Happy Holidays!

Isa had her first "big" birthday party at Wheels play gym earlier this month. It was great to celebrate with her and all the kids. Most of her preschool class made it as well as some friends we hadn't gotten to see for a while.




That same weekend, we went to see Frozen on Ice. Isa had a great time. The snowman song was the best. Even though the place was Frozen-mad, she picked out an Ariel snow cone cup for a souvenir. Still loyal to The Mermaid.

Unfortunately she got sick right after that and missed most of the last week of preschool. She misses her friends already, but she gets to see them before school starts again since one of them has a birthday party coming up.

On Friday we went to a party at the Hillsborough Rec Center and I got Isa to wear this holiday outfit by telling her she was dressing up as a candy cane. :) These little parties are great! She got to make fake snow (mix shaving cream and corn starch - who knew?), color gingerbread people, make a snowman ornament out of popsicle sticks, and play games with the other kids. I got to go yarn shopping while she did all that. :D

We've been busy gearing up for Christmas. We did our first cookie house, and I made a ton of homemade gingerbread for us, work, Isa's classmates, and various other people. I went a little heavy on the frosting...we like our snowmen and bears fluffy.

"I ate all the extras"

Just 3 more days! Hope you and your family have a great holiday season and a happy new year.

Fall fun!

We're having a great October so far.

The first weekend, we hit the library book sale. Nevermind that we'd just shopped at the preschool book fair (you can't have too many books). We got a pile of books at the library sale. Even though it's pure chaos, we look forward to the sale every year, and we always load up. I've slowly been picking up easy-reader books for Isa since she's starting to learn sight words (when she has the patience to wait on us to point to them - maybe for one book out of three!).

Then I took a day off to go to the zoo, because they have LION CUBS!!!!

We were lucky to get there when the cubs were pretty active. They were all nursing for a while, then some played while some wanted to keep bugging the mama to nurse some more.

"I got up and moved for a REASON, kid!"

This one just wanted to cuddle. Aw...

Sleepy babies!

Of course after all that lion adorableness, when we got to the carousel we had to hop on the lion.

This weekend, we went to Ganyard Hill Farm for pumpkin picking. We'd never done the pumpkin patch thing before so we were in for a happy surprise! There was lots to do: hay rides, a corn maze, a hay mountain with a slide, and Isa's favorites, the corn crib and cotton field.

We brought home handfuls of cotton and I'm sure it will come in handy for something crafty.

After all that fun, we went out and picked our three pumpkins. It was neat getting to pluck them right out of the fields!

Here's our pumpkin trio, all cleaned up and ready to decorate:

Happy Fall!

And you thought walking a mile uphill both ways in the snow was bad...

My business trip came and went, and I really enjoyed New Hampsire and Maine, but I hated to have to leave Isa while she was sick! She had a cold this week and missed both days of preschool. I left her presents for every day I was gone, so she enjoyed those.

I also brought her this game, Feed the Kitty, from a toy store I went to in Portsmouth. Portsmouth has some great shopping and eating. Isa figured out how to play the game two turns in, and she loves it. We've played it about five times already and I'm sure Dan has played it with her quite a few too.

Another fun present I brought Isa was a book about the Nubble Lighthouse in York, Maine. I just grabbed the book because it was cute and it was about a boy and his pet seagull. The boy is the lighthouse keeper's son, and they have to find a way to get him to the mainland for school. So the lighthouse keeper rigs up a cable with a pulley and a box hanging from the cable, and reels his son to and from school across the channel between the lighthouse island and the mainland. When we got to the end of the book it had a note saying it was based on a true story. Crazy, eh? It's included in this page of facts about the lighthouse. When the story got out, the Coast Guard made the guy stop sending his son across in the box. Sheesh, it's not even that far...

We have got to go back here on vacation soon!

We had Isa's parent-teacher conference this week too. Dan went and I stayed home with Isa since she was still feeling sickly. She got great reviews from both teachers. Miss M. said she was very, very advanced. They both said she listens well, follows directions, plays well with the other kids, and there's nothing we need to work on as far as preschool goes. We're very proud of her. We also got commissioned to collect acorns to bring in next week for the preschool kids because they're learning about fall. :)

Tomorrow we're off to Lowe's Build and Grow to make a firetruck. But before that Isa and I are going to make scones. We use a basic recipe that has heavy cream, flour, a little sugar and whatever goodies we have handy. Right now we have pomegranates so if I get up in time I'm going to seed one and make pomegranate chocolate scones. Another combo we like is chopped apples and walnuts. Here's our recipe:

2 cups flour
1/3 cup sugar
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/3 cups heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla
milk for glazing
 various tasty stuffs: fruit, nuts, chocolate chips, etc

Preheat oven to 400 and line a baking sheet with parchment paper (or grease it. I'm lazy, I use parchment paper). In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, fillings, and salt. Add cream and vanilla, and stir until moistened.

Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it. Knead a couple times, then pat into a disc about an inch thick. Cut into 12 triangles. Place each scone on the baking sheet and brush with milk.

Bake 15 min. or until golden.

New school, and counting down the days until Halloween

Our September is going great so far. Isa started school on the 3rd. It's a half-day program three times a week, and she really enjoys it. She loves making art and singing songs the best. When we go to pick her up, we can hear all the kids singing the "Pollywog song" through the door.

Here's her smiley first day of school photo:

Her favorite lunch is peanut butter and jelly, but she also likes monkey sandwiches (Justin's hazelnut spread and bananas). This week I made her some pepperoni rolls cheese rolls since she decided she doesn't like pepperoni. Hopefully she'll eat those for lunch as a pb&j alternative. Dan and I sure loved them. The recipe is here. But since Dan is allergic to eggs I used a blob of vegan mayonnaise, and it worked fine. I also stuffed the cheese-only ones with ricotta. We'll be making these again soon.

We were going to go to the museum today, but it rained, so we mostly stayed inside except for a quick trip out to collect acorns and draw on the deck with chalk. We painted some butterfly magnets and then we got the Halloween bin out of the attic.

Ohhh, the Halloween bin. Isa loves Halloween as much as we do. Halloween may be my favorite holiday. I don't have to shop, I don't have to cook, and the sole purpose is to dress up and eat candy. We had a great time going through the decorations, putting them out, and playing with all the Halloween toys. Isa came up with a great costume:

She also made up a Halloween song. It went something like this:

Spooky spooky spooky spooky halloween!
Tall trees that have lights on them
You better run away
Or you'll get a surprise
Spooky spooky spooky everything
Spooky spooky spooky spiders

That's all I remember but I got a recording of the part where she switched to singing "Monster monster monster." I'll post that later. I'm being summoned to play Sims 2 before bedtime.

I've been meaning to come back to this!

Time flies when you're having fun. It was before Easter when I started this blog, and I kept meaning to come back to it. I hadn't yet invited anyone to it since I only had one post! Maybe I'll invite some people now that I have two.

Our Easter trip to the beach was rainy and cold, but we got to see a lovely wedding, and Isa enjoyed her basket. Here she is at the wedding. It was her first wedding; she was fascinated with the bride's beautiful dress and very glad to be there:

We filled her eggs with about half candy and half rocks. The kid loves rocks. She says she is going to be a geologist when she grows up.

Since Easter we've had a busy spring and summer. We went to the Festival for the Eno, where we had a blast listening to music and wading with the minnows. We went to a birthday party at Pullen Park. It was our first time there but it won't be our last since there are so many fun things to do.

Isa had her first day of preschool summer camp in July. She had a great time, and is excited about starting back for good this Wednesday.

We had visits from four out of six grandparents this spring and summer, and just got back from a trip to WV where we we saw all six grandparents and almost all of Isa's cousins.

I'll try to update more often with what we're up to! We just joined the YMCA, so there's lots of swimming in our future.

Like a Christmas letter, only neverending and without presents...

It's our first blog post! Isa would be so excited, only she is in bed and doesn't know what a blog is.

I am starting this blog as a sort of online scrapbook for our family, but of course it will mostly be about Isa, our three-year-old daughter. Since most of our extended family is out of state, I thought it would be nice to let people know what we're up to more often, and this way we don't have to talk to each other in person (HAAA! Just kidding, we love you all). I also stick little tidbits of things we do all over the place on the internet—on Facebook, Youtube, parenting websites we're involved in, email, etc.—so hopefully I can collect some of that stuff on here. There will be photos, recipes, crafty things we do with Isa, more photos, videos if I ever figure out how to post them, and accounts of all the fun things we do around here and wherever we happen to go.

Isa is a typical three-year-old girl who loves ponies, princesses, cats, dressing up, and chocolate. Right now her favorite books are Princess Super Kitty and Kitty Cat, Kitty Cat, Are You Going to School? Her favorite shows are My Little Pony, Blue's Clues, and anything on PBS Kids. She loves going to the library, the Durham Museum of Life and Science, and the swimming pool. She is very excited about Easter and our upcoming beach trip.