a little impromptu ice skating

Well, I've blogged before about how Clara has been bitten by the ice skating bug... with all of this talk about Clara, Alex thought he might like to give skating another try too (he had taken a learn to skate class when he was five). It just never worked out for me to take him... that is until last night. :-)

I had signed Alex up for a park district class for the spring and in order to finalize his registration I had to fill out a form at the park where he will be taking the class. This park just happens to have an outdoor ice skating rink... which just happened to only have about 10 people skating on it.... and Alex just happened to think that this might be a good opportunity to try skating again...
Immediately after stepping onto the ice he was flat on his back... BUT... he popped right back up again and went for it...
I'm so thankful that I've started carrying my point and shoot camera in my purse.... you just never know when something spontaneous will happen.
He fell a LOT... but he actually did quite well. He could get up some pretty good speed. I'm thinking that we might have to buy him skates for next winter since this rink is near Clara's ballet class and it will be something fun for him to do during that time. Unfortunately, this weekend will be the last for the outdoor rinks... we discovered it just a little too late.
(Alex's reaction to being told it was time to go!)

Oh well... there's always next year! :-)

it's all about the hair

Or so it seemed for a couple of days this week. :-)

Tuesday Before...
The boy was in desperate need of a haircut! He hadn't had a haircut since November.

Tuesday After...
Ahhh... I can see his eyes again!!!

Wednesday Before....
Clara has a fascination with naturally curly hair. Every once in a while she'll bring me the sponge rollers at bedtime so she can have curly hair the next day.

Wednesday After...

We put some gel in her wet hair before we put the rollers in and her curls stayed pretty well! She needs to find some more of her little rollers though so we can put a few more of those in next time.

So... I need to choose my project{365} photos for Tuesday and Wednesday from this bunch... should I go with the befores or the afters?

days 51-53

day 51...
... Clara came home from dance to find that Alex was next door playing. Given that she was going to have to entertain herself, she did what she does best... she redeemed an iTunes giftcard and went shopping. She ended up buying a game for her nano... but is currently agonizing over what music to purchase next... she wants the Sound of Music soundtrack and Romeo and Juliet by Prokofiev.

day 52....
... the last swim meet of the season. I have more photos and more details, I'll try to post those soon.

day 53...
... a friend and I went to see the Lyric Opera's The Elixir of Love last night. Just amazing. This is just a sad, overexposed cell phone photo of the fire curtain while we waited for the show to begin.

charlie brown

I finally got around to scrapping some of my photos from Halloween.

Here's a layout of Alex in his costume....
I wasn't sure what to use as the title, but I had the phrase "you're a good man, Charlie Brown" stuck in my head. So I googled the lyrics to the song and used them on the layout.

Supplies:
A Beautiful Mess - The Kit
by TaylorMade + Emily Powers @oscraps.com
font - arial black

days 46-50

day 46...
... bubble bath.

day 47...
... paczki day!

day 48...
... the kids and I went to see the dress rehearsal of the Lyric Opera's The Damnation of Faust (more about that here).

day 49....
... I realized after going to bed that I had forgotten to take a photo that day. Rather than miss my first day, I took a photo of my clock with my phone... my photo of the day with 20 minutes to spare.

day 50...
... Clara belting out show tunes in the kitchen. This time it was Any Dream Will Do from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat.

Paczki Day!

Yesterday was Paczki Day! I had a lot of work to do to make up for last year's Paczki Day failure.

Thankfully, it was swim day with friends and since we were already all in the car together, we decided to go out in search of paczki.

We found some....

Not only did they have paczki left... but they had lots of choices available...
We ended up with two lemon, a cinnamon apple, a cheese, a cherry and one chocolate covered custard filled paczki. Yum!!

Jeff came home early from work so we had a mid-afternoon snack....
Clara enjoying her cinnamon apple one.

And Alex...
... biting into his lemon paczki.

So much better than Pumpkin Muffin Day of '09! :-)

ice skating

Here are a few more of the photos from our church's ice skating party...


