Mother of the Year

We spent a wonderful Mother's day weekend at the lake. Nice and relaxing. Wonderful weather - can you believe we were in the lake in early May? Well the kids were in much more than me.

We continued our tradition of Mother's Day strawberry picking and headed home with 3 1/2 gallons after just 40 minutes. Anyone have good strawberry recipes? Send them quick!



Upon returning home I found that my dear friend Stefanie nominated me for Mother of the Year and guess what? ............................. I won!!!

Do you think it was my acceptance of child labor?


Or unsafe working conditons?


Or maybe keeping the kids out so late they fall asleep at dinner? (really it was just 5:00 pm)




How about letting them drive at an early age?



Or for being sure they're dressed in weather-appropriate attire? (yes look closely, that's Katelyn's bare belly showing while making a snow angel)



Who knows? But Click here for the full story (Thanks Stef - love ya!)

Ok, so even I'm not really Mother of the Year,

my kids think I'm pretty special. One of the cards Katelyn made me this year is an acrostic poem (very big with 2nd graders):

M - Marvelous

O - Other than mean

T - Terrified by nothing

H - Hates snakes

E - Entertaining

R - Right all the time

How cool is that?? Her other card started out with a little poem:

Here's a gift for Mother's Day,

I'll try my best in every way.

But when you get upset with me,

Relax and have a pot of tea!

Inside the card - a teabag!! Too funny.

Slow down....please!!!!

As I look at how long it's been since I've written, I found myself thinking about how fast time flies and if only time could slow down just a bit. But as I started remembering all of the things that have happened in past few months, I realized that I really need my girls to stop growing so fast!!! Here are a few glimpses into moments in past few months. If anyone can find my babies please let me know!

It really began with the Father/Daughter dance. Perhaps, something to do with Katelyn being all dressed up complete with rhinestone hair clips, high-heel shows, fancy curls in her hair and notice the necklace - it's the one I wore on my wedding day! Am I really the mother of this beautiful grown-up girl?



And although she wasn't actually going to the dance, Lindsay could not be left out of the dressing up festivities or the pre-dance photo shoot. Here's my "baby" looking quite grown up herself:



Both girls have had recent makeovers of their bedrooms. Katelyn wanted more space in her room and well, it was way past time to get rid of the toddler bed that Lindsay wasn't sleeping in anyway. They both LOVE their new rooms and are even doing a great job at keeping them picked up -- well one better than the other ;)


Katelyn's -


Lindsay's -


We finally caved in to the many pleas by Lindsay to sign up for a gymnastics class. It's actually a combination dance/gymnastics class. She's not so interested in the dance part(though looks very cute), but is a natural gymnast! She's already been invited to join the advanced class in her age group. With her strong little arms she may someday take a medal for the rings event!



Here she is with 2 of her best friends - Ariel and Isa


Here she is practicing the rings in our backyard - look out Olympics!


Both girls have had birthdays since my last post. We celebrated Lindsay turning 4 at where else but The Little Gym. She and her friends had a blast jumping and trying out all the equipment. The party staff cuts and serves the cake, then cleans up. By far the easiest place to throw a birthday party.



She was quite the helper - insisting on decorating parts of her cake all by herself. To my surprise she did a really great job!





Celebrating Katelyn's 8th birthday wasn't quite so easy, but definitely a lot of fun. She had a sleepover party with eleven 7 and 8 year old girls. Our basement was a maze of sleeping bags and pillows. The girls started the party by making their own pizzas. Then we decorated pillowcases and purses. Next came cake - which was an event in itself. I very jokingly told the girls I was too tired to cut and serve the cake and that I was just going to pass out forks. Well....it turns out that's exactly what happened....









Finally we made homeade lipgloss, watched a late night movie complete with popcorn. We heard lots of giggling until about 12:30 and think they were all asleep by 1:00am. By 7:00 the next morning they were ready for pancakes! Whew! Lots of fun, but I'm glad birthday season is only once a year!

Here's Lindsay on her first day of Pre-K looking all grown up in her uniform.


Katelyn before....


and after getting braces!


