we're back....

and now I'm sitting here waiting to hear from Jeff and Clara. Clara started coughing yesterday morning and it just keeps getting progressively worse. When we got home, she had a temp of 101... so I called the doctor to make an appointment (thinking they would want to see her tomorrow)... well, they called at 5:15 and wanted to see her TODAY even though their office closes at 5:30. Dinner was in the works so Jeff grabbed her and headed out the door. So now we just wait.

So, while waiting, I edited a few pictures from Christmas Eve and Christmas day.

Here are the kids making cookies for Santa...
While I was taking this picture, Clara pressed too hard on her cookie and it broke apart. The shock of this caused her to open her mouth in surprise.... releasing the candy cane... which hit the floor and shattered into a million sticky little pieces.
After this we went to church for 4:00 service. We had to be there at 3:00 for Alex's choir and 3:30 for Clara's. We also were chosen to light the advent wreath as a family at the beginning of the service.

Once we got home, the kids showered and got into their pj's so they could unwrap their final book... Twas the Night Before Christmas...
We watched one last Christmas special (Pinocchio's Christmas), put out milk and cookies and got the kids into bed. At which point, Jeff and I rushed to finish wrapping presents.

We told the kids that they could not get us up before 7:00 am so at 7:00am on the dot they knocked on the door. We all went upstairs to see what was in our stockings and under the tree.

Alex's big gift from Santa was an electric train and Clara's was a Littlest Pet Shop Round and Round Pet Town. Here the train was taking Clara's Littlest Pet Shop animals for a ride. (And, yes, Alex did get new pj's for Christmas)

Okay... dinner's ready!

'nite!

(oh.... Deb... I use Rhodes White Dinner Rolls from the freezer section... do NOT, get the "Texas" sized rolls by mistake... that happened to me once and the whole thing got HUGE, shoving sugar, pudding mix and raisins over the sides of the pan... flaming raisins is not a pleasant smell with which to greet overnight guests with in the morning... sigh.

Ia... I had that card printed as a 5x5 from a company here in the US... steal away with the idea! I don't mind at all... you'll just have to show me it though... LOL! )

*******ETA:  The Diagnosis ********

she has walking pneumonia

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Just a quick note to wish you all a very Merry Christmas!!!

Here is our card...


(Scrapartist Merry and Bright Collab Kit, Lauren Reid's Wonky Templates and Sande Krieger's Season's Greetings)

Well... I'm going to get back to our Christmas morning festivities before we head to Michigan for a couple of days.

But I'll leave you with the recipe for our annual Christmas morning treat (recognize the recipe, Pam? I almost had to email you for it because I thought I had lost it in the move)...

Land of Nod Cinnamon Buns

20 frozen dough rolls
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup vanilla instant pudding (one small package)
2 T cinnamon
3/4 cup raisins (optional)
1/2 cup butter, melted

Grease a 10" bundt pan and add frozen rolls. Sprinkle with brown sugar, pudding powder, cinnamon and raisins. Pour melted butter over all. Cover with a clean, damp cloth. Leave at room temperature. Turn out the lights and say goodnight!

In the morning, preheat oven to 350 degrees F and bake for 25 minutes. Let stand for 5 minutes and then turn out onto a serving plate.

YUM!!! I just throw this and a pan of link sausages into the oven while the kids are opening gifts and by the time the kids are done, so is breakfast!

Okay... I'm out of here!

Have a wonderful day!!!

more zoo lights!

Not great pictures but we had a great time. My hands were frozen! I'm to paranoid about dropping my camera to wear gloves at all... hmmm... maybe I need those fingerless gloves with the little mitten tops that pull over.

Anyway... here are some more pictures...The kids loved watching the guy doing the ice sculptures. He was really nice and answered the kids' questions.
The final product! (there was dry ice and water in bear's mug to make it "steam" although you can't see it in the picture)

These globes were new this year. The kids were very excited to see them since they were based on the old classic Christmas TV specials (we've been watching them on abc family).


Another one of the ice sculptures...
Also, in the lion house they had Santa (but we didn't go see him) and a big craft table with free crafts for the kids. The kids colored pins to put on their coats, made ornaments and got temporary tattoos.

There were tons of good smelling goodies being sold but we were stuffed having just come from dinner.

