Thanksgiving in New York City

We had the wonderful opportunity to visit my parents in New York City for Thanksgiving this year.  They are currently serving an LDS mission in Highland Falls, NY with a military assignment at West Point Military Academy.  It was such a great trip and we can't wait to go back and spend more time in NY while they are serving.

I am terrible at taking pictures while on vacation.  I usually completely forget to bring my camera along with me.  As I was looking through the 15 pictures I took of the entire trip, seriously, I was sad.  We did so many fun things and had such a great time and I really have no pictures to show for it. :(  Hopefully one of these days I will get with the program and document our lives a little better.

Here is a picture of our "nature hike."  This is Abbey and Ela's favorite thing to do.  We went on a trail close to my parents hut (their home is known as the Mission Hut on the Hudson) and explored the area a little bit.  

A gorgeous view of the bridges on our walk back to the cars.

We went downtown NYC on Black Friday and shockingly, it was not very crowded.  I've seen this iconic place a million times in movies and on TV, but it was amazing to see it in person.  

We of course made a visit to Yankee Stadium for Eric.  Unfortunately we didn't get there in time for him to tour the inside, but it was pretty neat to walk around.  This was the least crowded area we visited and the girls loved that they could run around without having to hold someone's hand.  

It has been many years since we have been with family for Thanksgiving and it was great to be with some of the people we love the most.  The girls loved staying at the hut and spending lots of down time with grandma and grandpa.  We love that we are only 9 hours away from them and can't wait for our next visit. 

Columbus Happenings

It's been a while since I updated this blog, sorry!  We've been very busy since the move and I want to share a few of the things we have been up to...

We decided to get a membership to the Columbus Zoo.  It really is one of the best zoos we have ever been to and the girls LOVE going to see the animals.  I forget how "hands on" this zoo is, it is so much fun that the girls get to interact with the animals.  The also love the rids at the zoo...maybe even more than the animals. :)

Here are a few of the places we were excited to visit around Columbus... Of course!  The Cheesecake Factory.  One of my favorite restaurants!   We went to the Circleville Pumpkin Festival.  It was super cold and rainy, but still lots of fun.  The picture with the turtle is at one of the many pet shops around Columbus.  This is Tucker and he wanders the pet shop with a balloon taped to his back.  He is huge and can actually move pretty fast!  The last picture is Ela enjoying her spaghetti from Piada, a delicious restaurant my friend introduced us to. 

The girls are very into crafting and creating.  Abbey has always enjoyed crafting (as you can see by her toilet paper roll spider and bat drawings - something she did completely on her own!) and Ela has followed Abbey's example.  She may or may not have a little OCD...notice the markers arranged by color?  This is something I totally would expect from Abbey, but it surprised me coming from Ela.  So cute though!  They created the lego "Flower City and House World" together one night.  

 This year we did THREE trick-or-treating nights...  One was Boo at the Zoo (shown below.)  It was pretty cold and rainy and of course, my little monster couldn't keep out of the puddles.  I had her hand me her candy and go jump as much as she wanted.  Abbey tried it for a minute and decided it was too rebellious!   We also did the ward trunk-or-treat and the neighborhood on Halloween night.  These two little sweeties got WAY TOO MANY sweets!  Mom and Dad have been very helpful in helping eat all the candy. :)

School in Ohio

The girls are doing great in school here.  Neither one of them have had any problems adjusting to their new surroundings.  They have really surprised me!  Ela had a little singing program and then they did a costume parade for Halloween.  She loves preschool!!!

                                        

Abbey loves, loves, loves Kindergarten and is doing so great!  She is already a little reader and I am amazed at how smart she is.  Ela likes to sit and do Abbey's reading with us and now Ela can read Abbey's first book.  I have a couple of little smarty-pants!!!  This is one of Abbey's writer's workshop papers, it is a picture of her and I on a boat, it reads... On Saturday we went on a bot (boat) together.  My cats did not like it at all.

SCHOOL DAYS

My gorgeous girls on their first day of the school year!

 Ela started preschool today and was SO excited.  She has been such a good sport watching Abbey go to preschool for the past two years, but now it's her time!!!

Abbey started KINDERGARTEN today!!!  I really can't believe she is already starting school, but she has been ready for a while and I could not be more excited for her to take on this new adventure!  She has to have everything just so and we spent yesterday evening preparing so things would be in order.  We picked out her outfit, painted her nails to match her pink shirt, got all her paperwork together and planned out the rest of the weeks outfits.  After painting her nails, she had to put on her outfit and talk to herself in the mirror for a while.  She then carefully placed everything on the kitchen table exactly how she was going to put it back on... one sock and one shoe on each side of her shirt and pants.  ( I wish I would have taken a picture!)  She may or may not have a little OCD!  LOL!!  This is my gorgeous baby girl waiting for the bus.  Her favorite part of school is the bus ride so she was all smiles this morning!  

