Catching Up

Reported by Beth: You will get three posts for the price of one this week. I have had a busy and exciting stretch of activity at work, so we've gotten behind on the blog. Jamie was going to tackle it in my absence, but was a little busy!

Let's start back just after the new year. After our New Year's Eve outing, we enjoyed the rest of our time off. The girls got to paint their masks. Katie's is a monkey and Caroline's is a . . . monster? They both loved making them, and now I get to try to figure out where to store these 3-D masterpieces!



Once the holidays were over I jumped back in to work full force working late every night but one (and working from home that night). Then I had to leave on Saturday to go to New York for a 6-day business trip.

From Jamie: The two kids were funny while Beth was away. Katie was obsessed with cleaning the basement, which we did. One morning when she had to be woken up, she opened her eyes and asked if she could work on organizing the basement before school!

We also ventured out to eat one night to a "kids night" where both kids got free dinners. Caroline was double fisting corn dogs and doing shots of honey mustard, so I think it was a hit. Both girls got balloon animals- Caroline chose Dora (Nora, as she calls her) and Katie picked a penguin. This is pretty much the only photo we took while Beth was gone. Please don't judge the girls' messy hair.

Beth returned home Thursday afternoon (on a flight that left Laguardia about 3 hours before the one that ended up in the Hudson River). After she got home and experienced a usual chaotic evening with us, I joked that the Hudson wasn't looking so bad!

From Beth: Last weekend was the local alumni club's annual Notre Dame Communion breakfast. The girls got to play with some friends while we tried to keep them quiet. We sat at a corner table and had the kids play on the floor during the 3-hour event. I think we took about 13 trips to the bathroom as this quickly became entertaining for Caroline.

That afternoon Caroline and I cooked vegetable soup after reading a book about it. She was very proud to use her plastic knife to help me cut up the veggies and she was eager to try everything . . .

. . . including a hunk of raw potato! The soup turned out well and Katie got to help make banana cake. I think both girls agreed the cream cheese frosting was better for sneaking bites of than green beans!

I was lucky enough to have MLK Day off, so after a morning of catching up on things around the house, I picked up Katie from school and we went to her first full-length movie (Madagascar 2) and enjoyed a huge bag of popcorn and then spent the rest of the day together.

Later in the week . . .

Caroline got a little scratch on her forehead and happily sported a bandaid.

The next night she showed off her manners as we ate angel hair pasta.

And speaking of manners, look at Lily helping herself to some leftover pasta! (Note: we probably should have scolded her at this point, but it was so funny I stopped to grab the camera instead!)

This weekend Jamie and Katie had another Indian Princesses event and went roller skating. As you can see, she was a bit scared at first, but then Katie loved it. Her favorite part was the flashing pacifiers that the kids got for when the lights went out.

On Sunday we decided to use up some sugar cookie dough and make alphabet cookies. Unfortunatley, the dough got sticky and we didn't get many recognizable letters, but the girls had fun. As the cookies cooled, the girls had a nap and then we braved the snowy weather to go swimming at the Y. As I gazed out at the cold-looking day nothing seemed less appealing than going swimming, but the girls were very much looking forward to it, so we bundled up and went. It was fun and the small pool was 95 degrees, so we were nice and toasty inside.

When we returned from swimming, the girls decorated (and ate) the cookies. It was messy, but tasty.

OK, that's it for now. Hopefully we will be back on schedule next week. Thanks for checking in on us!