Picture Day at school seems to be Sofia's enemy...

Well, the first picture day in October, Sofia was sick on the couch with a fever and looked very much like she had earlier in the month:

But luckily Ava looked like this:

We just had makeup picture day yesterday.  Little did I know Sofia would wake up with her right eye looking even worse than this:

Conjunctivitis.

No school for her on the make-up picture day.

I guess candids & non-professional portraits will have to do for her First Grade year...

Gratitude

Both of my girls have now officially lost 2 bottom teeth.  The picture of Ava below was taken after her first one was lost and the second one was SUPER wiggly & crooked!!

I was just going through their schoolwork that I had put aside & I want to share what they wrote for Thanksgiving.  I wish I knew their thought process as they wrote these gratitude essays...The cuteness is just overwhelming!

Ava:

"I am thankful for God and pets.  I like puppies the best.  My cusins and my dog and terkey.  Cus all uve tham are cute!  And I love tham.  And I am thankful for frands and I am thankful for animals."

Sofia:
"I am thankful for turkeys and corn and cows and God and my family and my ster [sister] and trees for my oxygen.  I just love trees and spyders and Amarica because I lieev in Amarca and I love pumpkins and crayons and my flowers and food and Purell and Mrs. Morrocco and my dog and my fish and chick."

Veterans Day Hike

Last week we wanted to do something special on Wednesday since we were all off on the same day! 

It was a gorgeous blustery fall day...

We bundled up and walked through the woods and

we found a hollow tree,

a yellow tree,

and finally, the water.

Excellent day.  The only thing missing was Xavier.  But now that's an excuse for another hike on another day!

Happy Halloween!

Apple Pie

The Apple Pie was made!

But I'll give you 3 guesses who made it...

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Yes, the Chef made the pie.

But I don't think of myself as a coward who chickened out.

I think of myself as a very intelligent woman who knew that her Chef would make an amazing apple pie.  And I'm always right ;o)

Plus, he truly enjoys to cook and bake so I didn't have to do much arm twisting.

Yum yum.

Autumn activities

We go apple picking almost every year. And almost every year, out of all the apples we pick (usually 2 bags...) we eat maybe 3 apples, tops. And I feel terrible about it!  But this is because almost every year I declare that I am going to make an apple pie. So we pick a lot of apples. But every year, I do not make the apple pie and the apples sit on the counter, then in the frig, then in the garbage. It is wasteful, it is sad, but it is what I have done in the past.

Well, this year is different! This year I am going to make an apple pie. Yes, sir. Apple pie.

You see, while I don't believe I suffer from full blown Mageirocophobia (fear of cooking...), I do fear cooking in a BIG way.  I don't cook.  I am seriously afraid of it for some ridiculous reason.  Maybe this is why the only things my girls will eat are mac and cheese (from a box, duh), chicken nuggets or raviolis...Hmmmm...
BUT, I am actually a good baker. I know, it doesn't make sense that I could fear cooking but would be okay with baking. Maybe it has to do with food being a necessity and dessert being fun and so I don't worry so much about wrecking it. Maybe it's because I am deathly afraid of undercooking meat. Maybe it's because I'm not very good at it and screw something up EVERY time.  Maybe it's because I married a chef who is SO good at cooking that it makes me look really bad...  I don't know, but I fear cooking.

Anyway, despite the cooking fear, I can bake. I've made amaretto chocolate dessert tarts, I make a mean banana bread and I have created really cool and yummy cakes over the years (cake that looks like a hamburger, Backyardigans, tennis ball, pool ball...the list goes on). I enjoy baking chocolate chip cookies (probably because I enjoy eating them) and I really like baking sugar cookies to decorate with my girls.  So, this year I am making an apple pie. With my friend Amy. She's going to help. Because in my world, I see bread, cookies and cakes in a different category than an apple pie.  Apple pie falls into cooking and it scares me. Maybe it's because it's unknown, maybe not.  I don't know.  My fear of cooking is irrational, so why not add another irrational factor to it! So Amy's going to hold my hand and cheer me on while I make an apple pie.

