The Mitten

I haven't been taking (many) photos, but tonight I got some fun video of Emily and Louie.

Emily goes to Expo Special-Ed Preschool and she has some really awesome teachers. They do some really fun weekly projects. Today, she came home from school with "The Mitten."

Their project was to make a mitten out of paper and sew it together with yarn. Then they each got a picture of the animals that are in the book to color. Emily loves this book and we have read it many times. She got her own copy (a boardbook) from her cousin Katie when she was born....

Here's Emily starting to go through the story

After Emily finished going through "The Mitten," Louie told me about his day at school. It was mismatch day at NELC. Here, he sort of explains his outfit...

Hiatus

UPDATE: the good people at Canon, USA just confirmed that my lens does have some "poor focus issues and back focus problems" and are in the process of repairing my lens. it should be returned to me early next week! YAY!!!!

I'm taking a temporary hiatus in blogger land....at least when it comes to posting photos. I haven't taken any photos for a few days. For the past couple of weeks, I've been struggling with my 50mm lens; I felt like I wasn't getting a decent picture whenever I picked up my camera...It was so frustrating!
Last week, Karen Russell suggested that maybe my lens was doing a little back focusing. What is back focusing? I didn't really know. So my nerdy photography friend, Sherri, filled me in. Sure enough, that is what I think it is doing!
On Thursday, I called Canon had a long chat with a tech person. She checked some of my images and thought that might be the problem. So, on Friday, I wrapped my baby in several layers of bubble wrap and packed her in a box; I kissed her goodbye and told her to come back soon. She's going on a little vacation to New Jersey. I hope that whatever the good people at Canon do will fix her problem.
See you soon Sugar! we'll miss you while you're away!

The Snowy Day

One winter morning, Emily and Louie woke up and looked out the window. Snow had fallen during the night and covered everything as far as they could see. After breakfast, they put on their snowsuits and went out into the

deep, deep snow.....

Pirates and Ponies

Some favorites from the Christmas holiday...Emily loves her My Little Pony

and Louie loves his knight castle



We've really been focusing on getting kids to be totally potty trained with out accidents. It seems to be a hopeless expectation....but hopefully, we'll get though it. Louie's been doing better...He hasn't pooped in his pants since sometime last week. We've been rewarding the positive behavior.
It seems that along with pirates and knights, we're also totally into Batman!
Thank you Santa for the Batman cape. Photos to come shortly!

I had a dream....

to have a day off and bake cookies with my kids...who knew that Superman would be interested in baking cookies.

We also made some homemade macaroni and cheese. Dan got out the Cuisinart to make some bread crumbs. He taught Emily how to use it. We're teaching her how to work all of the small kitchen appliances.

New Year's Eve

Happy New Year! We had a fun night of coloring, eating, drinking and listening to Emily cry on New Year's Eve...

319

Days until we get these out of the attic and decorate our Christmas tree...... As we were packing up the Christmas decorations this year, Dan and I were amazed at the number of ornaments that each of our kids have accumulated already! They each have their own ornament box and each of them is almost full!
Oh and that big box on the bottom, is the box of ornaments that I have accumulated over my lifetime, some of them are ones that Dan and I have received since we were married or we have picked up while travelling. Unpacking each of my ornaments and putting them on the tree each year brings back so many memories.
I hope that my kids have the same memories that I do when they are older and have families of their own.

Christmas Morning

We had a great Christmas this year, there was a big blizzard on Christmas Eve that lasted into Christmas Day. We got to stay home and enjoy the day with the kids and play with all their new toys....the Christmas tree got put away on Saturday and our house seems so empty now..

Louie was the first to come out and see all the stuff that Santa left.


Then, Emily came out. They slept in their magic sleeping bags until 8:45 Christmas morning. Emily had to bring her sleeping bag out to the living room.

First, there were puzzles.

then, magnetic boy dress-ups.

and the Goodnight Moon Game.

and superhero capes.

and a Cinderella play set.

a knight castle

and their stockings.

the otherside of the superhoero capes.

a Batman cape.

A little glimpse of all the snow. Dan was out blowing and shoveling snow for several hours.

The plows came by and there was MORE shoveling that had to be done.

Christmas Eve

We're going to move the calendar back a couple of weeks to Christmas....because I'm a little behind with our blogging. We went to the Children's mass. Assumption is always decorated so beautifully for the Christmas celebration.

All the kids gather at the back of the church.

All the kids pull Baby Jesus to the Creche at the front of the church in a sled. Dan and the kids were in the back of the church waiting so they could get a good spot. Louie was right in front. Emily was behind the kid in the red shirt. He pushed everyone out of the way to get the best spot.

After mass, we headed out to Grandma's house in White Bear Lake for a delicious sit down dinner. She bought new Christmas dishes for the occasion. The table looked so pretty.

After dinner, we headed down to the lower level to open presents. Louie and Emily could hardly stand the wait.

Here's the stocking that Santa brought for all the kids.

Louie could hardly wait for the presents to be passed out.

He and Nick were checking out all the presents to see where to begin

Grandma gave Emily and Louie their own Shaggy Puppy Sleeping Bags. They have their names on them and they LOVE them!

They both climbed into their sleeping bags to try them out.

Louie got a treasure chest full of jewlery and fun pirate things. Emily got a really cute corduroy jumper with a matching headband. They both love their presents.

There was a parrot in the treasure chest.

Louie got a pirate book from Grandma too. Uncle Scooter read it to him right away! Auntie M got a squirrel proof bird feeder. We tried it out with the parrot.

and the last photo from Christmas Eve, the Tapio family.

Lucy

Meet Lucy,

She is Emily's new fish. Emily has wanted a fish for quite a while, since we took care of Claire's goldfish, Chloe. Auntie M wanted to get Emily her own Chloe, but the woman at Petsmart wouldn't sell her a goldfish for a 5 year old???
So, she got a Beta. And when it came time to name her (or him?) she told us "that's not a Chloe fish." The Beta was named Lucy....