more Christmas

On the way to visit with my husband's side of the family on Christmas Day, we saw this Eagle!

We spent the day with his family, then went to my parents' house, where the girls fell into bed.

The next day they waited and waited and waited for their cousins to come, so they could open more presents!  They finally arrived and the present opening began.  

All season long I heard about a Frozen Fantasy castle, which Rebecca really wanted.  It was a huge plastic monstrosity, which I really didn't want in the house.  Not only did we not have room for it, but it was expensive and didn't do much.  My mom found this smaller version, and we were worried she would be disappointed that it wasn't what she wanted, but she loved it, and I haven't heard about the other castle since.  

She has played with this and her Bitty baby the most.

We took some family pictures.....first the immediate family.....

And then extended family with my uncle, aunt, and cousins.

We hadn't all been together in a few years, so it was a lot of fun.  We ate too much great food and played games, and had a wonderful day.

(See the girls' matching doll dresses?  They opened them that day--made by my talented mom!)

Christmas Morning

Christmas Eve before church, in their dresses, lovingly made by Grandma....

After church, in their new matching PJs

Christmas morning.....the Bitty Baby she's been asking for for a year!  She was so excited!

Wonder Woman nightgown!

Another nightgown....Elsa....with an Elsa braid falling out of her hair, and a matching Elsa gown for her doll

Daddy made a bed for her new doll.    It's not quite finished, but close.

Bitty Baby got a matching nightgown, too!

Rachel was thrilled!  Minecraft Legos!

After present opening, she got right to work!

Saige, Rachel's doll, also got a matching nightgown, so here are all four of them together.

It was a fun morning and they were excited.  I'll add more in another post from the rest of our celebrating.

house for a mouse?

Tonight we read a christmas story called Mortimer's Christmas Manger, where a mouse tries to live in a nativity set at the house where he lives, but then learns that it belongs to baby Jesus, so he moves out, and into a gingerbread house that the family had made.  Rachel and I were wondering if the gingerbread house the girls decorated today would become a house for a mouse.  I sure hope not!  We've had enough trouble in previous years with mice.....none this year, please!!

But anyway, here's the gingerbread house the girls and I decorated today.

One of the sides caved in while we were working on it, but they had fun anyway, and at this angle you can't tell!

While we were waiting for parts of it to dry, they made their own graham cracker gingerbread houses.

new ornaments

Christmas festivities have begun around here....Rudy, our elf, made his yearly trek, much to the girls' delight, our advent calendar is in use each day, and the girls got their new ornaments for the Christmas tree.  Every year I try to get them one that reflects their current interests.  The problem this year was that Rachel's biggest interest, Minecraft, doesn't have a Christmas ornament available to purchase, and Wonder Woman, Rebecca's favorite thing, is equally hard to find (old ones are available on eBay, but that's the only place I found any).  As I was searching online for minecraft ornaments, which don't exist, I came across a few etsy shops where people make them.  Several were made out of perler beads.  Well, Rachel has a mosnterous sized jar of perler beads, and it looked easy enough that I could figure it out, so that's what I did!  I made my own!

Then, I thought, why can't I just make my own Wonder Woman ornament too?  So that's exactly what I did.

I felt kind of silly during nap time, sitting at the kitchen table all by myself doing perler beads, but I was pretty happy with the results, and the girls were really excited about them.

Happy December!

happy thanksgiving

The first Thanksgiving dinner at our house was a success.  

We missed those who couldn't come this year (my sister in law, my brother, Jack, his wife, and my aunt and uncle) and also, especially, my grandpa, but it was a nice day.  It was nice not having to drive and to get to do some Black Friday shopping here in town with my mom (last night) and my husband (this morning).  

Now it's hard to believe that it is time to start thinking about Christmas!

room switch finale

Well, the room switch is finally complete (except for putting stuff up on the wall in Rebecca's room).  The toys have been removed from the dining room/play room, and it's been transformed into a dining room.

We need chairs....these are the only two remaining of the original set, and my parents have three chairs they're bringing for us, but maybe someday we'll get some new ones and refinish the table, but for now, it's nice just to have a dining room, and I'm sure my grandparents would be happy to know that their furniture is going to be loved and enjoyed in our house.

The leaves come out and make the table longer, but this is how it looks with them pushed in.

I don't know if we'll keep the bookshelf there and put stuff on it or if we'll move it somewhere else.  

The girls play upstairs a lot more now (of course, they also bring toys downstairs to play, too....but they're learning that they then have to carry them back upstairs when they're done, so I don't know how long they'll do that.  It makes it quieter downstairs sometimes, which is nice, though I know there will come a day when I MISS all of the noise!  

Now the room is ready to host its first Thanksgiving on Thursday!

great room switch--revisited

Earlier in the year we embarked on the "Great Room Switch," where we took Rebecca out of the pink nursery, painted it tan, made it into the office/guest room, and moved her into the former office, which we painted purple (at her request).  Her new room is bigger.  She's been in that room for a few months now, and enjoys it, but we still haven't finished putting it all together.

