"Dear Santa
I have been very good this year.  Please can I have a princess suitcase.  Noella would like a baby dress up.  Please take care of the kids we are going to help this year.  Please bring my daddy and mommy dress ups.  Love, Mariel
PS Please be nice to my doggies."
She thinks email would be the fastest way to send the letter, but Patrick was concerned that Santa would miss her drawings.  Also her "word" of BAW1 on the top of the letter (she is not too clear on what she thinks she is spelling).  As a compromise between email and regular mail (which she doubts will get it to Santa with due speed) we left it in one of the fireplaces for the elves to come pick up. 

Happy Holidays...

I am thankful for many things.  On the list is a week "off" (not driving to Edwardsville counts as vacation, even if I am working from home!), parents willing to regularly drive 1800 miles to come visit us, kids who are healthy, bright, and generally well behaved (I did consider boarding preschool earlier this week, but we are doing well today), and a very fortunate life.  I am also thankful for a successful portrait session earlier this week- somehow the photographer managed to capture a number of very sweet pictures.  Here are some highlights!

Its been a good weekend- busy in an unusual combination of being both fun and productive.

We had friends over for dinner on Friday night.  They brought delicious pizza, some mozzerella sausage roll creation that makes me wonder how I ever lived as a vegetarian, and one of Mariel's favorite friends and playmates.  The two "princesses" had great fun in their imaginary world, spending a lot of time spinning in circles, falling on the floor, and laughing hysterically.

After dinner, I got to go out with more friends to a karaoke night downtown (I was an excellent wallflower).

Saturday was incredibly warm and nice, and we managed to rake up 10 yard bags of leaves, clear the backyard and driveway of all of the piles of construction debris (some of which predated us), and Patrick fixed a rotted windowsill.  He got to go out to dinner with Tim and then to a Blues game, which they won (the Blues, not Patrick and Tim). 

Sunday has been a good day, too- our basement is all organized and relatively clean.  Patrick and Mariel put together an early Christmas present from Aunt Carla and got to sit outside after dinner and make smores (Noella got graham crackers) under the stars.  There are some advantages to daylight savings and having dark outside at 5:30!

The Budding Picasso, Part 2

One of the (many) things that I never thought about before having kids of my own was how suddenly they move into new phases.  And how quickly this becomes so normal that it is easy to forget that it was ever any other way.  So I wanted to put up an example of Mariel's new art phase, since I had blogged about her artistry before.  For just a few weeks now she has been making little stick people when she draws.  I have no idea how it happened or where she got this skill from (maybe Babci showed her?  It wasn't me!).  Truly, they just started popping up every so often.  Here is one portion of her epic, poster board sized drawing from this afternoon.  That is her, and on another part of the board was Noella, the tiniest little stick figure and face that I ever saw.

She is also starting with limited letters and numbers- right now, she can write M and W and the number 1 (which I suppose we could also count as the letter I or lowercase L, but she insists that it is a 1).  Today we practiced A, so we'll see if that comes up again.

Mariel's wedding

Mariel has been looking forward to this weekend a very long time.  Officially, it was to celebrate the marriage of my brother, John, and my new sister in law, Kate, but we really all know that it was Mariel's wedding.  She enjoyed the attention, the flowers, and her beautiful dress.  The candy bribes were also quite popular (during rehearsal, she got an M&M everytime she walked nicely down the aisle) as well as the fact that she got to watch TV all morning in the bridal suite while the bridal party got our hair and makeup done.  She even got to go to the grown up party (aka reception) for a little bit. 

I am sure that others have much better pictures- between my own role as bridesmaid and messenger and balancing Mariel and Noella (who did not get to go to any festivities but remains blissfully unaware) I only took a handful.  I had good intentions at the reception, but after a few glasses of wine my recollection of those intentions faded a bit.

First Limo Ride

Flowers

And those other people who seemed to think it was their wedding

Another weekend excitement was Noella's first true word- and perhaps her first boyfriend.  She seems to have fallen in love with John's best man, Bob. Lucky for Bob, he also has a very easy name to say.  So "Bob" it is!