Things have been fairly quiet around here lately.  Winter break was last week, the detox is over, (thankfully, as those cold shakes were getting hard to swallow!) Mark is off in Barcelona this week and I am getting everyone/thing ready for Hawaii.  In the meantime, I thought I’d share some funny things the kids have been doing recently.  Last night we had a wedding in the house!

The Happy Couple

Both Soph and Max are very into “getting married”… usually to each other, but if Soph has made Max mad about something, he’ll tell her “I’m not going to marry you…I’m going to marry mommy!” I am not sure where this has come from… they have looked at a few wedding pics we have around the house and asked questions about our wedding, and there has been the discussion that you don’t actually marry your family, you meet those people much, Much (MUCH!) later, and yes, we’ve even had a brief chat about if girls only marry boys, and vice versus.  I’ll save that deep convo for a later date. Needless to say, they had a nice ceremony last night with Stella officiating,

You can kiss the brother now....

and if you are wondering about Sophie’s white dress…. that was my Princess Lea costume (from Star Wars fame) that my mom made me many moons ago!  Max just seems to think his suit needs to be his astronaut costume… so who am I to argue?

Sophie has been also doing another amusing thing: THEME DRESSING.  She came down dressed like this a few days ago:

Little Miss Roy G. Biv

It’s her RAINBOW Outfit.  She is wearing all the ROY G. BIV colors of the rainbow, (there’s a red t-shirt under the green sweater) and I think her headband is the blue in the mix.  She has also dressed like SPRING with a blue sky (skirt) with fluffy white clouds (t-shirt) and flowered tights for her garden… and we’ve had Valentine’s attire in all pink and red, so I am really excited to see what she does for St. Patrick’s day and Easter too!!

Finally, I’ll leave you with some more pictures of the SuperHeros hard at play… it’s usually mix of them taking turns arresting each other or Sophie using her Wonder Woman “truth-telling lasso” around Batman Max’s neck.  (The wonder woman costume is also an old one of mine… my Grandma Sophie had it made for me because I was totally into Linda Carter’s “Wonder Woman” show back in the 70’s!)  Ah, nostalgia!!

BatMax's Super Sword hard at work

Wrangling BatMax

Hi everyone… it’s the weekend and so it must be time for a new blog entry!! I finally got around to doing some SERIOUS editing (and by that I mean leaving most of it on the cutting room floor) of Sophie’s school’s Winter Concert. So check out the video below.  What else has been going on?  Well, Mark and I are doing our annual detox for the next 3 weeks, which is kind of fun, and probably the best part is the only real dishes I have to do is wash out the vitamix twice a day.  So, leaves me free time for lots of other things, like contemplating how hungry I am. 

pre-ear infection smile.

Max is recovering from an ear infection, which isn’t so great, but I am hoping that everyone will get their sickies out now and then when we head to Maui we’ll be healthy (and oh-so-ready for those rum drinks!)  Mark head off to Barcelona in a couple of weeks and gets back right before the vacation. Both kids are enjoying school, and I just registered Sophie for kindergarten next year.  Time flies, I can’t believe my little baby is going to ride a bus to and from school in the fall!! 

just doin' a little excavating...

It’s still winter here but last week we had about 4 days (over the weekend!!) that were amazing.  Like, sit out in short sleeves and get some pink in your cheeks from the sun while drinking a margarita, amazing.  It perked everyone up from the winter doldrums and Max was extra happy because he got to play outside in the dirt!

Mommy was extra happy because I could for a short while anyway keep the mess outside for a change! Anyway, I think I need to go make myself another cup of tea, which is the beer of choice while on a detox, right Mark?

Ciao for now, everyone!

Here’s something that I forgot we did….it was a very cold but sunny day that we went downtown to go for a ride on the holiday carousel… as you can see, the kids loved it! Enjoy!

