dress-up galore

It has been awhile since I've had a photo shoot for no reason with the girls. So we got out the dress-up box today and I let them go for it- do whatever they wanted and I just snapped away! We had a blast and I LOVE all the photos we got while playing.

 I can't believe these two photos are of the same girl. It's like "Audrie Freshman year of college and then Audrie runs for Congress"...!!

Of course, we had to get the official princess pics.

Annie is a little more of a challenge to photograph because she is NEVER still for even half a second- a constant state of blur. But I love these of her "say cheese" smile that she does.

Our friend, Juli, mailed the girls a package of really cool dress up items and in it were these rubber dinosaur gloves that Audrie loves.

Annie in a huge blond wig!

These last two are my favorite.

 

Sweet sweet girls. I love these two ladies so much!!!!!!!

procrastinating at it's worst

Oh my goodness, I am procrastinating SO badly right now. I'm supposed to be entering my Quarter 2 grades for all my student's report cards, but the girls are asleep and Jamie is playing tennis with his league... so... I've updated my Facebook cover photo about 4 times (can't decide which of these two I like better)

And changed my thumbnail photo (with my "tv hair-do" as a coworker calls it):

 Also checked Instagram every few minutes, downloaded some new music on iTunes (have you heard Kat Edmonson?? So good!) and now I'm blogging.

 Oh and the things I've Googled in the past hour have included: Grace Kelly, curly parsley vs flat parsley, how to fix drafty windows, and White House photographers.

How am I supposed to get anything done?!

Maybe I'll go google "how to stop procrastinating"....  ha!

how's your day?

 So I still haven't blogged our Christmas or New Year's photos, but that's ok because we have something more fun to talk about... Annie is finally potty trained! (This is exciting stuff.)

We learned our lesson with Audrie when we tried to push her into it way too soon and it failed several times. When we finally gave up with Audrie... a few months later she just decided one day to be potty trained (and it honestly all clicked for her one day and she never looked back).

So with Annie we decided we were not even going to mention it until SHE was really interested. A few times over the past few months I would sit her on the potty before bath time and she would sit there and smile (and maybe let a few drops out). But it wasn't until about two weeks ago that she declared she wanted to go potty. So we said ok let's give it a shot.

We let her wear panties and put her on the potty a lot. She had 2-3 accidents in her clothes, but honestly after a few days- she had it down! (Props to Jamie for sticking to it with her!) And now here we are two weeks later and she is completely out of diapers (well, she sleeps in pull-ups at night). But even when we are playing at the park, or running around town- she tells us when she needs to go! So proud of her.

 But as awesome as it is to not be buying diapers anymore- it is sad to think that this milestone just means she is growing up. Our little Baby Annie!

 This girl is so hilarious to me. She makes me laugh out loud so many times a day. Plenty of personality, that's for sure.

Today on the subway we were sitting next to a large African-American man that was at least 300 pounds of pure grouchiness- he looked like a snarly pit bull. Annie turned to him, grinned the biggest grin, and loudly asked "HOW'S YOUR DAY?!".

Love her.

December 2012

December was a big month for us!

Audrie auditioned for kindergarten at the Kaufman School of Music (which is right next door to Julliard)! It's such a prestigious school, but it's free. They only accept 15 Kindergartners and it's a 3 step audition process. We are waiting to hear back from the first round. Parents weren't allowed in. Audrie was in her audition class of 10 four year olds for 45 minutes and all I could get out of her was... "we clapped our hands"?! 

Later that week went to the tree stand a few blocks away from our apartment to choose our Christmas Tree.

 Audrie had to sniff them all to see which one smelled the best.

 They finally picked one, so we had it wrapped up and Jamie had to carry it the 4 blocks home!

 Then we got out the ONE BIN of Christmas decorations that I brought with us when we moved. (I'm still amazed that I was able to do that because I used to have about 5 huge totes of decorations.)

 Unwrapping the Nativity set is always my favorite. Talking about each figurine that we unwrap and wondering who will unwrap Baby Jesus.

 Audrie, pretending to be Rudolph.

 

And here she has the ornament from Jim and Emily's wedding that we got six years (?) ago and still hang it up again every year.

