the 31st...

The last day of 2011 got off to a fabulous start! Jeff and the kids went off to ski for the morning. And I headed to the spa with his mom and aunt! We had massages scheduled for that morning. Afterward we took advantage of the steam room and sauna.... soooooo relaxing!

We all met up back at the house for lunch. After that, the kids went to the indoor pool for a swim (supervised by Grandma and Auntie Donna).

Can you believe that after skiing and swimming, they still weren't tired?? So, we headed out to try the unofficial sledding hill our neighbors had told us about. The first tee box for the golf course is at the end of our street, so we walked down there and the kids started sledding...
They both had gotten new sleds for Christmas from my parents. Clara got a disk that had grooves on the bottom that made you spin as you went down the hill. And Alex got a Zipfy mini luge....
... he had seen one in Wisconsin when we went to Door County this summer and had really wanted to try it out!

It wasn't the best snow to sled on...
...you would hit bumps every once in a while that would send you flying...
(Clara was NOT injured during that fall and came up laughing... whew!)

Alex had a little trouble adjusting to the Zipfy at first...

... get one foot down when you turn...
and it's WIPEOUT....
Clara after another wipeout...
They had so much fun sledding....
... but they were soon ready to head back to the house because they were eager to start our New Year's Eve festivities!!

13 things on Thursday...

I honestly don't know that I have thirteen things to write about, but it seemed to go with "Thursday" so I went with it. This is going to be one of those boring, wordy posts with no photos, but given that this is the closest thing I have to journal, I wanted to get a few things down before I forgot them.

1. Made the decision on Monday that I will not be attempting the photo-a-day project this year. I've failed at it for three straight years, it's time to give it up. Up until Monday, I had just happened to have taken a photo every day, so that was my decision day.

2. On Sunday Clara auditioned for her first ever non-home ballet school summer intensive. A group of her friends from class have been talking and decided to start auditioning together. There are a few more coming up. Now we're just waiting to see what happens (if anything)

3. This week Clara started rehearsals for the ballet academy production of Cinderella. She's a butterfly. :-)

4. Also, Monday marked Clara's first day to do pointe work at center in class! She's been limited to the barre before. She had had to do some pointe work at center in the audition on Sunday. So scary for her to have her first experience at center be in an audition!!

5. Alex is off to a fabulous start after break! He got the top score in his grade for their Code Worlds exam that they took before Christmas (Code Worlds is a math course with language arts).

6. I am really impressed with Alex's teachers at school! On Tuesday I get a random email during the day from one of teachers writing to let me know how well Alex was doing in class that day. That afternoon at pick-up, his homebase teacher stopped me. He wanted to let me know that Alex and another boy in their homebase had become really good friends and wondered if I minded if he put us in touch with the boy's parents so they could get together on the weekend sometime. How cool is that? I think it's great that his teacher cares that much! And finally, last night when I picked up Alex from game club, another teacher asked if Alex could join the band he was putting together. Right now it's one teacher on drums, the assistant principal on bass and the teacher that I was talking to and Alex on guitar! The thought cracks me up! They want to put something together to show the school to get people excited and then they'll start working with beginning guitar students. So far, this school has been an amazing fit for Alex!

7. I think I'm becoming addicted to pinterest.

8. There's a really good chance that my perfectly crafted after school activity schedule is going to implode quite soon. In addition to our knowns of Cinderella and Alex's spring young ensemble theater project, we have several more things that may or may not throw a wrench in the plan. Alex seems to think that he's about to graduate out of Rock 101 and will be performing in one of the School of Rock spring shows and Clara wants to audition for her school's spring musical. We'll see though... it's all speculation at the moment.

9. We will get Clara's science fair project experiment done this weekend (if I say it enough times, hopefully it will come true!). It's not due for a month, but the sooner she gets it done, the better!

10. ??

Okay... I didn't make it to 13, I didn't even make it to 10. But I think I got down everything I wanted to and now I need to go get something accomplished! I'm still working on our photos from break... I'll have those up later today!

Just Dance...

the 30th...

... started out like a typical day. Jeff and the kids hit the slopes early, and I lazed around with the pup for a bit. But then I had to get busy! Jeff's parents and his aunt were coming in later that day for our "Christmas" with them! I got dinner started and we all picked up the house.

Soon they arrived and the games began!

Phase 10...
And pool...
After a huge dinner of ham, kielbasa, pierogies and other goodies, it was time for presents...

Then we did birthdays...
Clara commandeered my camera while I was opening presents and took this one of me. This could possibly the first photo of me that I've posted here, if not, it's the first in a really long time. I can't promise that I'll post many more, but I'm going to try to be better about actually being in photos rather than just taking them.

After me, she turned the camera on her brother...
... who was thoroughly engrossed in the parts to his new Skylanders game he got for his xbox.

She took some other ones as well... but I'm not going to push my luck with posting them because I have a feeling that I'm going to be in enough hot water for posting some video of our Just Dance dance-off later! It's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is for permission, right? :-)

Finally, after presents, it was time for cake...
... and pie (butterfinger pie... a pinterest find!)

A fun, fun day!

the "sledding hill" video...

the 29th...

... was my birthday! I woke up to presents and handmade cards... what a great way to start the day!

