Well, Hello!

It's been a long time.  And, I'm sorry to say, it's likely to be a long time more before anything else gets posted here.  As much as I value documenting Clara and Elena's childhood and keeping them present in the lives of family and friends far away right now posting on a regular basis just isn't something I can keep up.

It's possible, though, that I might be able to do this occasionally - give a bit of the flavor of a special day here and there.  Today I took the girls to the National Bison Range and then to two farms in Moiese where some of our CSA vegetable share came from.  We had a pretty fun time - here are some pictures from the day.

The antlers that have been found on the range through the years-

Why is he shaved?? We have no idea.

In the eggplants:

Picking a tomato for her dad:

In the asparagus:

Riding the rubber tire horse swing:

Pressing apples for cider:

The eight year old tractor driver who drove the kids all around the farms.

Can you spy them in the distance?

Farm dinner - with all veggies, grains, seeds, and cheeses from the immediate area.

Feeding the goats:

Getting baby Padma to eat a cucumber.

The girls are growing beautifully.  They have loose and missing teeth all over, and teeth growing in at odd angles.  They are in separate classrooms for the first time in their lives and they are just both loving their second grade experience.  Elena's still playing guitar, and Clara is deciding between continuing with the fiddle or moving to singing or guitar lessons.  Both girls are progressing in irish dance, and have been moved up again to the next level. Elena is trying again to grow out her bangs, and Clara is reading like a champ.  They are the smartest, funniest, most adaptive, beautiful children I've ever known, and I'll try to share them with you a bit more often!

-Christina

Irish Dancing Recording

We still haven't gotten the whole video-uploading-directly-to-the-blog  thing figured out, and we haven't updated here in a while, but if you'd like to see the girls' part of their Irish Dance recital you can see a montage of them here:
http://youtu.be/oXkAHrXeno8

Halloween 2013

This year Elena and Clara started thinking of costumes for Halloween way back on their birthday. They wanted a costume party. Clara begged for a werewolf costume, which we bought with the understanding that she'd also wear it for Halloween. Elena wanted to dress up as a pop star. You might recall that when their birthday rolled around they both dressed as Irish dancers instead. Fast forward to tonight - a not-too-dark, not-too-stormy night.

 

But, because it's autumn, it was still just the right amount of spooky. 

 And it was made spookier by the fact that Elena decided to ditch the pop star outfit and use dress-up materials we had to be a vampire.  Clara did wear her werewolf outfit, but decided against the mask.  And so we had fun with facepaint and spookified the night even more.

Ferocious, double-set-of-teeth werewolf.

 

 

A very-terrifyingly posed Elena (really, she was freaking us out with how she kept doing this!).

And a growly, scowly witch.  It seemed to round out the old-school Halloween characters we had going on. 

 

Steve opted out of dress up to instead be our photographer.

We walked down the street to a friend's house for a fantastic Halloween party.

With TONS of kids.  It was hard to keep track of how many there were.

After trying to round them all up for pictures we headed to the streets.  We made quite pack!  It was so joyous to see them running with their friends in the dusk, feeling confident in their neighborhood and secure in their lives.  The candy part of Halloween can get crazy, but going to say hi to people door to door pretty much rocks.

Now we're all ready for bed.  Happy Halloween!!