Happy Arbor Day

I'll get to the Arbor Day thing in a few minutes. :-) We had a nice week. We visited Grandma Betty on Wednesday for a little bit. Ella's speech was cancelled on Thursday but Andrew said I should still take her out. So we went out for lunch and visited the library where she picked out her own books. She picked Curious George Takes a Train and How Does a Dinosaur Say Goodnight, among others. It was fun to go out with just Ella. It's funny to think that's how I used to spend my day before Lily came along.

Ella is obsessed (or should I say she's very nurturing) with her Wilbur pig. We take it EVERYWHERE. She has to tuck it in for naps and bedtime. She shushes me when its "sleeping". She feeds it. Worries that the sun is too bright for his eyes. She puts him in the doll stroller and Lily's booster chair at the table. I've never seen her so attached to anything. It's very adorable in some respects. He's filthy as, well, a pig. She's not aware, but the Easter bunny purchased a second pig from Target and its hiding in our closet should we need to "replace" Wilbur due to unfortunate circumstances.

One of her favorite things to do lately is play zoo. She found our play yard baby gate and decided to set it up in the living room. Then she set her pig and various other animals outside the gate. Found a piece of her train track roughly the size of a digital camera and proceeded to tell me she was at the zoo and taking pictures of the "animals." (Okay, maybe I take a few too many pictures). ;-)

I know I tend to post more Ella stories, but really Lily is at the "Monkey See, Monkey Do" stage. So mostly whatever I say about Ella, Lily tries to do the same thing in her own limited manner.

The girls spent last night with Grandpa Gary and Gramma Clare. While they were there, Andrew and I made a trip to Menards. We filled our cart with a hose, a fashionable hose "box" to hide it, various cleaning supplies, and a deck box to hold our chair cushions and the kids folding chairs. We were standing in the check out line and an older couple behind us said, "So, how long have you had your house?" I laughed and said, "Since December" and Andrew said, "Is it that obvious?" They laughed and said they could tell it was our first "season". :-)

Andrew mowed the lawn for the first time today. And we had Grand Tom and Grand Pat come in for a visit. We spent the evening playing with the girls in the backyard. (Okay here's where the Arbor Day greetings come in.) In honor of Arbor Day, Tom and Pat brought us a pine tree seedling to plant in our backyard. So we dug a little hole, planted the tree, and took the girls first picture by it. I have a feeling we'll be taking the girls picture there often to see how they grow along with it. :-)

I've add a new April album to the pictures website, so enjoy!

A treasure hunting we will go....

Do you see anything in there Ella?

At the Arboretum I came prepared to take the girls on a "treasure hunt". I knew there was a letterbox located there, so I printed out the clues and brought our stamps. When we got near the area where I knew the box was located, I asked Ella, "Do you want to go on a treasure hunt with me?" She got very excited. (Lily was sleeping in the stroller at the time so I participated for her.) We followed the clues and had to go off the paved path a bit, but Ella was game and followed right along. And there in a tree, we found our first letterbox! Ella was very excited!

Oh, there it is!

We opened the box and looked through what other people had stamped and written. And then I got out our stamps and ink pad and Ella put a dolphin stamp in for her and a frog stamp for Lily. Then we put the letterbox's palm frond (or maybe it was a fern) stamp in Ella and Lily's books.

Here's our entry into the letterbox's notebook.

Ella had so much fun, she wanted to keep "treasure hunting". She wanted to find "More!". I told her there were a lot more "treasures" we could find, but they were in different places and we would have to find them on a different day. She seemed satisfied with that answer and resigned herself to treasure hunting on a another day. :-)

PS. If you haven't noticed from the pictures....Ella's little pig, Wilbur, travels with us EVERYWHERE! See if you can spot him!

Keeping Busy

Spring has finally sprung!! I can't tell you how excited I am by this. Yes, I appreciate the seasons once again now that we're living in Minnesota. And snow in April (as it did last week) is just NOT fun! And what is even more NOT fun is that there were a couple really nice days before that which led me to believe that the cold yucky weather was behind us. Ha! Well, knock on wood, I hope it really is behind us now. Currently, as I write this, I am sitting on our deck basking in the glow of a nice 70-degree sun while the kiddos take their nap.

