On running behind

I often allude to being behind on things, and I'm sure any reader might think, "What could a stay-at-home-mom possibly have going on that could be late?"

Ahhh, well, let me tell you. I had all of these grandiose plans this season of keeping our little digital scrapbook here updated with our Christmas comings and goings. I especially wanted to create a video montage of 2011 and have that post today. Instead, today is New Year's Eve, and we spent our afternoon making Christmas ornaments -- because I promised we would, but simply had not carved out the time for that activity. Once they dry, we will complete these artistic masterpieces and hang them on their trees... the trees that may very well be up for another week or two (or three).

Happy New Year's!!!

Friday's Quote

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

-Arthur Ashe

Birthday

Today is my birthday. Skip has been asking for a couple of days for me to think about where to go to dinner tonight, and I have been carefully weighing a couple of options. Fleming's, like last year, or possibly something else??? I was really torn.

This morning, over breakfast (in bed, with my four favorite people), Gracie announced that we would have my birthday party in the dining room tonight.

So there it is. Dinner at home! Skip and the girls have made a quick trip for the menu items, and they are going to wow me later with a scrumptious meal.  Dinner with the family is the perfect choice. 

Friday's quote

Youth is something very new: twenty years ago no one mentioned it.

-Coco Chanel

Shopping

Yesterday was errand-palooza.  By 1:00pm, I had made a total of 11 stops while completing various tasks.  Through a weird scheduling scenario, I had Gracie along for the ride.  She performed like a total shopping champ, and I gave her my highest behavioral rating -- five stars -- for being such a trooper. 

One of our errands was a quick stop at the mall to pick up Skip's gift.  Gracie has had some issues with discretion in the past, but she promised she would keep the gift a secret until Christmas morning.  She promised. 

This afternoon, Skip was loading the girls in the car when Gracie suddenly said, "Daddy I have a big surprise for you!"  He promptly told her not to say another word, to save the surprise, etc.  She is likely about to burst, and I fully expect her to run through the house screaming, "Daddy!  Your surprise is X!!!" at any point.  But, she did make it 24 hours before she alluded to the gift, and that is huge progress. 

In related news, we celebrated Christmas with my dad this past weekend.  We have had their gifts for a while, and those bags were the lone gifts under our tree so they have been a focal point for weeks.  They made it all the way through the gathering without spilling the beans.  However, as Lauren was handing PawPaw his gift she said, "This is for you, PawPaw; it's a book!" 

If Skip's gift remains undisclosed until Sunday, I am guessing he can expect a similar revelation.

Sunday best

I have a weakness for dress coats... and shiny black shoes and Christmas dresses.  

Gracie and Lauren have weaknesses for jewelry.  Although I still pick out their clothing, they accessorize themselves.  They put together the less-is-more look below, stopping with just one necklace and a few bracelets. 

Christmas program

Hooray for Baby Jesus!

The preschool choir began rehearsal for their program, "Hooray for Baby Jesus!" in August.  They have been practicing weekly for this event and have enjoyed learning all of the songs.  At the beginning of October, we were given a CD of the program to practice at home.  We decided to practice the songs during our morning and afternoon commute each day, and we were able to get through the program at least twice on the way to or from school, for a total of at least four times each day.  That's a whole lotta singing, and those songs are permanently burned into my brain (in a good way, of course). 

The program was the first Sunday in December, and my little point-and-shoot failed to deliver any usable pics from the event.  (My nice camera is still at the camera hospital where I am told it will likely remain until the first of the year.)  Instead, I dusted off the old video camera (that we, shamefully, rarely use) and got some great footage.  Unfortunately, I am not sure how to transfer it here. 

In the meantime, here is a shot of one of our many car rehearsals:

HOORAY!

Milestones

By way of update (and before I forget), we have a few more milestones to post.  (These tasks occurred between 4 - 4 1/2 months, as all photos were taken prior to Thanksgiving.)  William George is working on sitting up!  He has mastered the Boppy:

Along those lines, he regularly sits up in his chair and swing, and he can almost flail himself out of his Bumbo. 

He was very happy to finally have an official seat at the table.  Now he is holding out for actual "real" food, and he stares longingly at everyone's meals. 

He is engaging more and more.  He loves to help Gracie cook, and he grabs at their toys now.  It is the dawning of a new era:

Finally, he is about a week away from having his first tooth.  We will see how quickly he learns that teeth make for an excellent defense strategy with regard to his sisters. 

Friday's quote

If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.

-Woody Allen

Portraits, December 2011

As I mentioned previously, we had some updated photos taken a couple of weeks ago.  There was a problem with the disc so I have not been able to share until now.  Considering that our appointment was right after school, that we changed into clothing "on the fly," and considering that William George was very hungry, the session went really well. 

George was very happy, and the camera loves him:

Gracie and Lauren are always up for getting dressed and having a good time:

Unfortunately, they were more enamored with the photographer's assistant than with the photographer, and therefore, they are looking off center in each shot:

Regardless, they had a good time laughing:

When not laughing, Lauren struck some lovely poses:

And Gracie looked like a beautiful little school girl:

William George liked being in the spotlight almost as much as his sisters:

The trio:

All in all, we had a great afternoon, and we finished the night by going out for Mexican food. 