Jeff and the kids went off to ski and I hung out with a book and the Mango pup...
After lunch the kids wanted to go out and play in the new snow we had just gotten...

Alex's mind immediately turned to mischief...and he started stalking his sister with a snowball hidden behind his back...


But she was on to him and readied her shield...
:-)

Then he decided to go for a different angle...

They had so much fun just playing outside...
I kid you not... they were out there for THREE straight hours! They got this wild idea to build a "sledding hill" on our perfectly flat backyard. They actually made a pretty decent (albeit small) ramp with all of their hard work! I didn't take any photos of it, but I do have video... I'll have to post that next.

That evening we went to our neighbors' house for a holiday open house! It was so nice to get to meet and visit with other people with houses in our neighborhood. We got to talk to the family that has the cottage directly behind us for quite a while. They ended up coming over that night and their girls played Kinect with Alex and Clara. Lots of laughing and lots of good conversation!

First day of vacation!

On December 27th, Clara had her last Nutcracker performance. While she was there, we packed up the car so we were ready to head out of town. We were heading to our place in Michigan for a couple of weeks of skiing and relaxing!

We got in fairly late, so no skiing that night. The next morning though, the kids were on the slopes at 9:00 am for their private ski lesson. They got them as a Christmas gift. Alex has been having weekly lessons through the ski club he's in, but since this was Clara's first outing of the season we thought it would be good to start out with a refresher lesson. While they were skiing, Jeff and I ran to the grocery store to get our provisions for the next couple of weeks.

They skied for a couple of hours and then came back to the house to try out some of their new games they had gotten for Alex's Kinect....

Later in the day, Jeff and the kids all headed out to do some skiing...

A really good start to a great trip!!

Back home...

After almost two weeks away, the pack is back in Chicago! Lots of photos (and videos) to come :-)

a couple of books...

Some other photos I found while I was working on projects were some book photos...

The Ask and the Answer...
... by Patrick Ness

This is book two in the Chaos Walking series. Book one grabbed me and left with such a cliff hanger that I had to get book two as soon as I could. I flew through this one as well. Such a compelling story that you get so swept up in the excitement/chaos of it all. I will admit that some parts are tough. There is a character that I really don't like (it's not that he isn't well written, it's just that he's an evil man) and I get mad at him a lot (yes, I get mad at fictional characters) and have to stop reading. But then I *need* to know what happens next so I pick the book back up a few minutes later. I'm currently still reading book three... it's been a tough one for me, but I'll report back on that when I finish it.

A random library pick that I loved was...
Countdown by Deborah Wiles.

The book follows a 12 year old girl during the days leading up to and including the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I have read things and watched shows about the Cuban Missile Crisis, but they have all been from an adult perspective. This one really grabbed me, as it was written from the perspective of a girl.... a girl not much different in age from my kids. This book is an example of why I love historical fiction... it makes things real. It's not just some information in a history book, but something that happened (on some level) to everyone around at that time. Here is the story of a girl trying to balance friend troubles with the threat of nuclear war... it was heart wrenching at times. We bought copies as Christmas presents for both of our mothers. It's been interesting to hear their stories about where they were and what they felt during that time period. I think from what I can tell, this is the first in a series of books that the author is writing about the 60's... I look forward to reading more!

Alex's video...

Watch at your own risk...


He turns the camera every which way and screams like a lunatic most of the way down!

Where Jeff finally found the kids...

Just a little video so you can get an idea of how much ground they had covered!

the dunes...

We didn't stay inside our whole trip! We were hoping for snow so Jeff and the kids could ski, but instead we had no snow and mild temps. So, on Black Friday, while everyone else was shopping, we took out to Sleeping Bear Dunes and the Dune Climb.

Alex was pretty excited...

First order of business was to climb to the top of the front dune and run back down...

Jeff and I had figured that they would just climb and run down for a little while so we didn't dress to walk through sand. After running down, they announced that they would like to do some of the trails. Again, we didn't think this would last long, so we found ourselves a picnic table to sit at and sent them on their way....
However... they never came back! 45 minutes or so had past so Jeff had to go out looking for them! He finally found them about 1 1/2 hours after they had set out! They had decided to hike to Lake Michigan!!

He called them back and soon they were running down the front dune again...
Alex had my flip running as he ran and created a very motion sickness inducing video!

Here comes Jeff...
I had to interrupt their viewing of Alex's video in order to get just a couple more shots...

And then it was time to empty the sand out of our shoes and head back to the house!

backtracking...

While working on some projects for Christmas, I found a bunch of photos I never posted. One group in particular was our pictures from Thanksgiving.

Given that Alex had the opera both Wednesday night and Saturday night, we didn't have long to get away. So, we headed up to our place in Michigan on Thanksgiving morning. It was our first trip there as a family!!

One thing the kids were very excited about was that the house came with a pool table.

Jeff decided to show them how it was done...
:-)

Alex really worked at it...
... and is on his way to becoming quite the pool shark!

Clara? Well... we're just glad that no one lost an eye and nothing got broken :-)

Merry Christmas... umm... Happy New Year! :-)

Cards have finally been mailed out and should have arrived by now, so I can finally post here!

Hoping you have a wonderful 2012!!! (And that I have a more organized year!) :-)