It seems we've been crazy busy lately, but it doesn't really seem like I have a lot to report. I'm having deja vu, have I written that before? We pretty much only have to really plan our day on Mondays and Wednesdays now which is nice. We have our Ari/Jody playdate on Tuesdays and Ella's speech appts. on Thursdays and Fridays. The weekends seem to just whip by.

There is a park about a 1/2 mile from our house which is wonderful, we can walk to it! So we've done that a few days. Some of the pictures in this post are from there. I've started getting books from the library for Ella. And she loves it! She has really gotten into having me read to her which is so great. And I have way too much fun picking out books for her. I try to find ones with things that interest her in them: princesses (Disney and generic princesses), dinosaurs, balloons, trains, fairies, etc. And if I can combine any of those into one book, well I've hit the lottery! She has one right now entitled, "Princess Dinosaur". She is on a Curious George kick right now which is fun because they have books that I can incorporate with other things like Curious George goes to the Zoo, or the Aquarium. There is a new firehouse that just opened down the road from us and we pass it pretty much any time we go anywhere. So we got some books for her to learn about what goes on there. The other night she fell asleep in her bed with books all around her! I just can't think of a sweeter picture!

Andrew had to work all weekend because the New York Rangers made the playoffs. They called on Friday and said they wanted all this stuff done by Monday so they could put it up on the electronic billboards in Times Square. All of them, at once! At any rate, it was a looong weekend for everyone. But as a reward we spent some family time together this morning. We visited the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum which is about 7 miles from where we live. We loved it there! So much so that we put today's admission toward a membership so we can go whenever we want. There are fairly easy stroller-friendly walking trails all over. There's one place where there are little houses for kids to play in and a "treehouse". I put that in quotes because there used to be a tree that the treehouse sat in, but the tree was struck by lightning in 2001 and they cut all but part of the trunk down. So now its a trunk with some stairs and a roofed platform. They also have a really nice Visitor Center there and many activities throughout the year. For those familiar with the Huntington Gardens in Pasadena, CA, it reminded us quite a bit of that, but with Midwestern landscapes and trees. And not quite so regulated. You can picnic and hike and go pretty much wherever you like. There's also a three-mile road you can drive around if you like. Anyway, a great family place.



I also like to do little projects with the girls every now and then. Here's a picture of one:I picked out these little snap-on things for their shoes. They wear these on when they play on the deck and sometimes around the yard. I picked ones that I thought sort of "represented" them; Lily got Nemo, a frog, and a turtle while Ella got a princess crown, dinosaur, whale, penguin and monkey (for Curious George). The girls had a lot of fun picking out each thing to put on and telling me where to snap them on their shoes. I found the little snap things at Michael's craft store near the checkout.

Hmm...what else. The girls and I have spent a couple Sundays over at my dad's house so Andrew could have some time to himself or work (as was the case this past weekend). Yesterday was so nice, my dad got the sand box out and the tee ball. The girls had a blast playing in the yard. Ella was really hitting the teeball well! She bats left-handed but throws right-handed! She's just so Ella! :-)

Happy Easter!

We traveled to Racine to visit Andrew's family for Easter weekend. We had a very nice time. The girls were very excited to find eggs with candy in them in the morning. (They've been practicing with empty eggs for the past couple weeks.) And they loved their Easter baskets. Ella got the Charlotte's Web DVD and a little Fur Real Friends pig that oinks and makes little noises. Lily received the Happy Feet DVD and a lamb like Ella's pig. We enjoyed visiting with everyone during Easter dinner and relaxing afterwards.

Hope you all had a nice Easter!

A Banner Day in the Isaacson Household

Okay, some of this may be TMI (too much information) for some of you. But we believe (knock on wood) that Ella is finally potty-trained!!! We just got fed up last week and told Ella when her current pull-ups were gone, we weren't going to buy any more. We have been trying to potty train her for a year and a half. In January I thought maybe we were close. I think I posted that I bought the Little Mermaid vanity as a reward/bribe for her. She earned stickers each time she would go potty on the toilet. When she finished the chart, she could have the vanity. Well, that was not enough incentive for her. I guess she didn't want the vanity THAT much. It sat in her closet for months. Every now and then we would get to add a sticker.