Pam... you should enjoy the MSI! I honestly think my kids could live there! We spent two WHOLE days there this fall. If you want to go to the Star Wars exhibit, I would definitely call in advance... there were no tickets available for the day we were there... thankfully we had called a couple of days earlier. Thank you for the kind words about my cards! Since they're in the mail, I should post it here. Oh... and as for the Macy's windows... we loved them! I think they are a lot like the Marshall Field's windows... its the inside of the store where you can really tell the difference.

Okay... my parents arrive in few hours... must get back to cooking and cleaning!!

Happy Friday!!!

just one...

picture and then I'm heading to bed. Tonight we surprised the kids with a trip to the Lincoln Park Zoo to see the Zoo Lights. We had a really good time. It was cold but not too cold... and although there were a decent amount of people there... it wasn't crowded at all.

I'll post more pics tomorrow!

'nite!

almost forgot...

I got to chat with Deann the other day to record this week's episode of Dishin' the Digi Coast 2 Coast on DiScTalkRadio! It was a lot of fun... check it out and see what fun layouts and products we found!

yesterday (LOTS of photos!!)

Okay... before I get to yesterday.... thank you Laura for the kind words about my Christmas card I posted... it's not my official card. Those are now off in the care of the U.S. Postal Service so I'll be posting them here soon. Thank you for the printing info Deb (and thanks for de-lurking to do so! :-)... can you believe that I've never set foot inside a Costco? There is one here not too far from us... maybe I should check it out.

As I mentioned the in my post last night... yesterday we went to the Museum of Science and Industry.

Here is the Burlington Zephyr...
Once in the museum we looked at the Christmas Trees from Around the World. More details and my photos are posted on my new homeschooling blog.

Next we went in to see the Star Wars exhibit. Here's Clara and Alex driving the hover cars...

C3PO....
Oops... forgot the border on this pic... here's Alex and Clara building and programming their robot....

After lunch we headed to State Street to see the window displays at Macy's. As luck would have it, this year's theme was the Nutcracker. Clara was thrilled!









After seeing the windows we went in to do some shopping and see Santa.

*** WARNING SMALL RANT ***
I HATE what Macy's has done to the State Street Marshall Fields! I used to LOVE to shop in that store... such a grand historic building. Now it just seems so cheap and generic. I had decided several months ago that I wasn't going to go there any longer... but it was convenient yesterday so I broke my own rule... sigh.
*** RANT OVER **** (sort of)

Okay... here we are at Macy's... the great big store on State Street, with a FAO Schwartz in it for the holidays. We thought it would be a good place to take the kids to see Santa. We waited in line down this magically decorated path till we got to Santa. The "elves" took down the kids' names and then led us to Santa. Who turned out to be a cheesy fake bearded Santa stuffed into a chair in a tiny broom closet!!! It was just sad. The kids seemed okay with it though...Okay... I've rambled on enough!

'nite!

i actually printed stuff! lol!

Last week I tried out Shutterfly for printing some of my digital scrapbooking stuff. I have printed through them before... regular 4x6's and note cards... but this was my first time to venture into their digital scrapbooking area.

First I tried out some 5x7 photo cards. These are for the kids to mail out.


I was really impressed with how they turned out! The colors were great, and they had a nice matte finish.

Next, I tried an 8x8. I've never printed 8x8 before, but I think I really like that size after having it in my hands.
The colors again were perfect! The photos and digital elements looked great.

Finally, I printed a 12x12....
LOVED how vibrant the colors turned out! I was totally in love until I noticed this...
Yep... my journaling along the right side was cut off at both the top and the side.... sigh. I thought I did everything right so this would not happen. At this point, I'm not sure if it was my issue or Shutterfly's since I did get interrupted while I was working with it on their site. This is one of my biggest issues with printing digi layouts.... you spent the money on these large prints and you hope that you don't lose anything important around the edges. I have several 12x12's lying around my house with missing journaling.... it depresses me.

So... I have no "cons" in regards to printing with Shutterfly, except for the cut off text (which may be my fault).

The "pros" - great colors and good matte finish. Good fast shipping at an extremely busy time of year. I print most of my stuff through a pro lab, but at the holidays they get swamped and waaaaaay behind. For example, I placed my Shutterfly order on the same day I placed an order with the pro lab (Tuesday). My Shutterfly orders started arriving on Thursday, with the last package arriving Friday (regular mail). My pro lab order didn't even print until last Thursday, shipping on Friday and arriving on Monday (2day UPS). So, the holidays don't see to slow Shutterfly down at all. Finally, I was extremely impressed with the packaging of the 12x12. It came in a tri-fold cardboard box with a foam cushion and the print itself was in a nice clear plastic envelope.

