Camera Love

After hearing all the things that kind of went wrong around here, my parents took pity on me and got me a new camera for my birthday.  I was blown away by their generosity and I am completely over the moon about my new camera.   It is by far far far, the nicest camera I have ever owned. Just the fact that it is 7 years newer than my other one means that it has a lot of nice newer better features.  It is the Panasonic zs3 and so far I am loving it.  Thanks mom and dad!

Let them eat cake...again.

Last year we started the tradition of going to this bakery for treats in lieu of flowers or gifts on Valentines Day. The girls look forward to it and mention it off and on all year.  Last Saturday was the big day.

We take a really long time to choose: 

I liked what we chose this time even better than last year.

PD and I got pistachio mouse, PK1 got chocolate mouse and PK2 got a white cake with fresh strawberries and cream.

Then the girls went up and picked one more rasberry thing later.  I really wish I had eaten a sandwich first.  I had a bit of a sugar headache.  The  girls went a little nuts from the sugar too.

Just kidding, they were perfect little ladies:

We didn't get these, but they were the specialty for Valentines Day.  It is chocolate ganache with chocolate mouse filling.  Beautiful!

If you want to see last years visit to Mozarts, click here:  Valentines Cake 2009  The PKs look so much younger to me!

Charlie Brown Valentines

The PKs were lucky enough to be taken by Gram and Papa to "Be My Valentine Charlie Brown" at Gram's school.  Papa shot these pics for me..he is a big supporter of the blog:

They got to meet Charlie Brown:

And Lucy:

Thanks Papa and Gram, you are the BEST!

Party Time

PK1 had a few neighbor girls over for an impromptu party the other day.  We needed some fun after being either sick or snowed in for two weeks.  My wise little sister (age 30) says that kids like to look forward to stuff, plan and anticipate it.  When her kids were in preschool they would just spend so much time thinking about a little program that they were going to put on for the parents or a party coming up, and although the event is usually fun too, the anticipation is really key at that age.

With that in mind, I really involved PK1 in the planning and setting up of the little party.

She was so excited.

These girls almost ate me out of house and cheese its!

Then we made these little paper dolls.  When the girls got there I took their picture and printed it out.  Then they glued their face on a little cut out and designed an outfit for it out of scraps of colored papers, foil, whatever I could think of.

 I remembered from another party with these girls that they are really artistic.  They turned out so cute. You can always click on the pictures to see them bigger.

Some funny conversations I overheard.

1. Singing Twinkle Twinkle little star with Tinkle instead of Twinkle.  (insert gales of laughter)

2. When one of the girls ran in on the icy driveway carrying scissors, I exclaimed that that is one of the most dangerous things you could do..and she said, "no being in a sewer is."

3. When they played dress up they were playing WWII.  They decided they had four brothers.  One was missing in action, two were merely wounded and one was completely fine.

4. After they had played the dress up for awhile, PK2, came to me and said, "Mama, I can't play WWII until I learn some more about it."

When they were walking their last guest home, there was a pink sky.  They decided it was for their party.

Birthday Past

I turn 35 today!  I had a hot date night planned with PD, but a big blizzard is blowing through town and we may not make it.  Not surprising after the month we have had!  We will do it another time I am sure.

Growing up, my good friend from church had a birthday just a few days different from mine.  She was a real godsend because our church was really small and she was the only other girl even close to my age.

I was always so jealous of her though because she was an only child, and she had a pool table, naturally curly hair, a double sink in her bathroom, lots of smocked Polly Flinder dresses and her dad worked for the corporate headquarters of Pizza Hut and brought home free pizzas that he could have made any way he wanted.  That's cool though, because after I helped dry the communion glasses I got to eat the leftover communion bread, so really...it was a tie.  She was really nice and we played Barbies together and had sleep overs all the time.

The year I turned 6 and she turned 5, we had a combined birthday party.  Here we are.  (Notice her smocked dress.) Love you SE!