Well, she took the news of no more pull-ups pretty well. And was actually excited about wearing big girl underwear. On our trip to Target this week, she went over to the underwear all by herself and picked some out. She used her Dora seat (yes, I've been carrying it around everywhere we go) at the grocery store, TGIFriday's and a pancake restaurant we went to.

All this time she would only go #1 on the potty, but #2 was another issue. Then, last night after we tucked her into bed, she got up to use the bathroom and then excitedly called for me. She had to show me her "accomplishment." She had gone #2 in the toilet!! Finally, she is offically potty trained! We used the last pull-up yesterday. She's been rationing them, about one a day for a week.

And this morning Ella got to play with her Little Mermaid vanity for the first time!!! We are all extremely thrilled with this particular milestone! Here she is in all her Little Mermaid glory!

Randomness for a Sunday Morning

This morning I logged into Google as part of usual morning routine, and glanced over the news headlines. I read this article on cnn.com about Amelia Earhart which I found to be really fascinating. It suggests that she and her navigator didn't crash into the ocean as once thought, but perhaps landed near an atoll and were castaways for a bit. I've filed this one away in my brain to suggest to Ella or Lily if they ever have to do a school report on an important woman in American history or something like that.

Also on cnn.com, an article about global warming. My regular blog readers will know this is a topic of great interest to me and I am just amazed at the impact that Al Gore has made on the general public. Before his movie, An Inconvenient Truth came out, you barely heard about global warming, and many people didn't even know what it was. Now, I find information about it EVERYWHERE. There are articles almost daily on the internet news headlines. My Time magazine this week devoted a double issue to the topic. Anyway, just thought I would share and further promote this issue.

More of the same

Ella at 13 months playing in the toy box

Ella and Lily in the toy box today

And still making messes!

I uploaded new photos from March today. Click the link in the sidebar. Still no Super Bowl pics. Did I mention those are on Andrew's computer? I might never get them uploaded. However, the best ones were posted on the blog posts. So you're not really missing too much. :-) Enjoy the new pictures!

It's been awhile....

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Guess I just haven't been in a writing kind of mood. :-) We have been very busy though. We have Ella's speech twice a week, and our playdate with Jody and Arianna. Plus, we spent one morning visiting the Aquarium with my cousin Cindy and her family. It's great that she's on maternity leave now because maybe we'll actually get to see each other more often.

We had Tom and Pat visit a couple weekends ago. Andrew and his dad got our new tv hung on the wall and the sound system hooked up to it. So now, when we watch a movie, we can pretend we're actually there. We tested it out with Gladiator (not when the kids were around) and I told Andrew I wanted to feel like I was at the fight. And boy did I! Tom also moved our thermostat around the corner from where it was located. The sun was beating down on it and so the heat wasn't coming on when it should. Now, everything is much more controlled. Obviously the builders of this house had no brains when it came to deciding on the location of the thermostat. They put it directly across from our large south-facing picture windows. Anyway, much better now!

Last weekend we took a little road trip to visit Nana Mary and Papi Dave in Iowa. We had a very nice stay with them. The girls were excited all the way there. Ella kept asking, "Nana's house?" which was her version of "Are we there yet?". We visited the Science Station which is a children's science museum that was built when I was probably about 10 or so (still has many of the same exhibits). It was a free day and it was raining so we thought we'd try it out. Ella really enjoyed it. Lily mostly thought about taking a nap the whole time. The headquarters for Rockwell Collins is located in Cedar Rapids and they were the ones sponsoring the free day. They had little activities set up for the kids: gumdrop architecture, paper airplane races, egg drop, etc. Ella and Andrew really had fun with that.

Sunday was a gorgeous day, maybe even close to 80 degrees! We decided to have a picnic lunch at a park. I have some friends in California who are interested in letterboxing and I've been wanting to try it with the kids. I think it would be a fun activity to do in nice weather. It's sort of like treasure hunting, but mostly the prize is the satisfaction of actually finding the location of the letterbox. There was a fairly easy clue that lead to a park in Cedar Rapids, so we decided to venture there. We enjoyed a nice lunch, the kids played at the park, but we did not locate the letterbox. Turns out we had the right spot, but we couldn't find the box. Maybe we'll be successful on our next outing.