 Look  how small she is on those big steps!  I think she was about to say "Bye mom, I love you!" for the 20th time, it was so sweet.  I hope she still turns around to say this when she is a senior in high school!  I was so proud of her when she got on the bus all by herself with no tears!  We've had a history of separation anxiety and this really is a huge thing for her to do by herself.

 My  little girls are growing so fast and I am so proud of everything they are doing and the things they are learning.  We have our struggles but they are good girls, they really are!  I feel so very blessed to be their mom!

Funny story!!! We painted Abbey's nails last night and put glittery star stickers on her thumbs.  She loved them and was worried about the polish and stickers falling off before she got to school.  I put on two coats of clear polish to help it stay on longer... This morning at 5 AM Abbey came into my room sobbing.  When I asked her what was wrong she said she was worried her sticker had come off her thumb because she had been sucking it that night.  I tried to tell her it would be okay and I would fix everything in the morning.  It didn't help, she was so upset that we didn't have another matching sticker, and her thumbs had to be the same.  I promised her I would fix it in the morning and that I would not let her go to school upset.  Luckily she accepted and went back to sleep.  The first thing she said when she woke up at seven was, "mom, my sticker is still there!!!"  It got the morning off to a great start!

Happy Birthday Ela

Ela is 4!!!  The few weeks leading up to her birthday she kept asking me if she was 4 yet.  I promised her I would let her know when her birthday was, but I guess she thought I would forget to tell her because she still asked me every day.  Of course, she had a fever the day before and the night leading up to her birthday.  This poor girl always gets sick at the most inconvenient times!  She did feel pretty good by the end of the day and had no fever all day on her birthday!  We celebrated at her restaurant of choice... Texas Roadhouse.  I wish I would have been in front of her for this picture, she looked like a scared deer and I don't think she even cracked a smile, but she did get her arm up for the big "YEEEEHAAAAH!!!"

We had a little party for her at the park by our "oldish-newish house" (The girls refer to our first duplex rental as the "old house," our beloved house we just sold and moved from in June as the "oldish-newish house" and the small apartment we now live in as the "new house.")  This is their favorite park in town and they were very happy to drive back through the "oldish-newish neighborhood."  It was pretty windy, so here is Ela pretending to blow out her candles.      

 These are the awesome "popsicles" the girls and I made for Ela's special day.  For those of you that know me well, you know that this was a very trying and patience-building activity for me to do with my children.  I was very glad when it was over and I could clean up :)  Remind me again why I bought a popsicle-cake maker?

Here are a few of the friends that came to celebrate with us.  It was a fun day and everyone had a great time!  We are so thankful to have our crazy little Ela-bean in our family!

Swim Lessons

Swim lessons are over for the summer and Abbey is looking forward to lessons next summer already.  She passed her swim test today and can advance to "goldfish" next year!  Abbey did great this summer and is quite the little fish now.  Ela did not like swim lessons and was happy when it was Tuesday/Thursday when she didn't have class and could go to the kiddie pool.  I tried bribing her every lesson to get in and participate with her class, but she wouldn't do it.

Stretching out before swimming.

One of the few times Ela actually got in the water!

 Abbey's favorite thing she learned during lessons... jumping in!  She loved going to the deep end and jumping in where she couldn't touch.  

 This is where Ela stayed pretty much every lesson.

 They can only go down the slide feet first so Ab's thought she was being creative going down on her back... looks so uncomfortable, but she loved it!

GO PACK GO!

Eric and I took the girls to the Family Fun Night at Lambeau Field on Friday night.  Abbey kept trying to get Ela excited about going to a "real Packers game."

Cute little green and gold girls.  We stopped by Target on our way home from swim lessons to get Packers shirts.  Everyone knows you can't go to a fan night not wearing the teams colors!!! 

 The weather was perfect and we were on the shady side of the stadium...yay!  We got a huge thing of popcorn and the girls gobbled it up!

One of the highlights for the girls was watching the "WAVE" go around the stadium.  As you can see, Eric was very excited as well! :)  After the scrimmage meet was over, they had fireworks set to music.  It was very cool and a great way to end the night!  The girls were troopers and did so well for being up late... they even slept the whole way home!