 Some of my favorite ornaments.

Annie hold the ornament that Candace made for her first Christmas. So cute!

 A handmade ornament from Jacob's first Christmas.

 Every year Jamie and I pick out a new ornament with the year on it. I forgot to take a picture of ours from this year.

 This one from 2007 is when I was pregnant with Audrie and we visited NYC on Thanksgiving break.

 Jamie doing his daddy duty- hanging the star on the tree.

 Another big event for Audrie was that she got to perform at Carnegie Hall!!!! It was a crazy and awesome opportunity. Her dance company got asked to provide ballerinas for a Christmas Spectacular hosted by Jane Seymour.

 There were SO many ballerinas that I had trouble finding Audrie in the swarm of pink leotards, but I saw her waiting in her seat so I snapped a quick pic (they were SUPER strict about no photos so I really wasn't able to get much).

 Here is another I snapped of the stage before the show started. They had an orchestra and a choir and a few actors. The show itself was a little strange..! But we were very excited for Audrie's debut.

 Finally ALL the little ballerinas came out carrying candles and I could only snap this quick photo of them walking towards the stage. I was sad to not get any pictures, but we have a Playbill from Carnegie Hall that has Audrie's name listed in it. Such a cool life experience!!

 We absolutely LOVE Audrie's ballet company. Audrie loves dancing and I hope she goes far with it in her life. (Here she is watching the hip-hop class that is next door to her ballet studio.)

 In other news, did I mention I started knitting? I made Jamie this scarf/cowl and it's pretty awesome if I say so myself. I've started a few other projects and am really loving it!

 Jamie was snoozing on the couch and I snuck up (or as Audrie says "sneaked him up") and snapped a photo with him.

 The Disney store in Times Square is one of the girl's all time favorite places to hang out. It really is magical in there! We go there a few times a month to play.

 We took the girls to Macy's to see Santa and they were really excited of course!

 Speaking of magical, that Santaland is crazy cool. We had to wait in line for 45 minutes but there was so much to see the whole time that it went by fast.

 Finally the elf met us to take us to see Santa! (FYI- there are like 5 Santas and they have them cleverly hidden in a maze of little north pole cabins. It's pretty cool!)

 They sat very sweetly in Santa's lap and whispered that they both wanted for Christmas. Too cute!

 We decorated the front door to our apartment.

And went to Jason and Sam's house to decorate Christmas cookies. Samuel was a natural!

 The girls get to spend lots of time with Samuel and they are good buds!

 I was impressed that Samuel was so good at blowing bubbles!

 More fun at the park!

 We finally got brave enough to venture down to Rockefeller Center to see THE Christmas tree. We waited a little too late in the season so it was madness, but worth it- the girls LOVED it and oohed and ahhed the whole time.

 Also in December I got to observe Audrie's dance class. (They have a policy of no parents allowed to watch except twice a year on specific days.) It was SO wonderful to see the progress Audrie has made. She is actually starting to look like a ballerina.

 On the 19th I had my Winter Concert at school and the kids did such a great job! I keep meaning to post a you tube video of some of my favorite moments.

 Also that day Jamie left for Arkansas with the girls. I decided to ramp up my Type A personality and make a separate baggie for each girl for each day that Jamie would have them alone. In each bag I put their clothes, socks, underwear, hair bow, etc. No fail system! :)

 I had three days to myself after Jamie left, but honestly it was a blur because I was at work and then running around to do last minute Christmas stuff.

But I did get to Facetime with the girls a few times so they didn't miss me too much. :)

Finally I caught my flight to Arkansas on Saturday and Jamie met me at the airport. We had planned to have a few hours to ourselves (we had a hectic December and didn't get to see much of each other!).

 I have to admit that the first thing we did when I got off the plane was go to Walmart! :)
Then Chic-fil-a. We are true southerners!
But then we did splurge and get massages before we headed out to dinner with our dear friends, Jim and Emily (fondly known as "Jimily").

 Sunday morning (after sleeping in- whoo hoo!!) we headed to Green Forest to spend Christmas with Jamie's family (and take a nap on Donna's couch)...

 Ok, that catches me up to Christmas Eve. And I'll post about that next!