It was really nice here in MN when we returned on Monday so while the girls took their nap, I got our deck tables and chairs out and they LOVED being out there when they woke up. We also put their sand (aka rock) table on the deck and they played out there on Tuesday even though it was much colder and windy. Then the rains came...

So now, we're just waiting for it to get nice again so we can go out and enjoy the outdoors again! We got a taste of it this weekend and it's been hard to be cooped up with it raining the last few days. I have some new pictures to put up, I might get to it tonight. We'll see.

Hope you all had a great March!

February Photos

I have some new photos up in the February album. Still no Super Bowl pics though. Maybe I'll get them uploaded tonight. They are on Andrew's computer so it makes it a little harder. And I have a few more pictures to add still, but we left the camera at my Grandma's house. It's always something.

Enjoy, and hopefully we'll have some more new ones very soon!

Ella-isms

Okay this post would fall under the heading: shenanigans.

So I take my shower in the mornings (I need it to wake up, I'm not really a morning person) and I'm gone for about 15 minutes. I just have to trust that Ella and Lily won't burn the house down in that 15 minutes. Although, they haven't done any lasting damage, it does seem they get into some kind of trouble while I gone, almost everyday. Yesterday, Ella moved a dining room chair over to my junk cupboard above the phone, which just happens to be where I "hide" the candy. Apparently, I need to find a new hiding place. I came downstairs to find Ella, Lily, and Ella's baby doll in a corner of the living room eating chocolate.

I gave Ella a time-out for getting into the cupboard (she knows that's a no-no) and for eating candy without asking. When she was finished with her time-out, she promptly got her baby doll and gave the doll a timeout in the corner. I thought this was hilarious! (Lily didn't get a time-out because I decided she was just an innocent bystander in the whole thing and it looked like she hadn't had any candy yet.)

Today, Ella did the same thing. She got another time-out. The doll did not seem to be an accomplice this time. Today, I will be moving the candy.

Ella has a couple cute/funny things she says. She is the most polite 3 year old I know. Instead of saying just "no" to things. Everything is "No, thanks." Example conversations:

Me: Ella do you want to take a bath.
Ella: No, no thanks. (and she shakes her hand a little).

Ella: I'm thirsty.
Me: Do you want some milk?
Ella: No, no thanks.
(she wanted juice instead)

Me: Ella, do you want to go take a nap?
Ella: No thanks.

Me: Ella, do you want to sit on the toilet like a big girl?
Ella: No thanks. (shakes the hand back and forth)

You get the idea. :-)

Then she also says, "No. More." very definitively. Meaning stop, or I don't like that, or just no more. She often adds a hand gesture that is similar to "Talk to the hand".

Me: Ella, should we sing the ABC song? A, B, C, D....
Ella: No. More. (Hand gesture)
Apparently she doesn't think I should audition for American Idol anytime soon.

In the car driving home from an outing...
Me: Girls, stay awake. Keep your eyes open. We're almost home. Here, I'll turn the radio up for you.
Ella: No. More. (Hand gesture)

I serve Ella a plate for dinner that has broccoli on it...
Ella: No, thanks. No. More. (as she puts all the broccoli on the table away from her)

Oh, and another fun shenanigan story. I go to book club once a month. Once a month, I get out of the house completely by myself for an hour and a half. Yes, that's all. 90 minutes. So this past Monday, I leave feeling a little guilty because Andrew was still working and seemed stressed but told me to go anyway. So I said good-bye to the girls and told them to be especially good for Daddy because he was a little stressed out. And I told Ella she needed to be Daddy's Little Helper. Well, apparently she took what I said to heart. Andrew started to make pancakes for the girls for dinner. He got so far as to put the pancake mix in the bowl and then got a call and had to go up to the office. Not sure how long he was gone, but when he came back, Ella had indeed been a little helper. She was sooo proud of herself with a big smile on her face. She had helped Daddy make the pancake batter! She added some apple juice that had been left on the counter. And since the spices were right in the cupboard above her, she thought the pancakes could use a bit of Nature Seasons and black pepper. She was so excited to show Daddy how she had helped. Needless to say, they had hot dogs for dinner. And when I came home the house was in shambles. I guess that's what I get for being gone for 90 minutes. :-)

Snow pictures

Andrew and Ella "enjoying" the snow last night while Andrew shoveled us out. Lily and I watched from inside. We were the smart ones. :-)

The view out our front door. There is a street there somewhere.


