Running away to the circus?

The girls had their second trip to the circus this weekend. The show was good, but it seemed way too long. We got there a little after 1 and enjoyed about 15 minutes of the "pre-show" down on the floor with the performers. As you can see below, Madeleine enjoyed the costumes and performers. Lily said she was scared of the clowns, especially after some clown underwear got thrown her way. She wasn't scared last year, so we weren't sure what to make of it.

Of course, Madeleine's goal for the afternoon was to be good enough to get a light-up souvenir. The whole last hour she kept asking when it would be over and she could get her thing. Finally, she fell asleep about 15 minutes before the show ended. When we passed two souvenir booths before choosing one, she was in tears.

All ended well though, and we were finally home a little after 4pm.

Photo Geek - new camera lens arrived

My 50mm f/1.8 arrived today. Katy wasn't kidding when she said you could really only fit one person in the frame. But it was really nice to get natural light pictures, even after dark.

Snow - Part 2

We're lucky if we get snow here once a year, much less twice in the same month. So it was a bit of a surprise when we looked out the window Saturday morning to see about 4" on the ground. I went out the side door to get the paper and found two packages covered in snow by the door. One was a package of Valentines goodies from Aunt Robin. The other was from Aunt Marcia. Very squishy, I assumed it was some kind of stuffed animal.

But no - it was the perfect gift for a snowy Saturday in February. Snow pants! She'd seen the blog post about the girls not liking sledding because they got snow on their tummies and came to the rescue. They're not exactly easy to find around here, and you hate to spend a lot of money on them if they grow out of them before they ever get a chance to use them. But she found some nice ones, and they're big enough we should have them for at least a couple more years.

We didn't go right out and play since we had ballet class in the morning, but just after lunch the sun started peeking out from the clouds. I figured we'd better get out there before it all melted.

Unlike the last snow, this was perfect packing snow. So we set out to make a snow woman. Back at Halloween, we'd decorated a pumpkin and put a blonde wig on it to look like the girls' teacher Ms. Rebecca. So for our snow woman, we decided to make a Snow-becca.

The eyes are blue M&M's (thank you Aunt Robin). Lily is responsible for the anatomically-correct features of the snow woman, although I did have to move the right one around from the side. Madeleine was in charge of stick arms. We only had about half an hour to build her before the snow on the ground was pretty much melted. We took everything we could get off the car and the decks.

Snowed in

We had our first snowfall of 2010 this past weekend. The girls of course loved every minute of it.

It started Friday night at bed time. They gathered on Madeleine's bed to look out the window and watch the flakes come down. They woke up a full hour early Saturday morning because they were so excited about the snow.

We waited until almost 11 to go out because it continued to sleet all morning. We tried sledding in the street first, and it worked pretty good. A nice gradual incline. But not super-exciting. So we tried our neighbor Joy's yard. We made quite a track, and the girls would slam into the fence if someone wasn't there to catch them. Eric thought he'd pile up snow to slow them down, but that just made them airborne.

So then we tried the other neighbor's yard. That was much better, but the girls were getting cold. They had rain boots on, and the snow had come in over the top. We left our sleds with the neighbors and went in.

About 90 minutes later the doorbell rang. It was the neighbor kids' mom. One of the sleds had shattered. So, down to one sled.

We went out again in the afternoon in Joy's yard. The snow was still too powdery for a snowman.

Sunday was a different story. Even though it didn't get above freezing, the sun warmed it up enough to be packable. We were able to make the snowman below, although Madeleine refused to be photographed with it because she wasn't happy about the raisin smile.

We tried sledding again in Joy's yard. Then we heard the neighbors on the other side and went over there. We ended up being outside for close to two hours on Sunday.

Here you'll see Madeleine's bottom layer - a 3T onesie I'd bought when they were infants. They'd gotten snow on their bellies Saturday, and this was our best option to prevent it.

Flower-ific!

The girls have their first flower girl gig coming up in April. Unless some people start getting divorced and remarried again, this is probably their only shot. Aunt Laura's sister is tying the knot and asked us a year ago.

Cristine had already picked out the dress, but we thought it would be cute for them to try some on at David's Bridal this weekend. We got there half an hour early, and totally could not find Laura and Cristine. The people at the front of the store were totally non-helpful. We wandered around and never saw anyone. After many phone calls and texts, Laura's mom came out to get us shortly before three. They'd had an alterations appointment in the back, so of course the front desk people knew nothing about it.

When they wrapped up, we waited for a room to become available, checking every few minutes to bug the lady at the desk. Nothing like two bored four year-olds to make you ask again.

We tried on 6 different dress styles.


Lily modeling THE dress. It will have a blue sash.

The dress we found most inappropriate for a four year old. I thought it had that prom feel.

Also a little too strappy and bride-ish. I guess some people like their flower girls to be mini-me's.

Madeleine in THE dress.

Lily in a poufy dress and Madeleine in her favorite dress. If anyone knows where I can find one cheaper, let me know. It would be great for Easter or the rehearsal dinner. I've scoured eBay and haven't found one yet.

Happy New Year

We had our first big night out as a family for New Year's Eve last night. After managing to try chopsticks with our stir fry at home Sunday night, I thought this might be a good time to try a Japanese hibachi restaurant with the girls.

I think the highlight for them was getting dressed with Mom. They picked out their stunning outfits you see above. Note the costume jewelry, clip on earrings, and (gasp) makeup. They went through my jewelry box and are each wearing pins. They also picked out my dress, jewelry, and shoes for the evening. After curling my hair, Lily remarked that I looked like a different Mommy.

We got to the restaurant just in time for our 5:30 reservation and were quickly escorted to our table. Of course the girls wanted to go back out to the lobby to look at the koi pond, so Eric took them back while I looked over the menu. Chicken for the girls and seafood for us.

When the chef came out, the room was kind of noisy. so both Lily and Madeleine covered their ears and sort of ducked down. After that, they were kind of leery about the chef. They dove under the table when he made the onion volcano and fire, but were excited to see the flames on other tables.

Both girls ate their soup, but only Lily tried the stir fried noodles. When they got their chicken, it immediately became a game of "How many pieces do I have to eat?" I had promised them dessert, but the restaurant was in such a hurry to turn over the tables, they never even asked. They just brought our checks after the chef left. The waiting area was packed, so I'm not surprised.

So, quick thinking Mommy takes us to Dairy Queen. I wasn't sure what else would be open, and since it was raining and cold, I knew we needed to be indoors. Lily had a cone, which she ate with a spoon, and Madeleine had hers in a dish. All's well that ends well.

Happy New Year everyone!

And a good time was had by all

We had an awesome and busy Christmas break this year.

The girls were off last Wednesday from day care, so we had another "girls day" where we went swimming together at the gym and had lunch. Madeleine felt that she had put her face in the water enough during swimming that she had earned ice cream from "Berry's," so we stopped at Goodberry's on the way home despite it being only 50 degrees out.

For Christmas Eve we watched "Elf" and went to the 3:30 children's pageant Mass and then over to my parents for snacks and presents. Lily loved her new sweater.

Madeleine preferred the opening of presents to the gifts themselves.

Christmas morning the girls stayed in bed until 7, like we ask on other days. Then Lily rushed upstairs because she said she wanted to know what different types of wrapping paper Santa had used. Here Madeleine gets her princess on:

Lily shows her new favorite pajamas. We had outgrown all our other footed pajamas some time ago, and she has been sad about it for a long time.

Then after presents had been opened, we headed off to Oak Ridge to visit the Goodman grandparents. We spent two days there and had plenty of time to play princess, throw snowballs, and try out our new scooters.