Preparing for the Holidays

We kicked off the holiday season with an outing to a holiday parade in the historic part of our city. It was very chilly, but fun. Caroline refused to keep her mittens on (that's her Canadian blood) and wanted to eat all of the candy that was passed out as soon as it arrived in her lap. We liked the animals the best- especially the miniature horses and the camels. There were also some cute little dogs- two dressed as reindeer pulling a tiny sleigh with a tiny Santa dog being pulled along.

After the parade Caroline was ready for a snooze and Katie was ready for some hot cocoa. Then I snuck out to meet a friend for some shopping and afternoon tea and left the rest of the crew to watch college football.

That night Katie and I got to work making her birthday party invitations. We will hold her party at a pottery painting place on her actual birthday, so we thought it would be fun for her to paint the front of the invitations. Now several days later we are still working on them (scanning, printing, trimming with decorative scissors and LOTS of pasting).

Sunday morning we received a special package from Santa. It's an Elf on a Shelf. The girls named him Elfie (after much debate) and he is one of Santa's helpers. Each night while we're sleeping he reports in to Santa and let's him know whether the kids have been naughty or nice and then he returns to our house and we find him in a new spot the next morning.

After we found this package and read Elfie's story, I mentioned that I heard a thump the night before and Katie was very busy finding clues all over our house. "This piece of the puzzle was missing and now it is found. I think Santa found it and put it back!", "a piece of candy is gone from my parade bag, I think Santa ate it", etc.

Sunday afternoon Jamie and Katie had another Indian Princesses event- this time at the bowling alley. They had a great time and enjoyed the funny bowling tricks they had to do- bowl on one foot, sit down, etc. Katie was the first name called for a prize and came home with a lovely glittering bowling pin. I can hardly wait to find a place to display it in our home. Especially as it leaves a pile of glitter wherever it has been!

Wild Indians

This week Katie helped me get out our Thanksgiving decorations and the girls have been enjoying doing seasonal things at school. Katie was especially fond of her Indian headress and beaded necklace.

This is a remarkably short post for us- and only a few photos. We've been just as busy as always, but I guess the cold winter has us doing less photogenic activities (although I am sure you would love to see photos of Jamie and me snoozing on the couch while watching college football). Speaking of which, the conclusion of the Notre Dame-Navy game had us wide awake! We could not believe that the game ended up being that close after it appeared that ND had the game won.

Sunday, we saw our first snowflakes of the year as we headed to church and the girls were excited about that. The snow didn't stick yet, so we'll have to wait a bit longer to get the snowsuits out!

Sunday afternoon, Jamie and I went to the Cincinnati Bengals football game and were happy to enjoy the game from my company's suite since it was very chilly. We had fun and were happy they didn't lose, although a tie in the NFL is unusual.
Sunday night we ate up the upside down mandarin orange and cranberry gingerbread cake that Katie and I baked together. We even got out our whip cream maker, which was a big hit with the girls!

It will be another busy week, as both Jamie and I have had all kinds of extra meetings, bith early and late. We're glad to be employed, though!

P.S. I just realized that I never explained the second photo- Caroline was chasing me around wearing dish gloves and pretending to be a monster. This was almost as entertaining as when Jamie went to get her up from her nap on Satuday and she yelled "Boo!"

Brrr!

After a week of temperatures in the 70's we are now into more typical November numbers. Jamie played golf in short sleeves on Thursday, but by Saturday you can see we were into the winter coats, hats and mittens.

We'll start off this week's posts with two funny photos and two unrelated funny stories:

The first story relates to the fox that keeps appearing in our neighborhood. Our neighbor Mike told me this story. Katie was over at Miranda's house playing one evening. Mike was doing work in his office and the girls were doing something in the kitchen. All of a sudden they got very excited and came into the office yelling that they had just heard about the fox on the TV and they were sure it was back in the neighborhood. Mike disregarded their claims and then later realized that the kitchen television was tuned to Fox News. The girls heard "Fox News" and thought is was an update on the fox!

Now Caroline's funny story. Sunday night Jamie put Caroline to bed while Katie and I took Lily for a W-A-L-K (we have to spell it at our house). About an hour later we heard Caroline crying in her crib--very unusual for our star sleeper. We went in to check on her and she had undressed herself and was asking to get up. Her diaper (which she was holding in her hand) was wet, so I changed her and as I was zipping up her PJs she said "No, I need a shirt." She was fully convinced that it was morning and it was time to get up. I showed her that it was very dark out and basically started her bedtime routine over (while keeping her room dark) and thankfully got her back to sleep.

