YUM

This post is just for mommy, because I'm really proud of these pretty cookies I made!! I call them "poor man's truffles," because they have this super crazy rich soft chocolate filling, which is made NOT with the finest Swiss or Belgian chocolate, but with Oreo cookies blended with cream cheese! And they kill everyone with their yumminess. It's tricky to get the melted chocolate over them without making a huge mess, and to decorate them quickly before the chocolate hardens... Ollie, Aidan and Eli helped with that. Maddie helped by trying valiantly to eat all the little ornaments before they went on the trees. Very pleased with them... with our big crowd at Christmas, I'm sure they'll disappear in the blink of an eye!

Sleepykins

Beautiful Maddie, asleep in the car while Dad and Ollie run errands, and Mommy sits with you, snapping photos and trying to figure out her new phone.

One Busy Day

This year, the big Christmas party for the "Moms Around the Lake" group I'm in fell *exactly* at the same time as my Messiah concert, and I was really bummed! It's a great party - so many families and friends there, including all the dads, a huge potluck dinner, and even Santa comes! So I was actually a little bit pleased that we couldn't find a babysitter to watch the kids, which freed up Andy to take them to the party rather than attend my concert. They had a lot of fun, although Maddie had a royal freak-fest when she saw Santa, and apparently it took her ages to calm down. Nor did the kids eat anything at all, despite there being enough food there to feed a gazillion people.

So, although I was sad to miss the party, my Messiah concert with the New Jersey Conservatory was FANTASTIC!! We sang our hearts out, and by the end of "Worthy is the Lamb," I actually started crying, it was so beautiful and AWESOME. Here's a teeny tiny photo of me with my pearl-bedecked choir buddies, Laura and Lora... I took this with my new phone and I'm not sure why it's so tiny. Anyway, what a concert. So good!

First Big-Girl Haircut

My post on October 19, 2010 is called "Boy Cut," and I was chastising myself for giving Maddie the same haircut that I always gave Ollie. I thought, "Never again!" I'll take her to a real hair salon, and she'll get a girly cut. So that was my mission when we went to Snip-Its in Rockaway a week or so ago. As you can see from photo 1, she wasn't too pleased with this idea at the beginning. She cried a bit, but at least she pretty much stayed in one place. The lollipop helped a lot (photo 2). By the end, she sat resignedly in the seat, just waiting for the ordeal to be over. She looks quite dashing in her "after" shot, especially in her super snazzy outfit, for which I got a lot of amused comments on facebook! But she was wearing a cute sweatshirt over that top for most of the day, I promise. Anyway, by the time I got home I realized that it was actually a really BAD haircut - pretty much a blunt bowl cut that made her look Amish. I spent the rest of the day chasing her around with scissors, trimming a little bit here and there to get the hair off her ears. She's back to the boy cut, which looks incredibly cute on her, and I've learned my lesson: for now at least, Mommy's haircuts are just fine.

Best Buddies

How can I resist publishing these photos?!! Look at those silly girls.... this photo was taken right before they both stood up on the table and started dancing. Ryan and Addie hang out with Ollie and Maddie just about every week, sometimes a few times a week, when we're lucky. It's fun to see them grow and change together; Maddie is only saying a handful of words now, but when she hears Ollie talking about Ryan, she shouts out - "Addie!!" The boys are getting a lot better at playing together without having meltdowns about sharing toys, etc.... the other day, they closed all the doors to the living room and were in there for nearly an hour - no shouting or drama!! When Carol and I finally got around to checking on them, we found they had been "decorating for a birthday party," and had stuck dinosaur stickers all over every imaginable surface in the room, including walls, windows, lamps, pillows, you name it. Thankfully, they weren't very adhesive stickers - phew.

Wayne!

One of my best friends from college, Wayne Perry, was passing through town a few weeks back, and made time for a short visit before continuing on to Rhode Island... we calculated that it's probably about 16 years since we've seen each other!! I literally don't think he's aged a day, and we picked up right where we left off, laughing and sharing stories. I'm looking forward to next time, and hope it might include both of our families... having Wayne for a dad, I can only imagine his kids must be a blast, just like Ollie and Maddie. Sooner than another 16 years would be GREAT!

Candycanes and Smiles

After admiring lots of glamourous Christmas light displays around our neighborhood, it became clear that the candycanes were Ollie's favorite thing, and we decided it was high time to get some outdoor decorations up at our house as well, for the first time ever. Ollie was SO excited when we bought them, and we set them up in the afternoon with lots of help from Daddy, who used all of his Daddy skills to refrain from swearing repeatedly throughout the process. It was bitterly cold out, and he had to hammer little plastic spikes into the frozen ground, without breaking them or splitting the candycanes when they were pushed down on top of the spikes. We marvelled at how much work some people must take on to put up the crazy light displays we've seen around town, and here was Andy fussing over 12 candycanes!!! So, here is the fruit of our labors; maybe we'll add a few candycanes each year, at least enough to make it all the way to the front door. Meanwhile, we found a few miraculous displays a couple of towns away, in particular one that features a HUGE tree that's hung with lights so it looks like a firework - it's amazing! They must have used a crane to do them, or something like that. Seriously impressive. I know our modest candycane effort holds a sweet and righteous place in the world of holiday lighting, but I'm grateful for the occasional INSANE light displays that pop up here and there, full of silliness and joy; they make us smile.