Odds and Ends

Here's a little bit of what's been going on the past couple of weeks.

St. Patrick's Day!

I had a Groupon to use so the girls and I went to the Children's Museum in Naperville. We had never been before and it was a lot of fun! Cara was completely overwhelmed at first and Lila kept wanting to run to the next area without telling me, but once they settled down they really enjoyed it. Here they are using teamwork!

Lila in the wind tunnel. She loved this even though she is terrified of the hand dryers in public bathrooms. She even went in the wind tunnel to dry off her pants after she played in the water area!

Cara had fun watching Lila play in the bubbles.

The last day of the gymnasitcs (or germastics as Lila says) session was last week so I got to watch and take some pictures. Here she is practicing her rebounds.

And her letter T.

Ian is on Spring Break this week and left to go to his dad's this morning. Lila still has school, but all of her other classes are off this week, so I may have to get creative to fill in some of the extra down time!

And to end on a funny note, a dinner table conversation from a few nights ago:

I bent over to pick something up and apparently groaned or made a noise.

Lila: Mommy, why did you make that sound when you bent over?

Me: Because I'm old.

Lila: Oh yes, you are very old.

Ian: You're not old. You're in your prime.

Me: Thanks, Ian. That's nice to hear.

Lila: Mommy is 30.

Ian: Oh, you're 30? I thought you were 29...

Me: So, I'm not in my prime?

Ian: I guess so. At the very end of it.

Blah. Winter.

When we moved back to Illinois I told myself that I was choosing to move back and wouldn't complain about the weather. And overall, I think I do pretty well, but this time of year is rough because IT'S TIME FOR WINTER TO BE OVER BUT IT'S STILL HANGING AROUND. I hate that. I don't think asking for 50+ degrees and a little sun is too much by the middle of March, but apparently it is. The reason I'm telling you this is that the aforementioned weather has made me less than enthusiastic about picture taking. And what pictures I have taken have been sitting on my camera, not being uploaded or posted.

I finally uploaded pictures today, though, so this is what we'll call a catch up post.

Ian had his last swim meet of the season on President's Day. He did a good job in his events and had an overall successful season. Up next, he'll be going back to Fencing and giving Archery a try.

I remembered to bring my camera to the last day of the dance session. Lila knows first and second position and all of the moves to her songs!

Katie turned 29 and we went out to celebrate. We had a very fun time, even if I am getting too old to party like my younger siblings.

Lila was sad that she didn't get to go to Aunt Katie's birthday party, so she sang Happy Birthday to Aunt Katie instead.

Chris and I dressed up for the Junior League fundraiser.

Today was the St. Patrick's Day Parade! Due to the cold temps and the 30 mph wind gusts, Cara and I sat this one out, but Lila, Ian and Chris went and had a great time. Here's Lila looking to see if the parade has started. She does have green on under all those layers!

And Ian with the bagpipers in the background.

Yay!

Exciting news happening over at Cutest of the Bunch.

Happy Valentine's Day!

This and That

Lila's Curriculum Fair at school was this week. I didn't take any pictures, but we got to see all of the projects they've been working on in school. They made melting snowmen, penguins and polar bears and did some science experiments with ice. We also got a chance to check out what the 4 year old class and the Kindergarten class have been working on as well.



Then, on Thursday, I got to help out with the Valentine's Party in Lila's classroom. I really enjoy being a room mom and having the chance to see the kids interact and meet all of Lila's friends.



Cara also had her 15 month appointment on Thursday. She weighs 20 lbs 13 oz and is 29 inches long. That makes her 25th percentile for weight and 10th percentile for height. The doctor was impressed with her verbal skills and how social she is as well as her fine motor skills, so she's doing great! She is getting more independent every day. She walks all over the house and is perfectly content to explore on her own, but she still likes to be in on all of the action and to keep up with her siblings. I took her to story time at the library this week for the first time and she LOVED it. She listened to the story and clapped along with all of the rhymes- it was adorable to watch her have so much fun!



Cara can say Mama, Dada, Nana, Pa, Lila, Ian, shoe (still a favorite, she's obsessed), cheese, chips, thank you, paci, drink, more, bowl, this, sheep, ball, pool, yay!, hi, bye bye, boo, okay, and yes. And she knows quite a few animal sounds too: woof (probably the word she says the most), quack, baa, oink, neigh and moo. Plus, she can make a fish face and knows that a bunny goes hop hop hop.

Sail Away

Last week, Chris and I went on a week-long Caribbean cruise on the Freedom of the Seas. We stopped at CoCo Cay, Bahamas, St. Thomas and St. Maarten and had three days at sea. It was fantastic! We both love cruising- this is my fifth cruise and Chris's third- and this trip just demonstrated why we loved it so much. The weather was amazing, the ship was perfect and overall we just had a really good time.

The view from my beach chair in CoCo Cay.

In St. Thomas we went shopping (of course) and then that night we had a sunset harbor cruise around the island. It was really low key and fun and may be my favorite cruise excursion ever. It doesn't hurt that champagne was included!

The sunset

One night the ship entertainment was a magician. He asked for volunteers and Chris immediately rasied his hand. He was picked, so he got to assist during the "cut the woman in half" trick. He said it was very cool and he still has no idea how the magician did it. Chris is on the far right.

Chris with his three dinners on lobster night--prime rib and two lobster tails.


One of the the professional ones we had taken on the ship.

While we were gone, Mom and Momoo stayed at our house and took care of the kids and animals. We are SO grateful that they were willing to do that. And everyone had a great time. The girls got lots of one on one attention during the day and everything went smoothly. Except for a little thing like a record breaking blizzard, maybe you heard about it? I've heard it called several things, but my favorite is Sn...O.M.G. We got 22 inches of snow and everything was shut down in a city that never shuts down for weather. I'm glad we missed it and glad that everything here was fine.

Mom took pictures of the snow and of the kids during the week, but I forgot to get them from her camera before she left.

Oops! It's been a month!

Um, oops. I know I said January was a slow blog month, but I really didn't intend for it to be the middle of February before I updated. It's been pretty much the normal routine around here.

Lila did a winter animal unit at school and then at home had to make an animal out of clay to take to the classroom. She chose a penguin and did a fantastic job making one! Here she is making it out of clay.

And here's the finished project after it dried and she painted it.

My friend Shannon celebrated her 30th birthday with one of the most fun parties I've been to. It was a bar crawl with the party trolley taking us around the city. It was a blast! Katie joined in the fun and Tim even met up with us for awhile, including a nostalgic trip to La Bamba!

Emily, Me and Shannon