Lindsay having her first sleepover with her buddy Isa. Lindsay hasn't quite mastered staying over someone else's house yet, but I don't suppose it will be long before she does.



And last but certainly not least, here's Katelyn on the day of her First Communion.







Wow, I knew a lot had been happening in the last few months, but this felt like I was summarizing an entire year!

Snow Day!!!

Today was our second snowfall of the year with a whopping inch maybe an inch and a half of snow - and of course school was cancelled - even daycare! Since Katelyn was quite disappointed that she didn't get to play in the snow last time, we were determined to get out there and do some sledding -- at 9:30 in the morning!

It's quite funny to see kids sledding in the south. Not too many of them have actual sleds. I saw one old fashioned sled with metal blades, a few plastic sleds, several lids to rubbermaid storage bins and lots of "Boogie Boards" really meant for riding the waves.

There really aren't any good sledding hills so the neighborhood kids all head to the golf course. We were right there with them this time. Here is some video of the kids sledding:

It was quite cold so after about 45 minutes we were all ready to head inside for some hot chocolate!

The snow definitely looked pretty and I'm glad the kids got a chance to play in it a bit, but I'm looking forward to the weekend when we're expecting temperatures to climb into the mid-60s!

Stay warm!

still here

For those reading this....yes we are still here and doing well. I can't believe a whole month has gone by. Katelyn and Lindsay are truly experiencing the joys of sisterhood these days --- they fight with each other what feels like all the time. And it's all over very important things like Barbie dolls, stuffed animals, who gets to choose the television show, who gets to have a playdate with a friend, etc. Which brings me to why I don't have time to blog - I can't keep up with my kids' social calendar. Last weekend, Katelyn slept at a friends' house Thursday night since there was not school Friday. Friday night went to a sleepover birthday party, then managed to get us to say yes to having friend over Saturday afternoon. Meanwhile, Lindsay and I spent Saturday morning at her friend's house and on Sunday they each had a friend over. So we're keeping things a bit low-key this weekend in preparation for birthday season to start next week -- 4 birthday party invites for next Sat/Sun!! Really I'm very happy that the girls have lots of friends, but it's a bit much when they have more to do in a weekend than I do in a month!

Thankfully it's not all fighting. They did spend a few hours "smash painting" all by themselves in the kitchen. Katelyn did it in school and then she and Lindsay experimented at home. Smash painting led to finger-painting which yielded all of these beautiful pieces of art -- I didn't even mind that they were covered in paint since we ended up with some perfect handprints!

Here's Lindsay growing into the papercrafting hobby. She loves to cut out letters - especially her letters - (the ones in her name - she seems to think they're hers!) It looks like it won't be long and I will be able to have some long scrapbooking sessions with my 2 assistants - provided I make sure everyone has enough elbow room :)

And yes, I know my picture is quite blurry - the flash on my camera is broken, so I'm on a search for a new camera - any recomendations on compact cameras with lots of zoom capability?

Happy New Year!

Wow - 2009 is here already! It's hard to believe that another year has flown by. I can't believe Christmas is over, let alone all of 2008.

For Christmas Eve we managed to get the last 3 seats together at the 4:00pm children's mass (at 3:15!). The kids did great despite being at church for double the time. Then we enjoyed dinner with Nana and Grandpa and Mike's sister's family. The girls both fell asleep in the car after a busy day, so getting to sleep Christmas Eve was a breeze.

Lindsay woke up first at 7:20 and patiently waited until 7:30 to wake up Katelyn. I've never seen Katelyn wake up so quickly. I've already threatened to wake her Monday for school by saying "Katelyn, do you want to see if Santa came?" My guess is she won't fall for it.

There was no sign of a down economy in our family room. The piles of wrapped presents extended far beyond the reaches of the Christmas tree branches....and it took maybe an hour for the girls to unwrap everything :) Thanks to all of our wonderful families for sending gifts! We really are very spoiled! (Real thank yous are coming soon.) On, Christmas Day we went to Kelly's for brunch and then to Nana and PopPops for another delicious dinner and of course more presents.

We had a wonderful time ringing in the New Year with lots of neighbors and friends. Even the kids made it up to welcome 2009!

