice outing for Saturday.

We had a nice week last weekend with Nana Mary visiting. We went to Adventure Peak at Edinborough Park and IKEA as a couple of our major outings. My mom and I spent a majority of any free time we had (aka naptime) working on a canopy for Ella's room. We/she finished it but I am waiting for Andrew to get home to hang it. I'll post a picture once we have it up. I think its going to be really fun! And thank you Mom for all your cooking and help while you were here! I would be going nuts right now, I think, without that little reprieve. I have pretty much no pictures from her trip because Andrew has our good camera with him. Sorry!

Okay enough about us. And now the first installment of The Super Bowl Chronicles.....