Saturday, November 26, 2011

Thanksgiving

In this house we LOVE Thanksgiving!  We did our usual doughnuts and Macy's Day Parade in our pajamas, then we kicked it into gear and got dressed up for the day.  Clara and Elena were pretty happy with their new clothes, and VERY happy with each other.
Posing all matchy-matchy (their idea, not ours!)
Steve set up a fire pit outside, and we invited everyone over early to hang out as we cooked the day away.
Caryn, checking to make sure the boiling potatoes are not burning up the microwave (a sad occurrence from two years back).
Herb chopping, chatting, and a bit of drinking.
Nana Rose and Steve hanging out at the fire pit - it was unseasonably warm and we really enjoyed having a bit of room to spread out.
Christina at the kids table, handing out crayons and activity sheets while the prep continued downstairs.

These place settings were originally meant for last year, as an activity Christina made for the girls' preschool party.  That party got snowed out last year, and this year only half the kids we planned for made these, so we had plenty left over to preschool-up our own little gathering.
Caryn continues on with the potatoes -ricing the life out of them gives them a very nice consistency!
Two out of the three Steves at our gathering, hanging in the kitchen.
The third Steve goofs off upstairs while we get everyone sitting down with drinks to finally eat!

The kids, ready to say grace and get on with our meal!
And Steve arrives with the turkey he has artfully carved.
We skip the whole eating bit (who is taking pictures of that anyway?) and hop in again for part of our dessert table.  The games in the left are the ones we broke out afterwards.  It was such a fun day and night that we didn't even realize that it was past 8:00pm and that many of our guests had been there since 11:00am!

Both girls were asleep before we even left the room from tucking them in, and that gave us one more thing to be grateful for, on top of the multitude of others.  We hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, too!

Thanksgiving Eve

We were pretty busy with preparations on the day before Thanksgiving, but in between getting Nana and G-Daddy at the airport and getting into the heavy cooking the girls took a little break in the leaves.




Of course, their fun-loving dad was ready to jump into the fray with them, even though he had just spent the last two hours raking leaves.




And, in other news, Elena was helping Christina prep cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie, and was looking for some new cooking related jobs.  She asked if she was ready to use a real knife, and it seemed like the moment to try (she's done a lot of cutting with more dull knives, and she was only cutting butter).  She was SO very proud!

She completely got the idea of keeping her fingers back, she was meticulous in her cutting, and she loved every minute of cutting that stick of butter!

Grammie Ellen's visit

We were so happy to have Grammie Ellen out for a pre-Thanksgiving visit!  The girls showed off many skills while she was here.  Elena focused on building elaborate structures for her dolls/animals (it's hard to see here, but there was a sleeping compartment for each doll, a play compartment for their accompanying stuffed animal, and then sheltered boxes for all the small horses).


Clara focused on showing off her silly side - she has turned into such a clown lately!
She would hide in the cushions, then pop out with the most delighted look on her face.
Grammie took her turn delighting the girls by buying them the game "Operation" and getting Steve to show them how to play.  They love it!

Bzzzzzz!!!

She got one!
There were also plenty of snuggles.
(After looking at the picture above Christina thought it looked pretty familiar - and then realized we had THIS picture of Grammie Ellen and Clara from their first holidays together four years ago!):
Grammie watched the girls tend to many tasks - Elena trying to heal her animals was a frequent one (not sure why Ellen seems a bit dubious here!).
It snowed again while Grammie was here, so Clara took the opportunity to show her how she can snap up her own snowpants.
The visit was much too short, but we soaked up every minute.  We love you, Grammie Ellen!

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Snow day

We had our first snowfall that stuck last weekend, but Christina was out of town and missed it.  The girls and Steve had chocolate chip waffles and donned their snowpants, but by the time Christina got home it was gone.  So when it snowed again this weekend and we woke up to a little white on the ground we were sure to capture it in some pictures.

Clara and Elena were excited to catch snowflakes on their tongues - even though it was more like snow pellets at the point when they were trying it!



Then we set to work using almost all of the snow in our yard to make up a snowman.
He was a quirky fellow, to be sure, but they were so very excited about him.
Excited, and proud!
We warmed up afterwards with some hot chocolates at our favorite coffee shop.
That's a pretty sweet Sunday morning!