Those would be the very tippy tops of the small bushes buried in front of our house.

This is what our deck currently looks like. Half of the snow we got last weekend had melted away, there's about 15 inches or so in the middle of the deck.

The snow is ridiculous

Not much else to do today but blog, since the whole state is pretty much shut down due to insane amounts of snow received in the last week. I already reported we received 12-18 inches last weekend. Well, it started snowing again Wednesday night and pretty much did not stop until sometime in the middle of last night. AND we're expected to receive 1-2 inches more. Oh, what's another 1-2 inches when you already have over 3 FEET on the ground?!

It's too bad for Andrew that he works from home or he might have been able to get away with a snow day like the rest of the state. In fact, like the entire Midwest. My mom and Dave were without power in Iowa for 76 hours starting last Friday night. They were supposed to come up this weekend to celebrate my Grandma's birthday but since the highways are actually closed (yes, it's actually illegal to drive on them, punishable by spending up to 90 days in jail, plus extra costs and punishment if you get stuck and emergency crews have to come save you).

We're all going a bit stir crazy as we like to get out once a day and haven't done anything fun since our Tuesday playdate with Jody and Ari. Here's to hoping the snow stops and the sun comes out and melts it all away.

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.....

A little winter fun

The girls and I played in the snow yesterday afternoon on a little hill near the side of our house. They seemed to have a good time. Click here for a video. You just get one take because its a little difficult to shoot and pull the sleds at the same time! ;-) I tried to upload the actual video, but blogger is being snarky right now.

Roll out the red carpet....

'Cause Andrew is nominated for his first Oscar! Well, okay, not really. But An Inconvenient Truth is nominated for Best Documentary and Best Original Song at the Academy Awards this year! We are very excited by this!

And for those of you looking, you can see Andrew in the first couple minutes of the film. He is one of the first audience members you can see when Al Gore walks out onto the stage about 2.5 minutes into the film. That's the best view of him. You can catch the back of his head a couple other times throughout the film and of course his name in the end credits.

Here's an article link where Gore comments on the nomination.

My Sympathy on the loss of your 20's

The title of this post was the birthday card I received from my mother. Yes, yesterday I turned the big 3-0. I really can't believe I'm that old already (that comment was in no way meant to make those blog readers who are older than me to feel old). ;-) Some days I feel older than that and other days feel like I'm still in my mid-20's. So I guess it all evens out.

I had a very nice weekend and day yesterday. On Sunday, we had my Grandma Betty, Aunt Carol, and Uncle Joe over for ribs and my grandma made a birthday cake. And then yesterday, Ella, Lily and I tried a new place called Sovereign Grounds. An independent little coffee shop in the city with a play area! (What fantastic concept! Why aren't these EVERYWHERE?!...Hmm....someday when I win the lottery) And my dad and Clare came over last night with Indian food and more cake. The girls are loving this multi-day celebration. They have had cake for dessert three days in a row now.

We had a fun visit with my mom and Dave this weekend. We went to the Mall of America and walked through the Dinosaur "Museum" there. I put museum in quotes because I think it could very loosely be called a museum. There some labels with educational material, but the whole place is replicas of artifacts. So is that really a museum? Not in my opinion. But the girls liked wandering around seeing big dinosaurs, little ones, ocean dwellers, eggs, bones, etc. Lily was actually really scared at first of the big replicas (with skin and everything--they look like Disney Dinosaurs or something). But she warmed up to them as soon as she realized they don't move like animals at the zoo.

Not much else to report. We're looking forward to Nana Mary's visit again at the end of the week!

Looking more like Minnesota

Well we were lucky and had much warmer weather than usual all through November and December. Now, it's snowing for the third time this month! We got about six inches last Sunday and now there are snow flurries today. Not much acculmulation though. I just got back inside from shoveling the driveway along with all the 10 year olds in the neighborhood who just got home from school. Made me daydream of the day when I could send Ella or Lily out to do the shoveling! I hear from friends back in California that there was some snow there too, in Malibu Canyon and Valencia! Hope those folks are handling it okay. And there's weird weather down in Texas and the Gulf area too. Very odd.

Anyhoo, I'm not really here to talk about the weather. We are battling our umpteenth cold of the season. Hope all this ends soon! I'm not used to dealing with colds every other week. Not fun.

Last week was the first time since we moved in that I felt like I could relax a little. I didn't unpack or clean during the girls naps. I just watched my tv shows on the DVR and read in "my" room, which is really the guest room. But I'm loving its coziness.

We started potty training Ella in full force last week. There was a Little Mermaid vanity on super sale at Target so I told her we could get it but that she couldn't open it and play with it until she went on the toilet and wore big girl underwear. Well, not to give you all too much information, but the underwear went well for three days and now we're back to pull-ups. I think she got tired of peeing in her pants. But she does use the toilet every now and then. She just goes up on her own and then calls me when she's done. I devised a chart that I taped to the big vanity box (which is currently sitting on the bathroom sink). Everytime she goes, she gets a sticker. When she fills the chart (like 36 boxes) she gets to open the vanity. So far we have about 12 stickers. So at least its a start.

In other news, I signed her up for preschool this week! She's going to go three days a week for three hours a day in the afternoon. She has to be potty trained. So here's hoping she is trained by SEPTEMBER! Jeez, she'll be four, I hope she's trained by then! I think she'll enjoy preschool and I think I will too! :-)

Andrew's parents came for a visit this weekend. We had fun taking them to the Mall of America for a couple hours. We took Ella to Libby Lu (a store bathed in pink and purple made for little girls who want to be princesses) where she got a make-over into a Princess with a tiara and everything. My cousin Cindy's daughter Emilee turned four on Thursday and she had been to Libby Lu. When we went to her birthday party, Ella was envious of Emilee's up-do and tiara. So we thought it would be fun for her get the princess treatment. She loved it! She was so into it and walked around the mall afraid to get her nails all messed up! It was pretty adorable and funny to see Ella so prissy. She's such a tom boy some days and a girly girl other days. At least she's well-rounded.

We also visited the aquarium at the Mall. Ella & Lily still love seeing all the fish every time we go there. On Sunday, we visited Chuck E Cheese where everyone had a great time! See the pictures in the new January album.

Andrew is off in California right now for a couple weeks to work on stuff for the Super Bowl. Then he's off to Miami for the Super Bowl. So we're on our own for a bit. My mom and Dave are coming up this weekend to celebrate my birthday (the big 3-0!) and then Mom is back at the end of next week to help me out with the kids.

So I guess that's all for the current update. Nothing too earth-shattering. :-) Thanks for checking in!

Finally new photos

We finally got the G5 up and running so I added a ton of pictures yesterday. Check out the second half of November, December, and various Christmas celebrations! And I know many of you have been waiting for pictures of the new house so there are a few of those as well. I will add pictures to the new house album as we get more rooms finished and cleaned up. Enjoy!!! Just click on the "Latest Pictures" link in the sidebar.

Winter Wonderland

Well, we finally had a white Christmas. :-) We celebrated our final Christmas last night with my dad and Clare just a few hours before we rang in the New Year. Whew, that was cutting it close. Would have seemed weird to celebrate Christmas 2006 in January 2007. It started snowing yesterday afternoon and snowed for hours, leaving about 3 inches of snow behind. It really is a pretty sight out our patio door.

Happy New Year! Happy 2007!

Andrew and I left the girls at my dad's house last night and are enjoying a lazy kid-free morning. In fact, Andrew is STILL sleeping. We would normally be up hours before now. So, so far we are enjoying 2007. 2006 was a transition year for us sort of filled with stress and the Unknown. While many good things happened, and we always feel blessed by what we have in our children, family, and friends, we are also happy to say good-bye to 2006. We are calling 2007 our "Rebuilding Year". We are looking forward to feeling settled once again and getting into the groove of things.

Whatever your New Year's resolutions and goals are, we hope you have a wonderful, exciting year ahead of you, and we look forward to sharing in all of life's wonder with our great family and friends.