And hopefully she'll peel some apples.

Here are some pictures of our apple picking adventure and the corn maze:

The corn maze... For the last 2 years (and once in 2002 with X) we have brought the kids to get lost in a corn maze. They have so much fun running through the corn and meeting each other in circles and hitting dead ends and it truly is fun to watch them do this!  It is absolute torture for me to be lost, especially in a maze, and I tend to feel a lot of anxiety but they enjoy it and a lot of times being a mom means doing things your kids like even if it might feel like a circle of hell for you...I just try to keep remembering to breathe & know that it's just a stinking maze of corn!  They even have "corn cops" to help you if you need to get out.  So I do it.

Sick days & a rainy day

We've had two sick little girls in our house over the last few days and to say it's been trying is an understatement. There's nothing more frustrating than seeing your children sick and suffering and not being able to do much to ease their pain. They've been writhing in pain with fevers, stomach aches and joint aches. I'm not one to rush to the doctor's office but I was tempted this time around - and I did call twice...

Not sure what they had/have, but I think/hope/pray it's on its way out! Just in time for a rainy day...sigh.

BUT I bought this puppet activity a while ago and had saved it specifically for a day just like today!

And boy did the girls love it. It was worth each dollar. Thank you Martha Stewart (and Big Lots). This entertained us for over 3 hours today!!

This is entitled: Froggy, Rabbit and Piggy having fun until Lion wants a tasty dinner...and then his tail falls off...



While we were creating and playing with puppets, this is what Bella did:

Found the camera! . . . Lost the tooth . . . literally.

So we found the camera & here is how excited Sofia is: 

But . . . The night she lost her tooth she was so excited about finally losing her tooth & wanting to show it to Daddy the next morning that she took it out of the plastic bag and jumped around with it and it flew out of her hands & came to rest somewhere on this carpet:

I never realized that the carpet looks like a bunch of little teeth until I had to search (in vain) for a tooth on this carpet...

Sooooo...I'm not sure how to handle the tooth fairy.  How can she come if there's no tooth to exchange for money?  But how can the tooth fairy not come when a first tooth is lost?!  What do we put in place of the tooth?  I thought maybe a nice picture for the tooth fairy to find...Or a fake tooth made out of playdoh...We've got to figure something out because that tooth is L-O-S-T.

Guess What!?!?

Sofia lost her first tooth!  It was on the bottom!  And I can't find my camera!  Anywhere!  ACK!!!

She's very excited so I drew a picture of her, but it won't scan in!  The computer can't talk to the printer/scanner for some reason!  So...you'll just have to settle with the knowledge that the first tooth has been lost by our little girls!  Ava got her 6 year molars first, but Sofia lost a tooth first!

It's an exciting night here in our household.  I'm trying to get her to delay putting her tooth under her pillow for the tooth fairy b/c I really want to take a picture of it before the tooth fairy takes it!  I hope I find my camera before her permanent tooth grows in...She's got a cute smile :o)

Interlude

I know, I know...I said I'd continue with summer BUT . . . I haven't set aside enough time to get a summertime post together SO . . . Here is a picture of my girls with their favorite blankets in the whole wide world!  They started first grade with their new transformer & batman backpacks & lunch bags.  They love this stuff.  And I love them. 

And here's our new pet.  We keep him outside.  On the deck.  We actually never invited him to come live with us.  He invited himself.  And built his own house.  We avoid him at all costs.  The dude is SCARY.  He can stay with us as long as he likes.  I'm not kicking him out.  He might bite me.  Or wrap me up and eat me over a few days. The dude is BIG.

Summertime! (part 1)

So I'm having issues with blogger & posting pictures. It's not showing my pictures when I create a new post so I have no idea what the post will look like. So, here's one short post & I will try to figure out what's going on & create another post soon. (I know, promises, promises...)

Our summer was full of swimming & fun. We did a lot this summer, but I don't have a whole lot of photographic evidence because when I wasn't forgetting my camera at home, I was forgetting to get it out of the bag to take pictures! I did take some pictures with my phone, but there are 2 issues with that. 1) I'm not sure how good the quality will be when I upload them, and 2) I have no idea how to upload them.

