Boosterthon - PTA Fundraiser

The girls are participating in a fun run at school on Thursday, February 2nd.  They will run 25-35 laps.  On the off chance anyone is interested in sponsoring us - shoot me an email.  Per lap or flat donations are accepted.  Then I'll need to receive checks by Feb. 8.  I thought they had online entry, but it's me that has to enter everything online.

Madeleine won the Y after-school care running competition in the fall, so that girl can run when motivated!

Teaching

Madeleine loves Wednesdays when she can play "teacher" to Grandma and Grandpa Bench.

First Night 2011

Since we had such a good time last year and the weather was cooperative, I thought we'd try First Night Raleigh again this year.  We headed to downtown Raleigh about 2 and parked about halfway down Fayetteville Street across from City Market.  It was pretty empty then.

This year's main attraction was the ferris wheel at Fayetteville and Hargett Streets.  It opened at two, so we got in line right away figuring it wouldn't be getting any shorter throughout the day.  It took almost an hour to get on.

As you can see, Lily was not a fan at first.  But she warms up by the second trip around.

Madeleine has no such aversion.

Then we headed up to the Bicentennial Mall for crafts.  Here Lily's leaving her grafitti for visitors.

The girls display their Eiffel Tower markers.

And here are our impressionist paintings.  They also made sponge boats.

We participated in the People's Procession and made our way to Fayetteville St. with the rest of the crowd.  We got there around 6:30 pm and grabbed a spot for the 7pm countdown to "New Years" and the acorn drop.

My favorite part of the evening was following a taxi out of downtown.  Madeleine was very concerned about it and thought we needed to remember the number just in case.  This morning she when she got up she was able to recall it from memory and hand it to me on a post it just in case I needed a taxi sometime.

Merry Christmas!

Let's Get Ready

Madeleine got to introduce her kindergarten winter performance today.

Gingerbread

The girls love to do gingerbread houses and have been asking for weeks when they could make them.  For the past three years at day care they've made graham cracker ones, so we've just done a kit together at home.  This year they wanted their own kits though.

Back in my single days, my mom bought me a kit once "for fun."  Following the instructions drove me nuts.  The icing was runny and I pretty much had no luck gluing the thing together with the icing.  As soon as I'd get a side up, the next side would fall over.  It was pretty pathetic.

So the attitude I've taken with the kits is that they're fun to make, pretty to look at, but probably taste pretty awful and stale after sitting out for weeks on end.  I'd much rather make fresh gingerbread with the girls than have them eat the kit mess.  We usually just throw it of the deck 25 feet in the air and watch it smash into the back yard.  That said, I glue the gingerbread pieces together with hot glue before we even get started.  That way all the frosting can be used on the decoration and not trying to hold the thing together.

 Lily was set on eating hers from the beginning.  Of course she reminded me, "Mom, you know you're not supposed to use hot glue on these."

 Madeleine wanted to "snow" her roof, and was more into creating a pattern with the candy.

Lily was determined to eat something and licked a lot of the super-sticky frosting.

This year we learned we probably need some supplemental candy as well.

Holiday crazy

It seems like 2 weeks before Christmas is always the busiest holiday activity weekend around.  We kicked it off Thursday with Disney on Ice followed by City Ballet's The Nutcracker on Saturday morning.  I'm not ready to commit us to the full price Carolina Ballet production just yet.  The girls' favorite part is always Mother Ginger and the kids that run out from underneath her skirt.

We got a live tree this year and decorated it Sunday morning.  It's the biggest one ever, so we pretty much used almost everything in the box - even both Wonder Womans (but only one of the two Chewbaccas).

We finished up the holiday festivites Sunday by attending TMOTT's Cookies with Santa event.  The girls both asked only for American Girl dolls and were very excited to have one of Santa's helpers make them a balloon animal.