Top 10 Moments of 2012

In no particular order:

10. Girls' first day of kindergarten, and subsequent impressive speed at learning to read.
9. 5th birthday party and first annual birthday hike up Spencer Butte.
8. Camping in the rain FOR A WEEK.
7. My EPIC but lightly attended August 40th birthday party.
6. My first and only trip to Vegas with Jim.
5. Jim's family friendly and Heavily Attended October 40th birthday party.
4. Harding Family Thanksgiving at our house.
3. Engelhardt Family Christmas at Tom and Pam's, including meeting Cooper.
2. Snow weekend at Mt. Hood with grad school friends.
1. Dance performances: among them first ballet recital, hip-hop dance camp, and Hansel and Gretel!

Of course, every day with my amazing daughters and husband is a "top ten" kind of day. There has been enough tragedy and heartache in the world
this year to make me grateful for every moment of my beautiful life.

Happy New Year everyone!

Cousins

Sisters

Holiday Card 2012

Wishing You Merry Holiday Card

Click here to browse Shutterfly's holiday card collection.

View the entire collection of cards.

Thursday Thanks

Thirteen reasons to be thankful over the last week and a half. Enjoy! Pictures to come...still in the camera :-)

1. Cousins. Katie and Anika arrived last Tuesday, and S and P were pretty much glued to their sides for the four nights they stayed over.
2. Just Dance 3. What's better than watching your five year old shake it for hours with her cousin while donned in pajamas?
3. Grandparents. Picking kids up from school. Providing after-school entertainment. Cooking dinner. Need I say more?
4. My job. I actually really love it, especially the people, and the flexibility to work part time and take five days off to be with my family.
5. Oven Ready Turkey. No giblet-thingies to deal with.
6. Rain. If I say it enough I might actually believe it.
7. Siblings. Thanks to number 3 above, Jim and I got to have a night out with Tom and Anne. We hit a brewery, an arcade, a bar, and a donut shop. Not bad for a bunch of forty-somethings!
8. Jon Stewart. For making the news bearable to watch.
9. Oregon Ballet Academy. Two very happy little gingerbread girls stole the show and melted my heart! OBA puts on really amazing productions.
10. Northern Lights Christmas Tree Farm. $10 grand fir cut down with a chainsaw by a nice young man (please ignore the hand saw that will appear in Jim's hand on our Holiday Card), $25 custom wreath while you wait, wagon ride, and hot coffee made in a cute barn. LOVE that place!
11. Holiday lights and music-playing decorations. They provide a seemingly endless source of entertainment during the month we have them set up.
12. YOU! Thanks for reading this sporadically updated chronicle. I really intend to post more often and be all eloquent and such, but you know, I got stuff to do! :-)

Rainbows and Election Results

Here are the girls in their Rainbow Dash Halloween costumes, trick-or-treating at the neighbors' house.

And watching the election results rolling in.  Although I am very happy to see Obama elected to another term, I am sad to see how politically divided the country still is. Here's to hoping for bipartisan efforts to help the whole nation in the years to come. 

Lastly, we are the recent lucky recipients of a home FM system, thanks to another family from dance class who wasn't using theirs. This is such a gift! We are using it in the car, during dance class, and even around the house! Thanks Maren M. and Family!

What a Wonderful World

Skylar and Paige with their Wonderful TOD, signing What a Wonderful World with their morning enrichment class.

Wonderful, indeed.

Hansel and Gretl

Save the Date!
Skylar & Paige will be gingerbread people in the Hansel & Gretl prelude to Snow White in Oregon Ballet Academy's fall production. Their show is Saturday November 24th at 7 pm.

Jim's 40th Birthday

Edgewood Fun Run

Skylar and Paige each ran 4 laps. They really enjoyed it, ran in another kids run the next day, and then Paige hiked with me and some friends to the Pisgah swing the next day! Tired and happy chilluns :-)

Library Cards of Their Own!

Kindergarten Rules!!!

Grandmas and a Parade

Grandma Rotzie with the girls enjoying ice cream sandwiches; Grandma Mary getting a goodbye hug from Paige; and the ladies ready to march in the Eugene Celebration parade. Coming soon: posts on Swim Lessons with Hearing Aids and Prepping for Kindergarten. Kindergarten? Excuse me while I get a tissue.

Summer Finale

Visit with SJ and family, pre-party dinner with Erin, my girls and my parents, fabulous 40 PARTY (pics to come) with many dear friends, and now Vegas! What a way to end the summer!

Prepping for Monday

Bedtime Fears

S: Mommy? I'm scared.

Me: what are you scared of?

S: I don't want to tell you.

Me: If you don't tell me I can't help you.

Pause.

S: Skunks.

Olympic Trials and 4th of July

Best.Town.Ever
Best.4th.Ever

OHSU Cochlear Consult

But first, can I get a Hip hop hop, hip hoppapotumus! Will I ever get that song out of my head? Or Paige's "punches" and Skylar's "hip hop face?" I hope not. :-)

This past Wednesday, we took S up to OHSU for an audiological evaluation, to determine her eligibility for cochlear implants. Miss S did an amazing job in the booth. Two audis tested her pure tone detection and speech recognition, aided, on both sides. As we already knew, S tests well in the booth. Although her hearing levels suggest eligibility for CI's, her performance in the booth shows that she is doing well with her listening and word discrimination skills, and getting very good benefit from her hearing aids.