Okay.... I'm off to "do school"... be back later with the pictures from yesterday!!

so many photos....

... and no energy to edit them... sigh.

I'm exhausted! Today we went here and saw these...(the Star Wars exhibit and the Christmas Trees from Around the World)

I'll be back tomorrow to post pics both here and on the homeschool blog!

'nite!

I did it!

I just added a new blog about homeschooling... more pics and details about our day on there!

Now I'm really done for the day!

'nite!

monday

How's that for a witty, original title? :-)

Today was a crazy, but overall good day. We started out by going to a homeschool science workshop at the nature museum.Then we left there and went straight to Alex's cooking class. Today he made busche de noel with homemade pastry cream (oh, and cookies). YUM!

Clara and I picked him up from class and went straight to his piano "jury". This is our first time doing one so we're a little new to the whole thing. We were making good time until, while going up the steps at the school.... Alex wiped out and smacked Clara (who was directly behind him) in the mouth with his boot. We were bordering on being late and now here we are on the stairs with Clara howling with blood running out of her mouth!!! At the time, I didn't know Alex had kicked her (not on purpose, just because he fell and his feet went out from under him)... I thought she had hit her teeth on the hard stairs!!! Thankfully, she had just split her bottom lip open. Alex's jury went well... I have no clue how his evaluation will come back, but he went in calm and came out happy.... so in my book... it went really well!

After that we just came home and had dinner... and now I'm heading for the couch!

'nite!

we couldn't help ourselves...

... we "elfed" ourselves! I had been fighting it for some time, but today we did it...

The Radtke Family as Elves

Clara deems it... "alarious".

I have no pictures from our weekend because I didn't take a single one! Clara had her regular Saturday dance class... the studio was sooo empty and quiet now that the Nutcracker rehearsals are over. After that we went to a street near us with lots of cute little shops and boutiques. There were so many decorations that I wish I would have brought my camera but I was supposed to shopping and it was snowing pretty good.... I'm actually glad I wasn't lugging around my camera. After we got home, Alex got the bright idea to shovel snow! He was on a roll!! After he finished our walk, he did the sidewalk out front and THEN asked if he could shovel the WHOLE BLOCK! We said sure, thinking it would last a house or two on either side... but no... he cleared the WHOLE BLOCK!!

Yesterday we just went to church. After church we came home and the kids played out front in the snow.

Nothing exciting, but it was a nice relaxing weekend!

Oh... thank you so much for the notes in support of starting a separate homeschool blog... I should have it up later today since we're doing some cool stuff this week!

Okay.... I need to get our day started!

art and science...

We're still doing our modified school schedule for the month of December... so today was art and science day.

We started with a project from our art curriculum (Atelier). We were to draw the Cat in the Hat. Here's how we did...(I over-edited this picture.... not happy with it, but too tired of it to start over)
Guess which one is mine! I'll give you a hint... it is NOT the one with the unfortunate tail placement and it IS the one that looks like a cross breeding experiment between a cat and a sock monkey. :-)

After that we got out the Yuck Specimen Jar and started doing experiments. We made snot, slime and "yuck crystals". I was impressed that they included scientific explanations for what was happening. We have "recipes" for some of this stuff in a book... but it was just to have fun making it... not to really learn anything from. I felt like we came away with some knowledge about what was really going on... although if I was going to do it again, I would prepare a bit more so we made more background knowledge before beginning.

Here's Alex making snot...
I'm really thinking about starting a separate blog about homeschooling. I feel the need to ramble on more about what we did, what worked, what didn't... but I'm not sure here is the place to do it. I may start a new one... with just homeschool stuff. Hmmm.... now to figure out a name for it.

Okay... my kitchen is a disaster of dinner dishes and science experiments... gotta run!

'nite!!

the haircut

Going several months without a haircut was a painful ordeal for Clara. She loves her short hair, but with the need for a ballet bun for the nutcracker, we had to let it grow. She did make me promise that as soon as the nutcracker was over, she could go and get her hair cut.