Well, this past weekend, we embarked on phase two of the "Great Room Switch," which was an unexpected addition to the original plan.  While cleaning out my grandpa's house/attic, my mom found my grandparents' old dining room table, which she thought had been gone for years.  I've never had a dining room table, and no one else wanted it, so my mom asked me if I wanted it.  Our dining room has been our play room ever since Rachel was little, but we've been talking about eventually turning it into a real dining room at some point.  Now that we had the dining room table, we decided to get to work.

This means that all of the toys have to go in the girls' rooms.  Rebecca had quite a bit of room, since we still hadn't really finished with her room.  We're still trying to figure out Rachel's room--she has SO much stuff and is a big pack rat who doesn't want to get rid of anything, so her room is a little more challenging.

But anyway, today I worked on Rebecca's room.  The toys are almost all out of the dining room now.  Once it's looking like a real dining room, I'll take some pictures.  But here's a glimpse at Rebecca's close-to-finished room.  (Ignore the fan....it's her white noise during nap time--and notice the Hello Kitty poster, which I FINALLY just put up after she received it LAST Christmas!!!  I kept thinking we'd be changing her room, so I didn't want to put it up in her old room, but I never dreamed it would take almost a whole year to get to this point!)

We haven't had the trains out in a couple of years.  She never seemed very interested in them, so we just put them away and used the train table to house other toys, like castles, lalaloopsy houses, etc.--it was just a play table.  But she has been asking for trains lately, so we decided to give it a try.  It's kind of in the middle of her room, but the room is big enough that it works for now, as long as she plays with them.  That blank space behind it, we're trying to decide whether to put our toy kitchen there or a bookshelf that's currently in the dining room, and it'll house more toys.  We'll see.

And totally off topic, but a week or two ago my mom took Rachel to see The Lion King Broadway show, which was touring in Columbus.  Rachel loved it.  She begged to wear this Christmas dress from two or three years ago--it still fits her, which is a little sad (the sleeves are too short, but otherwise, it fits her fine!).

growing up

Oh, this girl of mine.....she's growing up!

That is her third grade picture.  She looks so much older than this one from last year:

Right now she's really (REALLY) into Minecraft.  I only let her play 20 minutes a day, if at all, thinking I could keep this obsession from taking over her life, but even though she hardly gets to play, she talks about it all the time.  She reads books about it, plans her strategies, makes masks in order to act out Minecraft, makes her own Minecraft books....even makes Minecraft things out of legos....

She always has gotten stuck on things and talked about little else while she's in that phase.  I guess Minecraft is just the flavor of the month.

boo at the zoo

A few days ago we took the girls to the zoo to their special halloween thing they have called Boo at the Zoo.

Rebecca, aka Wonder Woman, had a blast having people call her Wonder Woman (she would say stuff like, "Yep, you got my name right!" or "Wow, they really think I'm Wonder Woman!" when people would call her that.  She's so funny.

Rachel, on the other hand, who insisted on being a witch this year, even though we don't really have a witch costume (and she didn't really want me to buy anything special when I DID offer!) got upset at one point and said, "How come everyone is talking about Rebecca's costume, and not mine?"  It made me sad, but right after that someone said, "Wow, look, it's Wonder Woman!  And look, a witch, too!" and that made her smile that someone noticed.  She's still the cutest witch I know, even if her costume isn't all that original....

mourning

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/toledoblade/obituary.aspx?n=charles-breeden&pid=172945156&fhid=5503

He was one of the smartest men I knew.  He's always been one of my biggest cheerleaders, helping me with sports, coaching my basketball team with my dad, sitting on the sidelines at my track meets, helping me with math and science homework, cheering me on in whatever I've done.  

Growing up he took me on a number of trips, and I have so many memories of the places we went together.  The first time I saw the Grand Canyon was with him.  We went to Disney World a number of times.  No matter where we stayed, he made sure I had a pool to swim in, because he knew I loved to swim and dive.  They are all trips I'll never forget.

He called me "Wendy Jane."  No one else calls me that.

My grandpa was a big reason why I've continued writing this blog.  I don't think very many people read it anymore, but he always did, and loved seeing the girls' pictures and hearing about their lives.  He was the blog's biggest fan.  A lot of times I would write, even when I didn't have a lot to say, just because I knew he would be checking and want to hear something about them!  

We lost him on Friday.

I love you, Grandpa.  I love how much you loved my girls and me.  I will miss you.

Family fun

We took a trip this weekend to the farm where we've gone several times over the last few years.  The girls were too busy having fun to notice that it was windy and freezing cold!  They had a great time.