Now to the week's events. On Saturday we took Caroline for her first-ever haircut. She liked the place (which has an indoor slide to play on) and very intently watched another little girl getting her hair cut.






When it was her turn she was excited to sit in the red car and watch Elmo, but then got a little serious (as you can see here).

But she lightend up a little. Her first cut didn't amount to much. The lady cutting her hair was so good about collecting the clips for me and Jamie asked whether we were saving every strand because that's what it took to amass any volume!

When it was done, she was pretty pleased with herself, and especially happy about the balloon and sucker. We laughed because the before and after photos are nearly indistinguishable!

Later that day the girls and I raked up our leaves- we don't have many, but we had fun and I managed to keep everyone safe even with the rake flying around. Jamie was off at a charity event (playing mini-putt through a series of bars!) which unfortunately took place during the longest stretch of the day 11-4:30. Even more unfortunately, I had one ornery girl wake up the other during nap time, so it was a long afternoon! Once Jamie returned we went out to dinner and bought the girls some new shoes.
Sunday we went to a state park that's about 30 minutes from our house and went through a hike on the trails. It was fun, but we had to be vigilant with the girls as the terrain was rough and muddy at times and both Katie and Caroline had their moments when they thought they would prefer not to hold hands.

After our exercise we visited a nearby dairy farm for our favorite pumpkin ice cream. It wasn't exactly ice cream weather, but it was so good!

Trick or Treat!

Caroline continued her streak of not napping at school, which meant we still had our grumpy moments in the evening. One afternoon I was talking with her teacher about her reluctance to nap and the trouble she gets into while the other kids are resting and I said "She's a wonderful girl, but she can be a real stinker" and Caroline turned to us both with a big smile and said proudly "I wonderful girl."
The girls were counting down the days to trick or treat night- which was Thursday in our area. We were fortunate to have nice fall weather in the low 60s. Jamie and I both left work early and we had quite a bit of time to get ready-- a firefighter is not nearly as high maintenance as a princess! The only make-up application I needed to do was Caroline's nose and whiskers and a few black smudges on Katie's face.

Caroline got the hang of things very quickly and tried to steal candy out of our own basket before we even started.

We trick-or-treated with our neighbor Miranda (dressed as Hannah Montana)

We visited the neighbors on our street and Caroline walked and tried to keep up with the big kids. Then she spent most of her time riding in the wagon- and eating as many things as she could open.

She loved this yard decoration and almost tackled it! After about an hour Jamie took her home to get to bed. She looked exhausted and thankfully was able to fall asleep even with the sugar coursing through her system!
Katie lasted until about 7:40 and really enjoyed it. Miranda was on a mission to get a lot of candy, so Katie had to hustle to keep up!

Once we were home, Katie and I took over the candy distribution (getting rid of the kinds we didn't like!) Unfortunately it really slowed down at the end so we have a ton of candy left in addition to what the kids collected.


Katie was happy to be in charge of allocating candy between her bucket and Caroline's and participated in the age-old ritual of spreading it all out on the floor and trading it.

Friday night we were busy once again. I was involved with a 5K race, which was a fundraiser for my Rotary Club, so Jamie brought the girls down to see the activities. They enjoyed it- especially the Tim Hortons donuts-- and stayed until 8 p.m.


Sunday we went to Indy to my sister's house to celebrate Hannah's 2nd birthday and meet our new niece/cousin, Emma.

Emma was a little fussy when we arrived (and they had all had a long night), but then she settled in for a good sleep and didn't make a peep for the rest of our visit.


Once all of the girls had awoken from their naps, it was piano time! Let me tell you, it looked a lot cuter than it sounded! Caroline really seemed to enjoy it, and Poppy thinks we should buy a piano for her.

Once Billy's family arrived, we had cake and ice cream and then Hannah opened her presents. Caroline squealed with glee when she laid eyes on Hannah's new play kitchen, and Katie very quickly tried to take charge of it.




Overall, the girls played very nicely. Caroline and Hannah liked taking turns shaking the balloons. We stayed for dinner (which was marred by Notre Dame's overtime loss) and then got organized to head home. As they were on their third late night, the girls had some grumpy moments in the car, but with the time change it actually worked out okay to keep them up later.


Sunday we went to church and then caught up on stuff at home. Jamie attempted to take both girls to the grocery store after lunch and they had some trouble. The low point was when both girls dashed out of the cart and headed in opposite directions. After he gathered them, he cut the trip short, told Katie to hold on to Caroline no matter what as they checked out, and then brought them home. He then had to go back as I did the nap wrangling. It was a beautiful day, so we then went for a bike ride and to the park. The girls did chalk on the back patio--and on the back of Lily, who now has a pink tint.