Winter Fun-derland

Yesterday, we had a party.  One party with all our friends and family. On her "for real" birth-day.  Callie was up at 6:30 am.  Excitedly asking every fifteen minutes when her friends were coming.   I couldn't stop her....she turned six.

Planning a sliding party in February is like planning an outdoor wedding, it all depends on the weather.  We've been building the sliding hill in the backyard since the first snowfall and I don't know how we happened to get so lucky but after a solid month of forty below weather Mother Nature pulled through and gave us a perfect winter sliding day.  I guess Mother Nature didn't want to give me any more legitimate reasons to cancel Callie's birthday.

Let the fun begin...

Inside there was a big pot of hot chocolate and fifteen snowman Sharpie mugs waiting for their owners to cheers the birthday girl.  And in a very disorderly fashion, kids covered in snow kicked off their boots and stripped off their ski-pants and soaking wet mitts and brought their rosy cheeks to the table.

My big girl was so happy.  Seeing her smile, hearing her laugh, watching her shine on her day makes all the hours of preparation worth it.  She gets excited to see all the plans come together too...just like her mama.

This years plans included a game of snowball toss.  It was a close game as we kept score.  Lexi started off on strong only to lose out in the end to the big boys.

Next it was time for a little snowman art. Paint + Q-tips + Imagination = Awesome.

Then it was time to make our indoor winter fun-derland wall mural.

This mural makes me smile.  I love how every snowman is an original, creative work of art.  I plan to keep it up for a while.  

No party happens without helpers.  Grandma rocked the snowman cake that Callie requested.  And Jon has gotten used to my crazy ideas and no longer looks at me with raised eyebrows when I say I want the furniture moved, when I stay up late wrapping juice boxes and chocolate bars to look like snowmen, or when I bake Sharpie mugs in the oven because I saw it on Pinterest.  All to celebrate our girl who turned six.
My hot glue injury is healing nicely and the house still looks like a winter mess-a-land but its all worth it. Happy Birthday Big Sister.

Cancel the Birthday

I've been nursing a hot glue gun injury on my wrist for the past three days.  That's because there has been some crazy late night crafting going on around here in preparation for Callie's birthday celebration.  The other day I was teasing Callie saying that I was going to cancel her birthday this year.  As I hugged and kissed and tickled her I told her she wasn't going to have a birthday this year because I wanted her to stay five forever.  I tried to come up with as many reasons as I could as to why being five was better than being six.  Simple reasons like the word five has 4 letters and six only has 3 so it must be better than five of the fact that she will have to use two hands to show how old she is.  You know, real, legitimate reasons why I should cancel her birthday.  In all honesty, I think I was really trying to say that year number five went by too quickly and I want to slow down the clock.  

Her response to my cajoling was simply, "How would you feel if I cancelled your birthday and you didn't have any more birthdays?"  I respected her rhetorical question and did not reply, "well actually..."

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While I've been doctoring up my third degree hot glue burns, Dr. Callie has had Jake on the operating table.

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This wrapping paper that I got on sale for fifty cents a roll has been the inspiration for our party plans.  Fifty cents, as in two quarters, since today officially marked the end of the penny.

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I drenched the girls in baby lotion after their baths.  I found it way at the back of the cupboard and smelling them all clean and lotioned in their cozy winter jammies took me back a few years and ultimately gave me another reason to cancel birthday number six.  Some days I miss having babies.

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Here's a guy you don't see around the blog too often.  Happy Birthday to my much older brother.  Betcha he wouldn't mind cancelling a birthday or two!

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As I enjoyed my Sunday morning coffee I gave each girl a leg and said, "go ahead, create."

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Callie never did get out of her jammies yesterday.  Gotta love jammie days.  

Now I'm off to get a fresh band-aid for my injury and I hear my own jammies calling my name.  Nighty night blog-world.

Nothin' Much to Say

I take a lot of pictures.  Sometimes I take a lot of pictures of the same thing and when I'm done I can't decide which one I like best.  So here are a bunch of pictures, each just slightly different from the one before.  Which do you like best?

Last weekend the girls participated in a painting class at the local art centre.  They were VERY proud of their masterpieces.  If you're not sure, they are flowers zoomed up really close.  Callie came home from her art class inspired.  She began making art and sticky-tacking it to her bedroom wall so that it looked just like the walls of the art centre.  Most of the pieces in her gallery are some variation of a traced hand, although she did add a few new, interesting pieces through out the week.  Their art makes me happy.

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I am either on or off the exercise wagon and this week I finally climbed back on.  A three month workplace challenge has me back in my runners and sporting a pedometer on my hip to count my steps. It feels sooo great when I exercise... after I'm done of course.  I wish my brain would stop coming up with so many excuses not to do it.   I can announce that this is finally it.  That I will exercise regularly everyday.  I will stay committed and be strong.  But I know I will fall off eventually.  I have come to accept this.  I can only hope that in the end when the exercise gods come to lay judgement on me that I will have been on more than I've been off in my lifetime.

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This little project has been all over Pinterest.  I looked into a lot of the pins and the consensus seems to be that it only kinda works sometimes.  I'm going to try it anyway.  I'll let you know how turns out.

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Callie has this tribal face painting thing down pat.  She keeps pestering her sister to let her paint her face.  Lexi wants no part of it.  She provides no reason for not wanting to act as Callie's canvas.  She just says no.

 Isn't she scary.

Hmmm....
That's all I have for today.
Nothin' much.

Snow Day

The skies were grey today.  The cloud coverage warmed us like a heavy feather duvet.  Finally a break from the bitter cold clear blue skies we've been having.  Tonight I promised myself I would be in bed early but one episode of Storage Wars runs into another and I just have to see if they found anything good. 

Our Sunday snow day...

And a visit with grandma...

And now I have to hurry to bed before the next episode of Storage Wars sucks me in.  Good Night.

Smidgens of Growth

Last week Callie taped some paper to the wall creating a makeshift growth chart.  She carefully lined up all her favorite stuffies and emphatically marked a line above their heads.  Each line got a corresponding initial to identify its owner.  Her most favorite thing to measure though, just happens to be her sister.  

She's been measuring Lexi everyday for a week hoping to see some growth.  Any change.  Even the slightest of a smidgen.  Today, she announced in the most defeated of voices, "she didn't grow again."

This week marks my second year blog-aversary.  For two years I've been taking pictures of my girls' adventures.  Watching them grow and writing the stories of their days.  Stories that aren't particularly front-page news or of much interest to anyone beyond my following list of ten.

Sometimes, as I upload another batch of photos of Callie and Lexi doing more of the same... be it skating, skiing, summer beach pictures, going to parks, playing with friends or whatever... I think, "well these don't look much different from yesterday."  Just like Callie's measurements of Lexi, there's not much growth from day to day.  But all those little smidgens, all the small joys and tiny accomplishments, the details of the inbetween days, they add up.  And when the final calculation is done it all adds up to equal our life.

So these may be more photos of the girls skating. But that is what we do on Wednesday nights.  And they may only be a smidgen of a difference from the ones here and here but they miles away from Callie's first time skating, her second time  and even since she started lessons.

Every once in a while I click back to a random posts and look at the photos and see things in them that, at the time, were just part of our day.  Things like Lexi's sippy cup that she loved sitting next to her on the beach or Callie's Dora light that we hardly ever hear anymore.  I don't know what my girls will think about having their life documented by their paparazzi mama when they are grown.   And I'm pretty sure that eventually there will be a time that they will want the lens out of their business and I will have to respect them.  

For now, I will continue because the little things, even the tiniest smidgens, bring me joy.

Cheers to year three!