So... today was the big day!! Her hair looks adorable! There's something about a short sassy cut that just fits her to a T. These pictures really don't do it justice... we just had a few minutes at home between getting back from her haircut and leaving for dance.
Notice the extra wide gap? She lost another tooth yesterday!

Here she is sporting her brand new Moscow Ballet t-shirt Jeff got her on Sunday. It's pretty big on her... they had ones that were more her size... but they were white. Clara and white clothes are not a good combo.... we opted for too big but dark colored. :-)
I have so much more to ramble on about but I'm sleepy. I'm heading to bed... maybe I'll ramble tomorrow... LOL!

'nite!

nothing much

Nothing much going on here. Just still trying to recuperate from our weekend. Clara had one semi-major meltdown yesterday... but she was allowed given what her weekend was like.

Oh... I started a project... you can see it on the Memory Makers Masters Blog.

Clara and I had an interesting conversation on the way to pick up Alex from cooking class. She's hooked on the performing thing. She informed me that she wants to be in "big shows" from here on out. She's over recitals ("the shows where you get to keep the costume"), she only wants to do "big shows".... sigh. I told her she needed to take that up with her dance instructor.... LOL!

Okay... today we must be productive! I'm out of here!

Hopefully I'll have pictures to post later... I'm behind on my 2peas digi board photo a day challenge.

the nutcracker report

Wow! I can't believe it is all over!

The day went amazingly well. We were all really worried about keeping the girls happy and entertained over such a long day. But it really didn't turn out to be all that hard. Thankfully each dance group had their own dressing room and all of the dressing rooms opened into a large common area. So we had a room full of 8 snowflakes to keep entertained. One of the parents brought a tv and dvd player so that really helped. This is how Clara spent a lot of her time...On her nap mat, in her under the counter cave watching shows on my iPod. (oh... and get a good look at the hair! can you believe I got her short hair into a bun?? her hair was completely shellacked... to the point that it didn't move even after I removed every barrette, bobby pin and rubber band after the show... lol!)

Here is a shot of Clara out in front of the stage door. I saw one of the other moms doing this and had to do it too! Peer pressure I guess! LOL!
Yes, that's snow and ice and yes my daughter is in tights and crocs... I promise we were only out there a second or two.

The kids had a brief stage run through right after noon. It was a little rough since things are so much different on stage. They had been practicing alone as a group in the studio for several weeks but this time they were on the big stage navigating around the professional dancers who they had never seen before. The girls did great though! I was really amazed at the poise they showed.

For the first show, I was backstage, but they had a tv in the main area back there that showed the stage. They did sooooo good! They hung out backstage a bit and then at the end got to go out for the curtain call. The snowflakes were right up there in front! The dancer who played Drosselmeyer broke into the line of snowflakes, grabbing Clara's hand and the hand of the girl who was next to her for the final bows. Clara was sooooo in awe!

They came back the dressing room to change out of their costumes and into their warm-ups so they could go out and see their families. Clara was excited to see her grandparents and Alex! We went back stage again to have dinner and get ready for the second show.

During the down time, the Russian dancers came out to sign autographs and take pictures with the children.

Here is Clara with Clara (actually they call her Masha in this production, but all of the girls called her Clara)...
And here is Clara with the prince....
The kids were soooooo thrilled to meet the Russian dancers.

I got to watch the second show with Jeff. I was a teary wreck through the whole first act. I was just so proud of the kids! Honestly, the snowflakes danced the best for the second show... they may have been more relaxed about the professional dancers after having the first show under their belts plus having met some of them between shows.

After the show we packed up and stopped by Jeff's parent's hotel room to wash the goop out of Clara's hair and to pick up Alex. We had them both in their pj's in case they fell asleep on the way home. I really figured that they would crash... but they didn't, which was actually good. We got home a little after 11:00 pm and they went straight to bed (did I mention that Clara and I had left the house at around 8:00 am and had been in the theater from 9:00am until around 9:30 pm??).

So, today we're taking it easy and trying to recuperate!

Oh... if you're wondering why there are no pictures of Clara in her costume, well... that's because no photography was allowed while they were in their costumes.... plus they were only allowed to be in their costumes right before they left to go on stage and had to take them off the minute they got back stage. And there was no photography allowed in the theater... the studio owner tried to get permission for me as the studio's "photographer" but it was a no go... oh well!

Okay... I'm going to try and do something productive today!