Best wishes to everyone for a happy and healthy 2009!

Christmas Eve

I can't believe it's actually here already, but more shockingly I can't believe I'm actually ready and not stressed out this year! The house is all decorated, presents are all wrapped, cookies are baked and we're not hosting any meals at our house, so very little left to prepare.

Decorating this year has been interesting.

First, with our ladder and step stool at the lake, adding the tree topper proved to be a bit difficult. After a few failed attempts dangling Katelyn in mid-air, we opted to wait until we could get a ladder.

Lindsay is very much into pretend play. She's often playing with babies or little dolls having quite the conversations. It shouldn't have surprised me, but I did get quite the chuckle when she started arranging my ceramic Santas so they were knocking on the doors or peeking in the windows of the various houses on my coffee table.

I was able to go to both of the girls' class Christmas parties this year. Katelyn's was very fun with a tissue paper snowball fight! And Lindsay's class enjoyed a visit from Santa.

Katelyn and I love to go to the Children's Theater in downtown Charlotte. This year, she and I saw "Peter Pan" and "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever". But on Sunday, we got to introduce Lindsay to the theater when all 4 of us went to see "The Velveteen Rabbit". She did great sitting still and being quiet - until she yelled "Wake up Bunny!" But I think she really liked it since when the show was over, she wanted to stay for another one.

Yesterday we had lots of fun baking Christmas cookies. Katelyn, Lindsay and their cousin, Ally, made sugar cookies in all sorts of colors and shapes - even bunnies. I made the old stand-by peanut-butter blossoms and then finished off my baking day with kolachky - walnut and raspberry!

So after sampling lots of cookies yesterday, I decided I better start my New Year's exercising resolution today...we'll see how long it lasts!

Hope you all have a Merry Christmas!

Not too late to be Thankful!

So, I know I've been considerably absent from posting in quite awhile. I often think of great things to write about and foolishly tell myself that I'll post a little later when I have more time. I'm slowly but surely realizing that that time NEVER comes! Now I have the issue of what to write about....it's far too late to ramble on about how great Thanksgiving was, but I guess I will start there anyway :)

It really was a great holiday. We have so much to be thankful for after a year full of health issues. We started the weekend before celebrating with Mike's Dad and Ruth and the whole family. The cousins all had tons of fun playing all day!

Then we started our drive up to NY on Tuesday. Our travel plans changed about 10 times trying to figure out whether the kids would sleep in the car, could we drive through the night and still function the next day, was the weather going to cooperate or were we going to get stuck with everyone else who decided that flying was too expensive this year. Lindsay did ask about 10 miles after leaving our house if we were almost to Grandma and Grandpa's house, but all in all the kids were great travelers (Thank God for car DVD players and Katelyn starting to outgrow carsickness!)

For Thanksgiving day, we went to my Babci and Dziadzi's - this was particularly special since my grandfather is home now recovering from a stroke this summer. It was so good to see him up and around since when we last saw him he was in the hospital! There was still a little bit of snow left in the yard, so Katelyn and Lindsay (and me since Linds is connected to my hip these days) got to go sleigh-riding. It was the tiniest of hills, but my kids don't know any better so had a fabulous time! They even made a little snowman with Grandma.

Then back to Mom and Dad's to relax with my brothers and visit with Aunt Kathy. I was able to get in some of my "food fixes" like Tony's (well...Nick's now I guess), Nirchi's, Romas, and Cider Mill....so much for watching my figure ;) It was a bit colder than last year, but the cider press came out and the girls enjoyed making their own fresh apple cider.

Our trip wouldn't be complete without visit Jeff, Christine, Ryan and Emily. I can't believe how big all the kids are getting -- or that they could all fit on the slide to make our own little totem pole!

Before Thanksgiving, I remember feeling on top of things with our annual family pictures done and Christmas cards printed. Now I'm not sure where the last three weeks have gone and how Christmas is possibly going to be here next week when I'm not nearly done with my shopping and haven't baked a single cookie! So stay tuned to hear more of what's going on with us, but keep in mind that I cannot write or post anything while out shopping, at kids holiday parties, or up to my elbows in cookie dough :)