Wonder Woman

I've been searching and searching for a Wonder Woman costume for Rebecca for weeks.  She wanted to be her for Halloween, and a friend had a costume she could borrow, but I really wanted to find her one of her own so she could play dress up whenever she wanted in it.  I knew I'd get my money's worth out of it, but I also didn't want to pay full price, because they're expensive.  But not only are they expensive, but they're also hard to find.   Especially gently used, which is what I was looking for.  No one seems to be into Wonder Woman.  Lots of Superman, Supergirl, Batman, etc, but no Wonder Woman.  But I finally won one in an ebay auction, and it arrived today (after Rebecca asking me every single day if it had come yet).  

When she got up from her nap, I had it all laying out on the table for her to see.  She was more than thrilled.....ecstatic!  She's had it on all afternoon and evening, except when we made her take it off to eat dinner.

I need to fix the boot coverings--they're too big--but otherwise, it fits great (I was worried it might not fit).  She's in heaven.

catching up

I feel like I'm constantly playing catch up lately.  Things feel so busy that I get behind on everything, and then it takes a day to catch up on something.  Last weekend I caught up on laundry.  Wednesday I caught up on some cleaning I'd been wanting to do forever (there's still tons to clean, but this was cleaning out the fridge, freezer, and pantry, which really needed it, and I'd been putting off for months). I've been trying to catch up with various friends.  Catching up on errands....you name it, I'm playing catch up.  So here I am, playing catch up on my blog.

I guess fall always feels like this, to some extent, but this year it's harder to keep all of my ducks in a row.  Rachel's busier, so I'm always running places, it seems, plus I'm working two days a week, which adds to my to do list on the other days of the week.  My job has required lots of different trainings, too, so I've been trying to knock those out.  I have two more nights in a couple of weeks that I'll be gone for that, and then I can be done with that for awhile.  Whew!

We had to start a Google calendar online that my husband and I can both access, because we have so much going on that we each need to consult it before we add something, so he was calling me and asking, "What's going on on such and such a day?"  Now we can each just look there and figure it out and it's working well....as long as we remember to add the new stuff to the calendar!

And our lives are definitely less busy than most!  I don't know how families do it where both mom and dad work full time, and kids are in sports and dance and music lessons, and so forth.  Rachel only has two activities and that feels like a lot.  I wish she could do dance and music, because she'd love them, but I honestly don't know how I'd handle it all.

So.....catching up.....  Rachel is loving school.  I think she'd be happy anywhere, but she does love her new school.  Lately she's discovered a love for geography.  She's always loved maps and so forth, but she's been learning a lot of geography at school, and not only does she know everything she's supposed to know for school, but she's taken it upon herself to learn so much more, too.  I'm thrilled that she's interested and doing so well.  She's also really loving reading and is reading above and beyond what she's asked to read for school (which seems like a lot anyway).  She still struggles with math, and we spend LOTS of time on it in the evenings, doing her homework, and it will probably never be her favorite, but I'm happy that she has areas where she's excelling and feeling good about herself.  

Rebecca is still happy, snuggly, and TALKATIVE.  Man, can that girl talk.  She enjoys preschool, although she also loves it when she asks, "Do I have school today, Mommy?" And I tell her no.  She loves playing at home, but loves being at school, too.  Her teachers say she's doing great, and I'm thrilled to hear that she's listening and following directions, as I didn't really know how she'd do, being as talkative as she is.  She loves Super Heroes right now.  I guess she's been on a kick for awhile, all starting with The Incredibles a year or so ago, but she's also developed a love for Batman, Robin, and Wonder Woman, especially.  She checks their books out at the library all the time and has been watching old episodes of Super Friends from the 70s.  Rebecca is to Super Heroes right now as Rachel used to be to princesses.  Obsessed.  Rebecca likes princesses, too, but not to the level that Rachel always loved them.  (Rachel still loves them, though she's a little more reluctant to say so now.  Her favorite show is still Sofia the First, though I doubt many other third graders have much interest in that show anymore, so she probably wouldn't tell many people that.)

We finally got the rooms switched, so Rebecca is in her new purple big girl room.  She plays in her room much more readily now, and she really likes being in there.  It means a lot less mess and noise downstairs (sometimes--there are times she'd much rather be with us downstairs).  There are still a few lingering projects, like putting her closet doors back on and putting stuff up on her new walls, but we're almost there.

So that's what's going on here.  Maybe it won't be so long before I can catch up on here again next time.

fall fun ( before fall even officially begins!)

We went to visit Grandma and Grandpa this weekend to celebrate my day's birthday.  They took us to the apple orchard and pumpkin farm.  

At the apple orchard they each got to choose a ride.  Rachel code the barrel train ride.

Rebecca chose the ponies.

At the pumpkin farm they loved the huge corn box.  

Look how filthy they got!

Filthy kids is usually a sign of happy kids.....and they had a great day!

Happy birthday to Grandpa!