Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Cooking

We seem to be on a little bit of a hiatus here - it's not that we're taking pictures and simply not updating, it's more that we've not been taking as many pictures of the girls lately.  Today was a nice, fun day at home and it seemed like a good time to get the camera out.

We were watching the movie Ratatouille in 20 minute increments, and then going downstairs to cook for most of the afternoon.  That movie really inspires the girls!  What they are wearing here is very typical of our "at home" wear these days - they either want to be in pajamas or dress-up clothes (today Clara was in her dance dress-up leotard).
While they were baking brownies Clara and Elena were getting so chummy with each other!  While one girl stirred/measured the other girl would tickle or kiss her.
They were great at taking turns today, which was a welcome interaction after a fair number of sibling squabbles lately:
Beaming Clara close-up:
When I tried to get a corresponding close-up of Elena she broke out in a wink:
And so then Clara wanted to show us her wink, too:
Those brownies weren't going to finish themselves, so we moved back to stirring, which the girls turned into synchronized stirring:

And very scientific tests of viscosity:
And, of course, the ever-present taste-test once the brownies got in the oven.
After washing up we turned our attention back to the bread we were baking - here Elena and Clara are getting ready to punch the dough down:
And, PUNCH!
While bread and brownies were baking the girls decided to play rollerderby.  We had just gone to another bout on Friday, and they were keyed up.  Clara's roller-girl name is Ellie-Mental, after one of the girls she liked on Friday. 
Elena's is Mermaid (one of the girls at the bout did have this as part of her name, but Elena liked it short and sweet and kicked out whatever funny part was added on to the name).
After roller derby it was time to prep for dinner.  Both girls are great at helping, but Clara can really be trusted with a paring knife at this point, and she was so proud that she chopped all of the broccoli for our dinner tonight.
After she finished it was time to take off our aprons, turn off the oven, and head to school to pick up Steve from his long day at work.  We were happy to have him home, and he was happy to come home to a house that had been busy cooking all afternoon.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Love, love, love - love is all you need (well, that and ice cream)

 Happy Valentine's Day!  Although we've never been gung ho for couple-type valentines things we are all about family valentine's things!  The girls must have wished us Happy Valentine's Day over a dozen times today, and everything they ate was heart-shaped (including their pizzas and cucumbers below).

We carried on a proud Granato tradition of banana split sundaes for a Valentine's day treat.  Oh, how they loved these.

 Elena seems sort of astounded that she finished!  Clara finished hers, too - it was the first year for both of them that they finished, out of the three years we've been doing this.

We ate dinner by candlelight, which would seem sweet and Valentine's Day-ish except that every single meal (breakfast through dinner) has been eaten by candlelight for the last few weeks in our house.  We found a wine bottle last summer that had Elena's name on it (and really yummy wine in it!) and Melissa and her family secured the Clara wine bottle for us (though when it arrived it was mysteriously absent of wine...) and sent it to us a few weeks ago.  Since then we've used them as candleholders and the high point of both girls' day is when they get to blow these out at the end of a meal!

Here's a little "then and now" comparison of Clara and Elena's writing skills.  Last year we had them write their names on the back of all of their valentines, and although they made very deliberate and consistent marks no one would have known what their names were. This year there is a huge difference.  Here's Clara's comparison:
 And here's Elena's (although she's still go the reversal thing going on she has moved beyond hieroglyphs!)

Finally, we couldn't resist including this picture we took last week of our girls with our friends' twin daughters.  These are the girls our girls have been wild about ever since our friend Meg was pregnant with them, and they consistently take care of "their own" girl.  So here's Elena with Amelia and Clara with Lucy - they were so, so proud to be on their first babysitting gig!