Photos by Portrait Innovations

Exterior illumination

We debuted our Christmas lights on Thanksgiving night.  Once I finished the final steps, the girls came outside to check out the lighting of the Lindsey Christmas lights. 

I am teaching them everything I know about exterior illumination.

Friday's quote

"My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other's kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That's how I see business: great things in business are never done by one person, they're done by a team of people."

-Steve Jobs

Styling my children

I have mentioned, ad nauseum, about how we do not watch television.  The primary reason for this is that we simply cannot hear our television over the din of noise constantly being made by our three children (joyous, happy sounds!).  When we absolutely must view something on television, we resort to relying on the closed caption feature, but concentrating is difficult. 

When I was sick recently and completely wired for four days from the steroid shot I was given, I found myself downloading something -- anything -- to watch on my iPhone in the wee hours of the night.  I exhausted all of the free news programs first.  Sometime around the third night of being up until 3:00am, I downloaded an episode of the Rachel Zoe Project.  I am not proud of this, but I have watched seasons 4, 1, and 2 in their entirety (in that order).  I am completely up to speed on the Taylor drama, and I look forward to Brad's betrayal of Rachel in season 3.  Largely, I find the manufactured drama completely devoid of entertainment value, but I adore the clothes.  The clothes!  Love, love, love!

Last week, I took all three of the monkeys for photos.  And, I totally channeled Zoe when I was prepping the monkaroos for having their photos taken. 

I pulled choices for Lauren and Gracie:



I pulled choices for William George:




And, I put together looks that coordinated nicely:




Finally, since we were going to the studio after school last Friday, I put together a kit containing their accessories and grooming tools.  Unfortunately, there is no photo of said kit, but trust me when I say it was incredibly thorough. 

All in all, the whole affair was exceptionally organized.  Very Zoe.

Visiting Santa, 2011

We visited with Santa the day before Thanksgiving, back on November 23rd.  This visitation was very impromptu --  so spur of the moment that the girls were wearing their hand-crafted Thanksgiving turkey t-shirts.  Nothing like bypassing Thanksgiving altogether and diving straight into Christmas! We went to the Chick-Fil-A at a local mall, and Santa was there, too!  We were surprised to see him so early, and the girls were giddy at the thought of seeing him.  The upside to being super early is that there was no line whatsoever, and we got to spend a few minutes talking with Santa.  I guess the early bird really does get the worm!  Who knew?!

Friday's quote

"Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun."

George Scialabba

When the holidays take you down

We had a great Thanksgiving, and hope yours was wonderful as well.  As William George's photo indicates, he was wiped out by the entire experience.  Illness has struck at our house so I am simply going to provide an enumeration of where we are today:

1)  I have been so, so sick.  By Friday afternoon I was not feeling especially good, and by Saturday I had a fever of 102.  By early Sunday morning, my fever was at 102.7 so trekking out to an after hours clinic Sunday afternoon became a priority.  They ruled out the flu, considered walking pneumonia and finally settled on treating me for a sinus infection.  I received two shots, medication and a giant, flask-sized container of cough syrup.  Seriously, this is the largest amount of cough syrup I have ever been given.  Even though I have been taking the cough syrup every four hours and although it contains hydrocodone, I have been so WIRED from the steroid shot that I could have re-roofed out home with my bare hands, you know, but for the illness. 

2)  My camera is in the camera hospital.  I have noticed that the quality of the pics has really declined, but I assumed that was attributable to my photographic skills (and it may just that).  The last decent photos I captured were George's two week shots.  I finally received an error message, and the entire camera shut down.  I took it by Wolf, and they have kindly sent it in for repairs.  The upside?  They are so thorough and awesome that I am sure it will be returned better than new.  The downside?  It will be in the shop for 4-6 weeks.  So... my good camera is out of commission for the holidays, but I am very thankful to have my old camera (point-and-shoot) as a back up.  Otherwise, I would be looking at the girls' cameras.  (Speaking of, that it is a post in and of itself and one that I have been meaning to write forever.  I will get to it soon.)

3)  Somehow, the girls and William George have not caught my bug so it has been business as usual for them.  The girls have their big choral event this weekend so they practiced last night and will do a full rehearsal Saturday morning.  I think there is more to this weekend (a couple of performances?), but I will get up to speed on that once my head clears from all the cough syrup.  We have piano this afternoon, and we have portraits tomorrow after school.  (Since my nice camera is on the blink, we are heading into the studio.)  We caught a break with no ballet after piano today (due to our town's Christmas parade and our studio having a float in the parade) so we will at least have a short afternoon.  The girls are too young to walk in the parade, meaning that we can have a nice, quiet evening at home. 

4)  Finally, we all reek of Lysol, and my hands are permanently damaged from excessive use of hand sanitizer.  I think "sick season" is here.