Decorating the tree

Tonight we put up the Christmas tree. Joel went out for the evening so we spent the time decorating and watching Christmas movies. The only thing that would have made it better was if I had thought to make some hot chocolate.

The girls love decorating the tree. In fact they hung 90% of the ornaments themselves ( I just had to go back and rearrange about 90% of them so that there wasn't more than one ornament on the same small branch). Here are a couple of pics (really bad ones though) of the big girls helping me assemble the tree and of Miriam and Amanda posing by the tree after they had hung up some ornaments.



What I really enjoyed the most about the whole evening was how nice Madeleine and Miriam worked together. They really worked hard to be fair and to help each other. This week was really tough (Madeleine was sick from the Wed. before Thanksgiving and didn't go to school until Thursday of this week). Unfortunately the hard week meant that the girls argued almost nonstop every day. I watched them decorate the tree and felt such relief at them getting along. Heck, my relief wasn't even diminished when I overheard Miriam saying to Madeleine "I bet we get an extra present for being nice while we decorate the tree." I don't know that I agree with Miriam, but I can say that they probably won't get lumps of coal since they were able to pull off such good behavior.

First day of 1st grade

Madeleine started school today! She is going to Montgomery Elementary and it is about 1 mile from our house. Oddly enough, they offer buses to EVERYONE that attends the school. So her bus stop is four houses down from us. This morning though, I took her. She was a little nervous but did a great job going into her class.

The only issue she should have today is my fault. While writing this email, I realized that I forgot to give her lunch money. What a bad mom! I hope she isn't too upset :(

Afternoon at the beach

We got to Florida yesterday afternoon. We are spending a long weekend at her house close to Flagler Beach. This is the girls first time at the beach. I will post more pictures later!

Budding chef

This morning I was treated to breakfast at La Madeleine's. She did everything herself while I read the recipe and retrieved the measuring spoons and cups. They were fantastic. My only complaint is that I had to bus my own table.

New family member!

This weekend we added a four legged kid to our family. Sadie is an 11 week old West Highland White Terrier. So far Sadie is adjusting well--she loves the kids and Madeleine loves her. The other two girls will take some time before they warm up to her. Miriam and Amanda have never really been around dogs much. So they are a little on edge with the dog but they like her--they just get a little jumpy when she starts darting and around and playing like puppies do.

For those of you who have never heard of a Westie (short for West Highland White Terrier) and are curious about them, check out this link.

Disney on Ice

Joel was able to get the girls and I Disney on Ice tickets for this morning. The girls had a blast. The were enthralled by all their favorite characters skating around. They had been looking forward to it all week long and were not let down by the show.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take my camera to the show and the only decent pictures I got were at home before we left. But I took a couple of pictures with my phone at one of the exhibits.

Halloween 2009

We had a terrific Halloween this year. If you can't tell, the girls all dressed up as characters from the Wizard of Oz. Miriam was Dorothy. Madeleine was Glenda the Good Witch. And Amanda was the cowardly lion.

Of course the big girls had a blast running from house to house getting candy, but even Amanda had a ball. After the first house, Amanda had it all figured out--people were passing out candy. After that, Amanda had to have a peice of candy from every house; even the house where Michael Meyers was handing out candy (for the non horror movie fans, he was the scary character from the Halloween movies).

We let the girls stay up extra late (9pm) handing out candy to the kids. We had about 50 or so kids come by.

Snow Days!!

I am sure you have all heard about the huge Colorado snow storm. This is the girls second day off of school and we have been having a blast. Yesterday, we spent about an hour playing outside in the snow with some friends. Then we made hot chocolate. And after dinner we made snow ice cream!


The funniest part was that Miriam wore her nightgown ALL day. She just pulled her snow suit on over it. Following is a video of the big girls playing in the snow and some pics of our day yesterday (I extracted the pics of the kids from a video so they aren't the best quality). The first picture is one of our back deck; it will give you some perspective of how much snow we have had.

Trip to Buena Vista

Two weekends ago we took a couple of days off and went down to Buena Vista. It was gorgeous. It was just past the peek of the fall colors but was still amazing with all the leaves changing. We rented the perfect teeny, tiny cabin just outside of Buena Vista. The campground that the cabin was in was deserted. We spent our days driving and hiking in the mountains around town. We got to go to a cool ghost town and old cemetery. After that we got to tour a goat dairy and Madeleine helped milk the goats. Then the next day we all hiked up to Agnes Vaille Falls--a beautiful little waterfall. The hike wasn't very long but it was pretty challenging. We were really impressed with how well the big girls handled it. Madeleine was able to do it all by herself and Miriam just needed to hold Joel's hand in the rough spots. Of course, we carried Amanda the whole way up but she walked the last part going down.

We had such a great trip and enjoyed getting out to the mountains one last time before it got cold. And we barely missed the cold--the day we left it snowed several inches later in the day.

Miriam goes to Preschool!

Miriam had been waiting for this day for 2 years (ever since Madeleine went to preschool). For the past six MONTHS she has asked me pretty much daily how much longer until she went to school.

And when the big day arrived, Miriam was not disappointed. Here are a few things that she told me about today:

-I read a book to a little girl. Because you know I can read now. (I guess since she is in school now, Miriam thinks that must mean that she can read.)

-I made a 100 new friends!!!

-I am the biggest girl in my class. And I am bigger than the boys too. I am BIG! (If you look at the group shot below, it looks like Miriam might be right--she does appear to be bigger than her classmates.)

Miriam was so ready for school, that we decided to put her in it 5 days a week. So she goes to school everyday from 8:30 to 12:30. She even gets to eat her lunch there (she is super excited about that).

Amanda and I really enjoyed our day today. We had a nice quiet morning and then the afternoon was pretty quiet and relaxing with just Miriam around. Then once Madeleine came home things got rowdy and we all went outside to play! So far, I am really liking this school year :)