Record?

Is this a record for longest blogging break for us? Since it's not like I have tons more time now than the last 2.5 months, I'm not going to give you detailed posts on everything we did, but just a quick cliffnotes version:

Greg and Kristin got married - the girls loved jumping off the altar stairs before the wedding while pictures were happening. Congrats, G and K!

They also liked dressing up.

We got a little snow.

It was even enough for sledding, despite all the leaves poking through. But had to do it anyway, who knows if there will be any more the rest of the season!!

The girls had their hair done the same way.

We got more snow. This time it was good for playing soccer in the partially-shoveled driveway.

Sage turned two. Her sister was excited also.

Christmas excitement - just a little.

Cookies

YUM!

Wonderful baby present!

Good friends came to visit with their two girls. It was a very girly house for a weekend!

Oh yes, and we got more snow.

Sage's first french braid - had to have one just like her sisters.

Pile on Mama is a fun game when I get home from work. I taught a new January term course that was fun - but left me very few moments to do anything other than work.  These were good moments even if I was getting squished.

We got lots more snow... and more... and more... and I think we quit taking pictures of it.

That about sums it up! Back to regularly scheduled random, fairly rare posting!

Chef Claire!

Claire got an apron and a kid's cookbook for a birthday present. She loves them and as you can see in the picture, she loves cooking from it and is very proud of herself!  She made us little English muffin pizzas (with ham and pineapple on them). She wasn't actually as much of a fan of eating them as making them unfortunately, but Will and I thought they were okay.

She has also made (all with parental assistance, of course) applesauce muffins, which were tasty and she really liked, and last night she made dinner again - sloppy joes! We all liked them (except Sage, who refused to try them). And Claire liked them even though she knew she had put onions and mustard in them herself! :) (We don't usually have sloppy joes at home but she's had them at school and liked them, so that's why she chose the recipe.) Then:  "Sloppy joes have mustard in them??????"

Matching Cupcakes

And they're even sharing toys! (the picture below was taken a few minutes before the first one... before the sharing was finally successfully mediated.)

Sage's hike

A few weeks back at the start of the weekend we were talking about things we might need to get done that weekend and Sage piped up, "Hike!" We said, okay, maybe we could go for a hike the next day.  Right away the next morning she said to me: "Hike! hike? hike!!" So we went on a hike.

We all enjoyed it.

Birthday hike

We took a short hike in late afternoon on Claire's birthday in order to collect a few little samples for viewing under the new microscope. Moss, creek water, and a deer tick were all successfully collected.

Birthday!

Can't believe someone turned 7 recently!

She had a fabulous day!

Her first microscope! "I LOVE my microscope!" (direct quote the next day)

She also got an apron and cookbook for kids! Tonight she's making dinner for us, and she's super-excited!

Someone else found a use for some of the tissue paper in the presents, inspired by this.