We just got back from an extended stay up at Whistler.  Why extended, you ask?  Well, the day after we drove up, Seattle got hit with the first of several serious snowstorms, the final one culminating in over a foot of snow in places (10 inches, or 26cm to you Aussies at our house alone!) and then was hit with an ice storm on top of the snow that created a real mess.  The I-5 freeway we would have taken to drive home was shut down and people were warned to not go anywhere unless it was an emergency.  Sounds like a perfectly great excuse to ski a couple extra days, no?  So, we did.  Nevermind that Whistler got less than HALF the snow Seattle did the entire time we were there; and let’s just forget about Sophie’s occasional bouts of vomiting (and ONLY when we were out to dinner, of course;) and we won’t even talk about how bone chilling-ly cold it was either, because the skiing was great, the kids each got to ski a bit, and Mark and I had 5 glorious days of skiing and “après” skiing together as well.  It was FUN!!!  Sophie really enjoyed her ski lessons… after 3 days of it she was able to put her skis on herself, navigate a rope tow and ski down a short hill, not only by herself but looking darn good, too!  She was a real trooper, the last day we all skied, it was -22 degrees celsius on the mountain, and she still came home raving about how much fun it was.  Max had one day of lessons…. more of an into to wearing skis and how to walk in them.  It was a long day for him (6+hours) as he is used to having an afternoon nap, so he was good and tired but he did pretty well and will be ready to go more full on next year!  As I mentioned, it was very cold (the locals were even complaining) and Mark got a case of frostbite on his cheeks (on his FACE….ahem.) so he’s now sporting some scabby skin, poor guy.  So, after more than a week, we were ready to come home (as were our wallets) but it was great to ski ourselves into exhaustion, and eat and drink at some fun places (like Australia, Canada allows kids into the pubs until a certain time, making them more family friendly and all around a nice way to be able to vacation), swam in the outdoor heated pools, soaked in the outdoor hot tub in a snowfall (very fun!) and could hardly turn around without running into another Aussie (or as Mark liked to say…a NAFA…I’ll let you decipher that one yourself.) 

So, here are some of the pics we took, mostly with out phones as the big SLR was too much to juggle with skis, and gear, etc. Sophie even had her picture taken on the mountain on her last day of lessons, and it’s no mystery which ones those are.  So, enjoy the pictures!! 

p.s. Steve and Rachel, let’s all keep our fingers crossed that all our “vacation kinks” have been worked out now and we won’t see any more crop up when we meet you in Hawaii.  🙂

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Well, needless to say, it was a blur of the last couple months…. so here are some bulk uploads of just pictures! General kid snaps, Max’s 3rd birthday, snow fun on a trip up to Leavenworth (which is like Little Bavaria up in our mountains…hence Markie’s beer!), and Christmas Eve, morning and dinner… all at our house. We somehow didn’t end up with many pictures of those events- probably because we were busy with the holiday craziness and had no time for the camera! Anyway, enjoy the pics… another blog post to come soon!

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Well, we made it.  It was a nearly week long affair but Sophie is now officially 5 and mom and dad managed to get thru the week unscathed.  She had a little party at school (you get to bring in cupcakes or some other treat to share with the class) and also she got to bring in a story and a “special person” to read it… it was ME!  The story she choose was “Uno’s Garden” by Graeme Base and I think the kids reeally liked it.  Anyway- after that it was off to a little mommy/daughter salon visit for Sophie to get some feathers in her hair!

These are real rooster feathers that they crimp into your hair and you wash and style just as usual. They colors she picked don’t stand out as much as they could but maybe that’s a good thing.  Anyway- she likes them and that’s what counts. Then it was home for birthday dinner and presents with Max and Daddy and I.  And FINALLY, on Saturday was the actual PARTY.  This year we did it a but differently as it was a “kids only” party instead of the usual family dinner party in years past per Sophie’s request- she wanted kids!  We had some of Sophie’s pals from the neighborhood (her best buddy and her sister couldn’t make it, but we had a nice small group of kids anyway!) that came over for a pizza making/bingo and pin the nose on the clown game playing/present opening and cake eating bonanza.  It was fun, everyone behaved really well and Sophie got some fun gifts… even if the “no new Barbies” rule got broken by several people!  Take a look at the slideshow below…gives you a peek into the kid fest we had!

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Well, it’s been a busy fall around here…. October always seems to be a very busy month….Mark seems to travel a fair bit and with BOTH kids in school that means twice the pumpkin patch field trips, school parties,etc.  To top is all off, we decided to have a Halloween cocktail party as well.  The house has been made up in spooktakular fashion for weeks now!  So, you’ll have to pardon this post with a multitude of pictures-farm and pumpkin patch visits, halloween decor and costumes, and… also the newest addition to our family… Stella!! 

 We adopter her from a shelter and she has a very sweet and loving personality.  In cat terms that means she likes to sleep on your face.  She’s pretty  spunky and it took a little while for the other cats to come around but they have warmed to her and now we are that crazy family with 4 grey cats!  The best part is the kids totally adore her and she thinks they are great too… this is some of the stuff they get up to:

So, as you can see- they all seem to think each other is peachy.  It’s really cute. 

So, now that the actual Halloween holiday is over I can finish this posting.  Over the weekend we had an adult Halloween party which was fun, and one of the reasons we went a little overboard on the house decor, and then last night Mark took the kids trick-or-treating!  They came home with quite the haul of candy, and unbeknownst to them, 1/2 of it is already in the trash!  What they don’t know (and get to eat) definitely will not hurt them!