The rink was one of the city rinks right downtown behind Millennium Park. It was a cool little hidden gem of a rink.
Clara spent most of her time hanging out with the pink posse in the photo from my last post. Those three girls also take ballet together.
I think they were more interested in chatting and playing around than they were in actually skating... but they had a great time together! And, if I remember right, that was basically what I was interested in when I used to go roller skating with friends as a kid. :-)

Clara and another one of her friends...
You would have thought it was sixty degrees out! But no... 31 degrees... but of course they all got quite warm skating and kept tossing us moms articles of clothing as they skated by!

catching up... days 41-45

day 41....
RECESS! Snow fort building with friends.

day 42...
An intense game of Jr. Scrabble with Clara. :-)

day 43...
Clara messing around with the homemade ipod Valentine she had gotten from a friend.

day 44...
Clara and friends at the church's ice skating party.

day 45...
Alex and his "pancake extravaganza"... so yummy! (taken with my phone)

Some Valentine's Day photos...

This is the outfit the girl put together for church today....
Festive, isn't it? :-)

She was very proud of this outfit.
No head injury in the photo above, just dripped on.

I hope you all had a fabulous Valentine's Day! We had a good one... a little crazy, but good. We went to church this morning and then for a quick lunch that didn't up being as quick as we needed it to be. Alex had to be at rehearsal at 1:30... he made it there at 1:29. Jeff had a haircut. I accidentally told Jeff that Alex was to be picked up at 4:00... oops, that's when tomorrow's rehearsal ends. Today was a run through that lasted until they got it right. We finally got the call to pick him up at around 7:15... thankfully Jeff was anticipating that he would be done around 7 and was already on his way to pick him up. They picked up dinner on the way home so we could eat as we watched our Valentine's Day family movie pick.... Ever After. Whew!

Anyway... I have such a backlog of photos to post!! I have been keeping up with my project{365}, plus I have a bunch of other photos. I'll try to at least post my photo-a-day photos tomorrow.

Happy Valentine's Day!

supplies:
Supplies:
Love notes 2
heart - Love birds
all by Emily Powers @oscraps.com

Supplies:

template from Barenaked book 1 (cropped to 4x6)
kraft paper - Funky love song
all by Emily Powers @oscraps.com

snow!

The kids had the promise of some playtime in the snow if they got their schoolwork done in time. I'm not sure that I've ever seen them work that fast before :-)

Here they are... all bundled up... ready to go to their friends' house...
Once we got there, the boys went to play in the back and the girls played up front.

Clara crafting the perfect snowball...
Clara, her friend and her friend's little brother...
When I went to pick them up, they had started construction on a snow fort.... the building continued today (and I may or may not have photos... haven't downloaded them yet to see how they turned out).

days 39 & 40

day 39...
my current iphone app obsession... Words with Friends. It's a scrabble-like game that you can play with friends who also have the app. If you have the app and want to play... send me a note with your username!

day 40....
We finally got another big snow this winter!! The kids were so excited to go out and play in it... so they plowed through their school work so they could meet up with friends.

days 36-38

day 36...
The boy enjoying one of the Cadbury Creme Eggs Jeff had brought him back from the UK.

day 37...
Clara's "new to her" ice skates. Clara has developed a love of ice skating. She's extremely fortunate to have a really good friend who takes her along when they go skating on the weekends. We took a trip to Play it Again Sports to see if they had any skates in her size. We lucked out in finding a pair, just her size for only $15.

day 38...
This wasn't taken by me. Clara went skating with her friend today and her mom emailed me this photo. It was just too cute to not be my photo of the day today.

a quick little layout

I thought this template was perfect to use for a quick layout of Clara's first swim meet. It is Experiment No. 7 by Emily Powers at Oscraps. It's a free gift from Emily so go pick it up!!

Pattern papers and hearts - funky love song
Solid paper - classic cardstock
... all by Emily Powers!

days 33-35

day 33...
the boy and his ipod

day 34...
my sick girl :-(

She's not "sick" sick... just a cold... but the runny nose and cough are wearing her down. She was zoned out watching PBS kids in the photo above. She's feeling a little better now... so hopefully we'll keep moving the right direction.

day 35...
On our way back from Walgreens to stock up on cold fighting supplies, we stopped for mini-cupcakes. This mini-carrot cake cupcake with a pink carrot on top was the one Alex chose for Clara.