Happy Birthday Daddy!

Andrew turned 33 on Friday, December 11th. We started the morning off with cinnamon rolls for breakfast. And since I hadn't planned a special dessert later, we put a candle in Andrew's cinnamon roll.

Andrew had a good day at work and was surprised by the whole staff at the Famous Group singing him Happy Birthday over the phone. :-)

He took the afternoon off around 3:30pm so we could head downtown to go to the Holidazzle parade. The girls were SOOOO excited for the parade. But before we could head over to the parade, Andrew opened his gifts.



The girls like to get a little something for Daddy that they pick out on their own. Lily picked out a Star Wars play-doh set "for daddy". She was very excited by this and thought Daddy would love it! You can even make play-doh light sabers.

Ella picked out a Star Wars toy ship. (Hee hee...the nice thing about these gifts is that Baby will be able to play with them too when he gets older!). ;-)

We ended up getting downtown quite a bit early for the parade and decided to check out our spot in the skyway. Well, at 4:45pm there was only one decent spot left! So we grabbed it. I waited there while Andrew and the girls ran to get food. Then they sat and had a carpet picnic while I went to get food. We still had to wait until 6:30 for the parade to start, but they found ways to entertain themselves. I also always have coloring stuff in my purse in case I need to entertain the girls on a moment's notice.











You'd have to ask him yourself, but I think all in all, Andrew had a pretty nice day. :-) The girls and I sure had fun helping him celebrate.

Mall of America Christmas Outing

December 5th, we braved the crowds at the Mall of America. My kids have been scared of sitting on Santa's lap since 2007. Ella's never had a bad experience so I'm not sure why she was freaked out. Lily has never wanted to go near Santa so that was nothing new. They both told me again this year that they didn't want to visit him again. I don't push, I just ask once or twice and then leave it alone until the next year.

Well, we have this photo frame my mom gave me several years ago. It has side by side photos, one of me on Santa's lap and one of Andrew on Santa's lap. We're both six in the photos. Ella was looking at it with Nana at Thanksgiving and Nana told her that Mommy and Daddy were both six in the photo. And then asked Ella if she was going to visit Santa this year. At the time, Ella told her no. But a day later Ella came up to me and told me she had thought it over and decided she did want to see Santa. So I jumped on that bandwagon and told her we would go to the MOA to see Santa (the Santas there are usually more "authentic" looking). She was so excited and practiced what she was going to tell him she wanted for Christmas. Lily still didn't want to go near Santa. But we convinced/bribed her to get in a family photo with Santa if she could sit on Santa's lap. She was still pretty freaked out (as evidenced in the photo) but there we all are and I now have a new Santa photo for our frame to cover the one from 2007. Lily even told Santa what she wanted for Christmas. So we'll see what next brings with Santa.

While we were at the Mall, we decided to make an experience of it. Andrew took the girls to the Aquarium while I ran into the American Girl Store to buy the gifts for the girls...they both wanted American Girl "stuff". So as fast as I could, I waded through the crowd in there, bought the stuff, and headed to the parking garage to put the stuff in the trunk of the car.

There was a new five-story climbing structure in the Nickelodeon park and Ella REALLY wanted to do it. Of course, even if I wasn't pregnant, I would NEVER in a million years do this. But Andrew braved it with her.

There they are! They have a harness on them, attached to a rope hanging from above them that moves along with them.


They are ALL the WAY at the TOP on the left in the first photo. And there they are up close. :-) Andrew was REALLY freaked out up there and Ella had absolutely NO fear. NONE! She is sooo brave. And she was the littlest person up there. All the other people on the structure were commenting on how amazed they were by her.


Ella with Spongebob and the girls in their elf hats from Santa in front of the Pillow Pet kiosk. The girls really like these, but unfortunately, they didn't have the specific animals they wanted. :-) They had fun seeing them in person. They have been mesmerizing by the Pillow Pet commercial they've been seeing for a couple months now on television.

I had an alternative reason for wanting to go to the Mall that particular day too. The Santa thing just fit right now. The author and illustrator of the Fancy Nancy books was there signing books. I waited in line to get them to sign the girls' Fancy Nancy book. It was really cute to see the little girls all dressed up "fancy" and how excited they were to meet the author. My girls decided they didn't want to wait in the line and would rather ride more rides.

On the left is Robyn Glasser, the illustrator and the right is Jane O'Connor the author.

All in all, we had a really great time at the Mall even though it was December and pretty crazy busy. :-)

2009 Holiday Letter

Our annual holiday newsletter is now available (thanks to my brother-in-law Ben for his technical expertise). Many of you will be receiving the link for it in your Christmas cards, which I just mailed out yesterday, but thought I would post a link on here for easy access:

Our Holiday Letter

Also, I heard this song on the radio the other day when I was in the car and I made a mental note to look it up. Then, I was getting caught up on my Google Reader this morning and someone had already posted a link to it. So here's some holiday fun for you:



Oh wait! Just found this one...this is actually the one I heard on the radio. I LOVED the part of the song where they were singing a Christmas version of Africa by Toto (anyone out there remember that song?!)

