daddy daughter dance...

Saturday night was the big Daddy Daughter Valentine's Dance. Clara and her friends had been looking forward to this for weeks!

Clara hadn't had a haircut since May, so we figured Saturday was as good a day as any to get it trimmed. Beth was running a little behind, so they grabbed a starbucks (vanilla steamer) to sip while they waited....
The trim...
The cut is complete....
... time to style!

The style started with curls....
(Jeff had to leave to get Alex, so I walked over and took over "Clara duty" at this point)

The back....
The side...
(her poor ears!!! we had just came in from walking home.... and I guess the lack of hood or hat took it's toll on her little ears! they warmed up quickly though!)

The front....
She LOVED her hair style! Beth did such a fabulous job!

Here are her "perfect" shoes....
And finally, here's Daddy and Daughter all dressed up and ready to go....

They started out with going to dinner....
The quality of that photo wasn't the best.... but it's probably one of my favorites from the night!

And here are the girls dancing with their daddies....



And a couple of group shots...

And some more dancing....


The one above is another one of my favorites..... the flash made their eyes a little goofy, but I LOVE the genuine smiles on their faces! They really had a great time!

(and thanks again to Jeff for documenting the night for me!)

days 29-35

Wow.... I got a little behind with posting these! But with these, I'll be caught up again (for a day) :-)

day 29...
... skiing at Devil's Head.

day 30....
.... family game night... Disney's Guilty Party!

day 31....
... groceries are here! Gearing up for the big storm!

day 32....
.... a little hot cocoa with whipped cream to drink while we watched the snow come down.

day 33...
... BLIZZARD!!

day 34....
.... snow day #2... playing mario cart with the neighbors.

day 35....
.... back to school (taken with my brand new little point and shoot!)

blizzard....

It started snowing here on Tuesday, just before I needed to pick Clara up from school. Once it started, it didn't stop until Wednesday morning. And then it started again with a couple hours of lake enhanced snow.

So, Wednesday morning we were out in our pj's walking the dogs and inspecting the snow drifts...
And then, what started as a walk.... turned into a run....

Mango the snow dog....
She has a love/hate relationship with snow. I'm thinking that she wishes she was born a husky or another similar breed so she could stay out in it longer. She loves playing in it, but she gets too cold too fast!

After we got the dogs back in, Clara and Alex suited up and started work on their fort.

Here's Clara pointing out where the fort will be built...
Adding more snow to the pile...
And there's Alex...
his job was to take the snow from the deck....
and shovel it down to Clara so she could add it to the fort....
Then it was time for a mid-morning snack break. Here are the cinnamon rolls I made...
... this was my first attempt at homemade cinnamon rolls and they turned out really yummy!! A fun treat for Clara's first official snow day!

Later Jeff called me out to check out the garage. This is what we saw when we opened the garage door....
After the cinnamon rolls, the kids had gone next door to watch a movie with the neighbors. Once the movie was over, they decided to all come out and play in the snow.

The boys on the block....
and the girls....
Clara girl...
Then Jeff called us out to the alley. A portion of the alley was so deep and drifted that they weren't even going to attempt to dig it out. He thought that would be a great place for the kids to play. So we gathered up our stuff and moved back there.

Sledding... city kid style.....


Most of the men from our block had all joined together that afternoon with a common goal... to dig a way out of the alley. It was a little like a snow day block party! It was nice to catch up with the people we knew already and also meet some of our neighbors for the first time.

Here's Jeff doing his part....
MAN DOWN!! Alex wiped out....
A snow covered, post wipe out, Alex...
Trying out a new sledding "hill"....
Clara planted herself, face first, into a drift....
Alex off in the deep snow....
And Clara maturely handling the fact that she had just cracked her sled in half....
They had such a great time!!! I thought we would never get them to come back in!! They loved all of the digging, tunneling and "sledding". When we finally got them in, we had a nice dinner of black bean soup and cornbread before they took hot showers and got into warm pj's. Since Clara didn't have school again the next day, we let them each pick a movie from Netflix instant streaming (love the instant movies from netflix!) and have a movie night!

snow fort... part I....

Not sure if there will be a part II or not given the extremely cold temps today.... but here is the start they got on it yesterday....

They planned on working on it all day, but plans changed. Late morning (while they were in eating their cinnamon rolls), they got invited to go next door and watch a movie.... then after the movie, we took all of the kids out to the alley to play in the HUGE drifts back there. They had so much fun sledding down the drifts and digging tunnels through them (I do have photos and video that I'll hopefully get to eventually). I think they spent close to four straight hours outside, as they stayed out and worked a little on their own fort after their friends had gone home. They didn't even come in for lunch!!!

(Okay... I've messed up the formatting on this post and I can't seem to fix it.... oh well....)

indecisive mango...

Snow day here in Chicago! I have a bunch of photos and a ton of video to go through, but I thought I would go ahead and post this little one...



The kids were out back building a snow fort and Mango so wanted to go out with them.... however, when it came down to it.... her toes were just too cold!! (She does have booties... but they're a little hard to get on, so I hated to go through the effort if she wasn't going to want to stay outside... and with the temps, she wasn't going to last long even with booties on!) She ended up sitting by the window, watching them and whining. :-)

science with alex...

The main reason for recording this experiment is that we were anticipating a "big boom". However, this is what we got....

(yes, he's doing school in his pj's) :-)

Nothing terribly exciting about our Monday.... Alex and I spent his post school hours working on a little bit of storm prep. We're under a blizzard warning starting this afternoon. We got our groceries, and took a trip to the library to return overdue books (yes, I had overdue books AGAIN) and stock up on reading material. Most of the kids' activities are canceled for tonight and tomorrow night so we're looking forward to an evening of hanging out and watching it snow (perhaps I should have picked up the supplies for hot chocolates as well.... hmmmm).

Stay warm and safe everyone!!!