So, take a look at the rather large slideshow that follows;  it includes pics from both the pumpkin farm visits, a wedding that Mark and I went to that had a photo “booth” (yay! we finally had a reason to get dressed up!),  the kids’ Halloween costumes (Sophie went as Jessie the Cowgirl from Toy Story 2…I was so relieved she didn’t want to be a princess, and Max was an astronaut,) some rather blurry shots of them racing around waiting to go trick-or-treating, plus some of the party and the house all dressed up for Halloween.  Enjoy!!

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Well, last week was another milestone…. Sophie started her LAST year of preschool, in Pre-K, and Max started his FIRST year of preschool… in the Pre-3 class. Sophie was more than excited, because at this age school is just plain fun and she was looking forwward to meeting her new teacher and seeing her old friends. I think she was MOST excited about school starting because that meant she could finally wear these:These shoes have tiny (and very bright) LED colored lights scattered all over the shoes that light up when she prances around (so the lights are on pretty much 100% of the time.) They are her “new school shoes” and so wearing them on day one was a no brainer. Here she is all dressed and ready for school… which happens in the afternoons this year Monday through Thursday. On the other hand, Max is in school just 2 mornings a week on Wednesdays and Fridays. He is lucky enough (and by “lucky” I mean Mommy went up and used her muscle to guarantee it) to have the same two great teachers that Sophie did for her Pre-3 class. He was pretty excited as well for “Cool” (he still can’t pronounce the “S” sound) to start. So, when I am not driving up and back and back again to Preschool (I am calling myself a kid mule this year) I think I just might have enought time to either blog or clean up a bit. Hmmm… expect LOTS of posts from me this year! Anyway-for Max’s first day he and I went up together and spent about an hour in the classroom getting aquainted with everyone and everything… and I’ve attached a slideshow of those pics because it was cute. He was very into trying out all the puzzles and after that he was ready to get out of there. Take a look!

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Well, last week was the illustrious “stay-cation” and it was fantastic. We lucked out with amazing weather and really made the most of our time off. The kids enjoyed having Daddy home a lot and so did Mommy! We did a bunch of stuff, like going to the zoo, one morning Mark and I left the kids at home and rented stand up paddle boards and cruised around the ritzy waterfront and ogled the rich people’s houses, had some nice dinners out on the deck and caught up with friends and drank more beer and rose wine than should be allowed! Here are some pics of general summertime fun starting back in July, more of Sophie’s Ballet Class, additional miscellany (I should have broken up this blog into a few posts perhaps, but it’s summertime and I’m being lazy) and rounding up with this past week at the zoo, et all.

We also spent a fair amount of time out on the boat this week, including two overnight trips, which was a real “experience.” Especially given that Max was so excited to get to share the cubby-hole bed with his big sister he could hardly sleep! He babbled and giggled and came up outside on the boat deck where Mark and I were sitting enjoying the evening to tell us “Good night, I love you, I’m tired!” every 5 minutes or so for about an HOUR. He did eventually get to sleep for a bit but then woke up again at 2AM and wanted breakfast! I had to eventually go in there with them to be the barrier between Max “smell my feet” Linton and Sophie, who was actually trying to sleep (albeit unsuccessfully.) Needless to say, the next morning we were all rather tired and grumpy. And the worst part was – we were all set to make ourselves some coffee on the stove but failed to bring along a fire-clicker to start the damn thing. Good thing Markie was able to cook eggs in a frying pan on the BBQ, so we didn’t go hungry. Either we were not scarred all that badly or more likely, we just have short memories, because we did another over-nighter again later in the week, (this time with the clicker in hand!) and things went much better, but Max and Sophie still had a good time being bad (not sleeping) and Mark and I both had crick-y backs after sleeping on the table-cum-bed. Oh well, I guess that’s what you call a “first world” problem, and we’ll take it. And now it’s back to work for Mark, and off to Milan tomorrow for a very short work trip and then, hey- it’s the weekend again (and a long one too for Veteran’s Day) and with that comes…. you guessed it- more BOATING! We’ll keep on until the weather stops cooperating. Here are some pictures from the first trip, as you can see both kids (Sophie in particular) are really getting to love the water. Sophie easily spends 3/4 of her entire day swimming around and then the other 1/4 of the time she’s eating and drinking (as are we. a-hem.) We aren’t sure which costs more… fueling the boat or fueling the kids (and parents) while on the boat! Enjoy!!

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