The bottom line recommendation: no rush to CI's, monitor for any further progressive loss, do some further testing in noise, and meet the surgeon to discuss next steps (like radiology).

So proud of my girl. She was nervous on the way up, loosened up quite a bit once she was out of the booth, and thoroughly enjoyed the aerial tram ride back down to the car.

The view was gorgeous; the outlook sunny.

FIVE

I'm not sure how my babies got to be FIVE so quickly, but OH are they getting so grown up.

Just look at these beauties.

Five is a wonderful, curious, hilarious age. I have taken quite a lot of video trying to capture their utter adorableness. This May was especially packed with momentous occasion after momentous occasion.  Some highlights:

1. First Ballet Recital. This was a REAL recital, with tutus (see above), a stage in a real theater, and a professional video recording. Skylar was ready to go before, after, and during, soaking up every aspect of the experience with typical Skylar gusto. Paige was a little more reserved about it, but when she saw the tutu, all bets were off.  She did it, and I was so proud of her! She buried her face in my neck for five straight minutes after it was over - it took a lot out of her. But both of them did so well, and they have the best teacher in the world. Grandma Rotzie and Papa Tom got to see the recital and boy, was it a treat for them!   

2. My Dad's 70th Birthday. I made him a photo book for his birthday, containing many photos he took himself and some I took of him with his grandchildren. He LOVES it (see photo from two posts ago). This was also a special day because it was the day my parents got to Eugene after my dad finished some recent health treatments. It was so great to have him in Eugene again, spending time with Paige and Skylar. 

3. The Girls' 5th Birthday. Well, this was a big giant slew of parties, of course, including a school celebration (Friday), their party in our backyard (Saturday), and their actual birthday (Sunday). The party was fabulous, thanks to the efforts of all four grandparents in making things, cleaning things, buying things, and sprucing things up. (I know, I'm soooo lucky!) S & P also have wonderful friends, so the company was fine and a good time was had by all.   

4. Skylar's Transition to Kindergarten Meeting. We don't have her draft IEP yet, but the meeting went really well, and I like the Kindergarten teacher quite a lot.  Skylar's eligibility for special education services is good for another year, or we might be looking at a 504 plan instead of the more comprehensive services she's getting now as part of her IFSP. So I'm optimistic about the Kindergarten year - she's ready, the school culture seems to be a good fit for both Skylar and Paige, and it's our neighborhood school so they get to ride the bus. :-)  

5. Hike with Grandma and Papa up Spencer Butte. We've gotta make this a birthday tradition - the hike is quintessentially Eugene! It was my girls' second time up, and my parents' first. It's so fun to actually hike with S & P! They are growing into good little walkers and hikers and able to do more and more difficult things every day. Fun times ahead including camping this summer and hopefully some day trips to lakes and waterfalls.

Next for us is a summer full of camp! Stay tuned!

Grandma Love

Ah, King Estate. Beautiful scenery, delicious food and wine, and happy children cavorting with their grandmas.  It doesn't get much better than that!

Party day!

Today is Paige and Skylar's 5th birthday party. How can that be?!

Here are some recent pics of the girls with their papas. The second one was taken at my dad's 70th birthday celebration. Love the papas!

That's a wrap!

No Words Necessary

Big Guy

Tomorrow Porter goes in for surgery to remove a cancerous mass. We just found out on Saturday. The vet advised us to schedule it as soon as possible. Wish us luck. I have no words for how much I love that dog!

Diligence is a Virtue

Jim burned the eggs he was making for dinner, giving Skylar the perfect opportunity to practice her new vocabulary on him:

"Daddy, you weren't diligent."

Goofy Cousins

Bring on the Egg Hunt!

New ballet class

The girls had a blast in their new ballet class today!

Two of My Loves

Too cute not to post. :-)

Spring Snow Cowgirl

Hike with Porter in a light spring snow

Recent Activities

The other day, Paige arranged all of her tank tops on her bed and declared that she was going to put them all on.  First just the spaghetti strap ones; then all of them.  Nine, I believe.  Skylar could not let this fun activity go by without her participation, of course, and here is the result: two giggling four year olds, each wearing nine tank tops and mugging for the camera. :-)

Yesterday, we headed to AC Gilbert Discovery Village in Salem, a place they love, to meet up with our dear friends J, Z, and M.  The three girls enjoy each other's company immensely, as you can see from these silly photos taken right before we had to part ways.

I was very impressed by P and S's fearless conquering of the triple-decker twirly slide, which must be 30 feet tall and dark for most of the ride.  Not only did they scamper up the play structure to the top and swoosh down together without hesitation, they repeated this circuit no less than seven times, getting all pink in the cheeks and grinning ear to ear.  Yes!  See Exhibit A and B below:

Lastly, I had to include the shot below because it is so cool.  On our snow weekend reunion with graduate school friends (which was awesome!), four of us moms stole away to the brewpubs of Hood River for a few hours.  (Attention JTC moms, this is reason #2 to attend Hands and Voices National in June). This shot was taken at Big Horse Brewing's Horsefeathers Pub, with a view of the Columbia River from a big wooden house perched on the hill. Good, good times.