So, until then, here are some pictures of our summer.
Tree climbing, fudgesicles and the beach...What can be better than all that?
Oh yeah, a pose with the pine man in there, too!






More pool, beach, local food fest and wave pictures to come...Once I figure out how to fix this picture upload issue...

Parades

Nothing special this post - just some parade pictures!
But first here are Ava & Sofia on a climbing wall! They made it all the way up several times!!






Above was 4th of July, below is Gaspee . . .

P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)

When I first heard that Michael Jackson had died suddenly, I was shocked like everyone else. He was so young. I remembered one of my favorite pictures of me when I was young & so I wanted to post a blog about how much I loved him when I was 10 and share the picture with you.

I had begged my cousin to let me take a picture with her album cover photo. I only had the cassette, and the album had such a huge, beautiful picture of him that I just HAD to be in a photo with him.

(Note the Cabbage Patch Doll behind me? Beggars couldn't be choosers back in the 80's Cabbage Patch craze so the only place I could get one was through a mail-order catalog that sent you whatever the packing clerk picked off the shelf. I prayed every night for a girl with brown hair. Sadly, my brown-haired girl did not come to me in the way that I imagined. I was sent a boy named "Brian Ross" with a small tuft of poo-colored hair. So, I did what anyone else would do in that situation, right? I made a wig for him with my grandma's brown yarn (I braided it) & sent away for a new adoption certificate in the name of "Katie Ross" (I thought Ross was his last name). This picture is pre-yarn wig...but I digress...).

I mean, Michael Jackson was to me then what the Jonas Brothers are to young girls today. Seriously. I had posters of him all over my room & I even did my 5th grade report on him and his family. I was a serious fan.

But the media has just been inundating us with images of him, history of him & to be honest, the images of him post-Thriller just scare me. The more plastic surgery he had, the less of a fan I became. For pre-teen girls, it's not about the music, it's about the look. (No offense, Jonas Brothers...).

So I decided not to blog about my adoration of Michael 25 (!) years ago.

But then, fate stepped in (as it always does).

The girls chose an old book of mine from the attic to read for bedtime tonight . . . And this is what I found inside the front cover:

Holy crap. I was not just a fan. I think I was out of my ever-loving mind.

So of course, I had to humiliate myself and share this with everyone.

Is this what my girls are going to do in 4 years?! Who will they love in that pre-teen girl way? I hope they don't embarrass themselves the way I did!

Rest in peace, Michael Jackson.

We love rainbows

We've had rain on 14 of the last 18 days and the news just showed rain for the next 5 days coming up. So I thought I'd post this picture to remind the girls and me that there have been rainbows in the past & more rainbows will come again!!

(And I reminded them that weathermen aren't always right & that just because it's cloudy doesn't mean we won't be able to ride bikes!!)

Biking like big girls

When Sofia & Ava first got their bikes as birthday gifts in August 2007, they looked like this:

We called them their "big girl bikes" but they still preferred their super-fast tricycles. So a year later, they were still riding on training wheels when we went to City Park:

Now . . . they are cruising without training wheels in our neighborhood (and at City Park in the first picture --- I took a big digger trying to get good pictures of them from the front, so you've got to settle for the one from the back. Ever try to turn around while riding on a bike to take a picture behind you? I don't recommend it...On the plus side, the girls were super-impressed with how I skidded into the woods & threw down my bike as I propelled myself into the air to avoid getting my leg crushed by the pedal...Sure, sure, I could have ridden way ahead, stopped my bike & then waited for them to come around a corner, but where's the fun in that?).

Yes we've had the bikes for over a year and a half, but they picked up 2 wheels so fast that I was just floored. Neither one of them fell down. I could not believe it. They're only 5 years old!
It is all happening so fast . . . But now they're asking for Batman & Transformer bikes b/c Barbie doesn't cut it for them..."Barbie's grosssss..." (BUT if it's a choice between riding the Barbie bike or not riding at all, they choose Barbie every single time!) Those are my girls!