Late fall or perhaps winter randomness...

Not sure if I should title this post Fall Randomness or Winter Randomness...I guess technically it's still fall until December 21st when it's the first day of winter. But it sure is starting to feel like winter around here. Temps in the in the teens or colder and plenty of snow on the ground already.

We started finishing our basement the first week of November. We're about halfway through the process at this point. Had the electrical, plumbing and HVAC inspectors out and most everything checked out fine. So I think the next step is to put up the drywall. Below are a few photos of the framing. Not sure the photos will make much sense, but here they are:

The above photo is standing to the right of the basement stairs looking into what will be the bathroom.

This is standing in the same spot as the first photo but turned to look the other way. So standing in what will be the tv room looking into what will be the guestroom (with two closets, one on each side of the doorway).

This is looking back into the tv room standing in the guest room.

This is standing in Andrew's office looking toward the wall that will separate it from the guest room. Exciting stuff right? ;-)

Since I first started this post, the drywall has started to go up. We'll put up a few photos of that very soon. It's really taking shape down there now and going to be great when it's finished.

One day after school, I was getting Lily's lunch ready for her and she was playing with one of our laundry baskets. I turned around and found her like this:

How cute is she?!!!

Above is a rare moment where the girls are actually getting along and cuddling. Usually when Ella comes home from school, the girls are happy to see each other for about a half hour and then they start to annoy each other. It's a pretty standard pattern of behavior around here during the week.


B-Pa's birthday is December 1st. We celebrated with dinner at their house on December 5th. The girls helped B-Pa blow out his candles and open his presents. :-)

The girls spend the night at my dad and Clare's about once every month or two. They asked Gramma Clare to take this photo of them with Gracie the cat. They had covered Gracie up with Lily's blanket. The girls said they wanted their picture taken so that "Mommy could put it on the blog." Okay, seriously? I had no idea that the girls really understood what the blog was. Or paid attention to it when I am writing on it. Too funny. So this photo is for the girls.

The girls and I did a lot of baking a week or so ago to make goodies to give out to teachers, friends and neighbors. Here they are just before we got started.

Thanksgiving 2009

We had a nice Thanksgiving this year. My mom and Dave made their usual trip up to our house. We also had my Grandma Betty and Aunt Carol for dinner. Everything turned out wonderfully and we had a delightful meal. My dad and Clare also hosted Thanksgiving at their house for the Engelhart side. So we headed over there for dessert and to visit.

I didn't take very many photos this year. I have to be better about taking photos when people come visit.

Do you see that GIANT turkey on the wall? Ella went to an art class and this was the group project. Apparently, because Ella put most of the "feathers" on the turkey, they let her take it home. She was VERY proud of it. :-)



Here is our Thanksgiving craft project:


Above: Lily's handprint turkey.

Left: Lily's other turkey and Ella's turkey. It was Ella's idea to do a "sideways flying" turkey. Isn't it cute?

Left: Ella's other turkey and right: Mine. :-)

Slacking Again...

I haven't posted in awhile again. I didn't have anything exciting to talk about until Thanksgiving and ever since then, I've been running around dealing with Christmas decorations, shopping, baking, etc. I'm trying to spread everything out this year so I don't get too stressed. I've got most of the shopping done which is a Christmas miracle because I'm usually still buying stuff the week before. ;-) And most of it is wrapped already.

I've got one round of cookies made, and two more to go. Christmas cards still need to be done, but they are sitting here waiting for me.

At any rate, I have posts in the works for you...I'm hoping to get something new and interesting up this weekend if I have a chance....but it might have to wait until the next weekend. We'll see how things go.

But as always, thanks for checking in and hope your holiday preparations are going well this year!

Happy Holidays!

Milestone Alert: Last speech therapy session!

So it seems that I only like to knit in the fall. I have all these grand ideas for projects throughout the year, but I only ever get any finished in the fall. Ella has been in private speech therapy for 3 1/2 years and 3 of those years has been with the same therapist, Ms. Kim. Well, Nov. 24th will be her last session! This is both exciting for us and bittersweet. Mostly because we've gotten to know Ms. Kim a bit and will miss seeing her on a weekly basis. However, so exciting that Ella has come sooo far with her speech and no longer needs the private therapy (she still receives 2 sessions/week of speech at school).

As a thank you for all the wonderful work she has done with Ella, I wanted to make Kim a scarf. I set about looking for a very specific color of yarn. I wanted it to be variegated and representative of both Ella and Kim. Kim likes more earthy colors of moss green, browns, grays, and oranges but she always tried to remember to wear pink on the day she worked with Ella because she knew it was Ella's favorite color. On a visit to Coldwater Collaborative in Excelsior about 15 minutes away (photo of store to the left, doesn't it look sumptuous?). I found a beautiful skein of Noro Silk Garden Lite in color 2032. And I decided to use the Lace Ribbon Scarf from knitty.com. Here are some photos of the result:



And this last photo is one that I'm going to include with the scarf when we give it to Kim: