And we all get older

I celebrated my 32nd birthday on January 23rd. Andrew had already left for his big trip so we celebrated with the girls a week early.


Don't you just love my new shiny slippers from Lily. They are complete with rhinestone hearts on top. Nice, huh? Ella told me she wants a pair just like them. :-)
Ella picked out The Cutting Edge DVD to give me. (See her current fascination with ice skating in post below...)

Instead of doing one little cake or anything like that, we visited the bakery at the grocery store and everyone got to pick out their favorite dessert. For my actual birthday, the girls and I had a very nice dinner at my dad's house to celebrate with yummy lemon cake. And my mom and Dave came up that weekend for a visit. It was a very nice birthday in all. I have to say, this is probably one of the first birthdays where I actually feel as old as I am...hmm...not sure that's a good thing. ;-)

Andrew works on Pepsi video

I know this is over and done with, but maybe some people will be interested. In January, Andrew went from here to Arizona for a conference, then up to Los Angeles for just a couple days, and then he headed over to Tampa for the Super Bowl. He's definitely been racking up the frequent flyer miles!

The Famous Group received a call on a Friday that they were going to be involved in a Pepsi YouTube campaign for the Super Bowl, the following Wednesday (in four days!). The shoot involved getting 90-some crew people together and shooting Will Arnett and friends (including Andy Richter) for Super Bowl ads on youtube.

Ice Princess

Ella declared one day in January that she wanted to learn how to ice skate. She asked several times. I'm not sure where she got this in her head. But we live in Minnesota, it seems like a natural thing to learn to do. :-) Unfortunately, there is one time in my life I can remember being on ice skates and I'd say it was when I was 11 or 12 or so. I had visions of putting on those skates and just gliding around the ice. Easy, right? Not so much. My ankles caved in and I just had no idea what I was doing nor the determination to try again.

Andrew's from Wisconsin, you'd think he would be an ice or hockey skater. Hmm...not really. I guess he played hockey for a few games when he was 14. So, at least he's been on the ice a few times. Lucky for me, he won the contest for "Who is going to teach our kids to ice skate?"

The community center here offers skate rental and indoor rinks. They also have a tot open skate for beginners where no one else is on the ice. And an instructor is available to give you tips.

Ella was so great! I couldn't believe how determined she was and how hard she worked. It was much more difficult for her than I think she thought it would be, but she stuck with it and really worked at it. I'm so proud of her for not giving up. Athletic ability comes pretty easy to Ella. She's naturally good at throwing, swinging and kicking. So it was fun to see how she handled not being good at something the first time she tried it.

She's gone a few more times and seems to still enjoy it. The pictures are from the first time we went. We brought Lily just in case she wanted to try too, but no go on that one. She and I sat on the sidelines and watched. Hee hee...Lily is so much like me when I was little (a big chicken!).



Ella with the instructor Chris. He's helped her a few times. She always comes home and gives me a full report of her new "lesson". :-)

Random photos of Lily watching Ella.


And of course, you just HAVE to get hot chocolate after you're done ice skating. So what if a little gets on your shirt. :-)

Hope you all are enjoying some winter fun activities as well!

8 Times a Christmas

Yay! I have my computer back and with all the information still on it! Andrew took it to the Apple store on Saturday and it turns out the trackpad clicker was stuck in the down position. Even though the problem wasn't a big deal, they did have to perform some minor surgery. They put in a new keyboard and trackpad. The laptop looks brand new again! And we're back in bloggin' business.

Now, you might be wondering why is it so hard for Holly to actually get updates up on the blog. Well, I tend to get stuck when I have a really big post and then everything just gets very intimidating to get back on track (like right now). Christmas is so crazy for us. We have 7 or 8 separate "Christmases" or present opening occasions. I know! Totally over the top and insane, right?! We do that because we make an attempt to see all parts of our family at Christmas every year. We jostled going to some family and not others for a few years and trust me, spending two crazy weeks in December is worth it! We get it all done in one fell swoop and everyone is happy (at least I think they are). The kids are glassy-eyed and strung out at the end of it. But we think it is important to give everyone their own time.

I was originally planning on doing a separate post for each group, but now you're getting them all lumped together and in condensed format just so I can move on. It's almost March already, jeez!


Making cookies with Nana Mary.


Ella opening up the knitted sweater I made for her stuffed animals and my mom trying on her knitted socks I made.

A group shot with Nana Mary & Papi Dave.

Christmas at B-pa and Gramma Clare's and with Uncle Sam. (Sorry I guess I didn't take very many pictures there. I'll have to be better about that.) ;-)

All set for bed Christmas Eve night with cookies and milk out for Santa.


The HUGE pile of gifts at my Grandma Mazie's house and Ella with "Santa" aka Steve my cousin Kari's boyfriend. Every year Santa makes an appearance at my Grandma's house. When I was little it was actually my Grandma who was dressed as Santa. Can you believe no one noticed she wasn't in the room? ;-)

Ella and Emilee hanging out and Braeden pulling his pants up. Isn't he a cutie pie?

We played Christmas pictionary with my mom's side of the family Christmas night after a nice dinner at our house.

And on to Wisconsin on December 27th. We opened gifts with the Comande side of the family.

Lily with Great-Grandma Iz and Ella with Great-Grandpa Nick and Uncle Randy.

Almost all of the Comande side of the family

We visited with Andrew's cousin Eric and his family while in Wisconsin. Doesn't little Mykenna look cute in her sunglasses, phone and purse we gave her?

Every year for the last four or five years my sister-in-law Jenelle and our cousin-in-law Gina (get it, we all married into the Isaacson family) get together and go get pedicures and have lunch. We all look forward to this little outing every Christmas!

Lily received a Penguin Webkinz and Ella received a tiger. :-)

Hanging out with Aunt Jenelle and Uncle Ben.

An Isaacson family photo.

Whew. Okay. Christmas is done. We enjoyed a very nice New Year's as well. We went to Roma Lodge to visit with the Comandes again and then headed over to Ben and Jenelle's house for a wonderful dinner and hanging out with their friends. Ha! I'll take a short-cut and send you over to Ben's blog for that one! You have to scroll down a bit to find the New Year's post.

PS. Despite how I was raised and much to my mother's chagrin, I have been AWFUL at thank you notes the last couple years. Just wanted to say a collective thank you to everyone who took the time, made the effort and thought through gift choices for all of us for the holidays. We really appreciate it and have given a new home to all our treasures! THANK YOU SO MUCH!

Technical Difficulties

Sooo, I'm really not posting for lack of trying, I promise. I really do want to post. I want to get this silly blog up-to-date. But forces beyond me are interfering. First the internet went out in the hotel on two separate occasions when I was going to post. Then, at the end of our trip to Hawaii the weirdest thing happened to my computer. The "clicker" (not sure of the technical term) for my track pad was no longer working. I could move the cursor around with my finger on the track pad, but I couldn't select anything. I plugged in a mouse and tried again and nothing! I could move the cursor with the mouse, but couldn't select anything. So I'm not sure what's wrong with the computer, but it will have to make a trip to the Apple store for a check-up.

Right now, I'm typing on the old laptop we set up for the girls to use as "their" computer. But none of my pictures are loaded on it and I haven't backed up the last several months of our personal pictures (if I have taken photos of you, don't worry, I do have a backup of all those photos). So yes, I can post on here. But I can't attach photos right now and let's all be honest here, the photos are the best part (even though I tend to subject you to long posts of my ramblings, which I know you all love). So I think I may go ahead and write up some posts that I wanted to do and then add the photos later. Not sure if I'll "publish" the posts before I add photos or not. Anyone have an opinion? Do you want posts even without pictures for now? Or just wait to read everything until I can attach photos again?

And cross your fingers that I don't lose all my information off my computer. That's happened to me once before with my current laptop and I'd prefer to not go through that again. So stay tuned. (Are you sick of me saying that yet?)

In the meantime, have you checked out my book blog lately? My friend Allison and I are constantly updating that and we are hosting a book giveaway right now! Hop on over and check it out! Enter the contest if it interests you. And for those of you who have smaller children, we'll be reviewing Anna Dewdney's newest book Llama Llama Misses Mama next month and hosting a giveaway of that book so be sure to check back and enter for a chance to win a copy.

Waterpark in Winter

Edited to add: I had planned on spending all morning updating the blog on Friday while I relaxed by the pool, but I got as far as writing this post (not even adding the photos) and the hotel's internet service went out for HOURS! So unfortunately, I didn't get things updated like I wanted to. Boo!

See, I said I would be posting about Christmas around Valentine's Day...I had grander plans of updating this sooner. But you know how it goes. I am currently relaxing by the pool while Andrew golfs so I thought I'd take the opportunity to get a new post up. The weekend before Christmas we traveled to Lodi, Wisconsin (near Madison) to visit with the Isaacson side of the family. We had a nice afternoon at Aunt Gail and Uncle Mike's house eating good food, chatting with family and opening a few gifts.


I just think that second picture is funny. :-)

After that, we drove about a half hour to Wisconsin Dells and stayed at the Great Wolf Lodge. This hotel has a huge waterpark inside! And our room had a separate little bunk bed section. The girls were in love! The hotel actually reminded us quite a bit of a Disney experience. They had a gathering in the lobby every night where animatronic characters sang and they made it "snow". They had a spa for kids called "Scoops" where they could go and get ice-cream flavored mani/pedis. :-) We didn't try that out, but maybe next time.




We had a nice time with Tom and Pat joining us. Ella explored every single inch of the waterpark and tried EVERYTHING. She was even going to try the tornado funnel slide but was too short. I couldn't believe some of the stuff she was doing.