Time to Plant?

For some reason I'm not very motivated to bring down my garden book and start to plan. Perhaps it is the 19 degree weather we woke up to this morning (yet, Daryl rode BIKE to work) or the pile of snow that remains outside my front door (even though it is GONE everywhere else). Maybe I just need to make a baby step and get my notebook from the closet... Spring WILL come, right?

Elizabeth's Monkey Birthday Cake

The 10th cake has been made and partially consumed! Daddy does it again. His labor of love for his 2 year old little girl.

Daddy hard at work shaping the cake and making the fondant.

Creating the arms and legs (at this point, I went to bed!)

Mr. Monkey... ready to celebrate Elizabeth's birthday!

Family Birthday dinner

Mashed potatoes, green beans, teriyaki chicken, rolls... yummy!

Happy Birthday to you... (she started singing "Happy Birthday to Nana")

Blow out your candles

Daddy and the birthday girl

Cheese!

Guess Who's 2?!?

Elizabeth Anne!

Two years ago at the time of this blog posting... we welcomed this little girl into the Olson family. She has delighted, frustrated, loved on, smiled at, bothered, laughed at, yelled at, screamed at, brought so much joy to us every day since and we wouldn't trade any of those days for the world!

Elizabeth Anne, at 2 years old, you...

• have found your words and they come tumbling out more and more each day. You're favorite sentence recently has been "G bothering me!"
• love to run. The evenings are spent with 3 little girls chasing each other around and around the "loop." 
• sleep pretty well at night. We hear you yell out every once in a while.
• are dropping your nap (sniff). You spend nap time playing with the animals in your bed, including "reading" them books.
• enjoy reading and singing. You like to be the one to choose "thank you Father" as our meal-time prayer (and will argue with Grace about who really chose it).
• really like people and are rarely shy around new people. 
• have kept your blue eyes.
• love baby dolls and babies. You will sit to feed your doll a bottle and then change their diapers. You are watching Becky closely when she cares for baby M. "Elsa" is the coveted doll even though or maybe because Elsa belongs to Grace.
• know how to push all of Grace's buttons to get her to yell. Recently it has been to call her a baby!
• are very snuggly and mommy is so thankful for that as you are becoming less her baby and more her little girl.
• don't really like the snow, but that could be because it is so hard for you to move around. You do like to be pulled on a sled.
• enjoy the water as much as your sisters did at that age and want to desperately for mommy to let go of you when you are in the water.
• like to eat the tips off markers. On Friday you, in the moment that mommy turned her back to you, got quite a bit of black ink in your mouth during an art project at Art Haven.
• like watching "funny videos" with your siblings, although your attention span with anything on the computer isn't as long as theirs.
• love playing hide and seek... although hiding with you is a pretty high likelihood that we will be discovered pretty quickly.

We thank God for you!

Happy Birthday, Lizzle!

We love you!

Mommy, Daddy, Hannah and G

Something's missing...

our little girl's tooth!

Can I just tell you how excited she was/is that this happened?!?! For her it is another sign of growing up, something she eagerly awaits with each inch taller, each start of school, each baby tooth falling out. Daryl and I... well... I have to confess that there was a bit of grief. How can this be happening already?!?! Didn't we just celebrate the arrival of that little tooth? For that matter, didn't we just bring this wee girl home from the hospital and wonder if the crib we got was too big?!?

Life is so much this... the celebrating and grieving right up next to each other. Watching these latest stages happen... Gracie talking about going to school... Elizabeth figuring out how to climb out of her crib... has definitely helped me to enjoy the moments. These, too, will all pass way.too.fast. The house will become clean and quiet... sigh... that sounds nice too. There I go again grieving and longing all in the same moment.

Grace ~ 3 1/2 year old tomorrow!

Almost 2!

"Nemo" 2013

Well, the sun is out, the snow piles along the streets are turning into mushy, icy, dirty mess, so there are still plenty of reminders of this past weekend's storm. Hannah missed two days of school, so we had a four day weekend. We were going a bit stir crazy by the end, although we did get out in the snow a bit.

Around 11:00 on Friday morning, the first flakes started to fall. Here in Gloucester the temperature was hovering just at or above the freezing mark, so the snow didn't lay in the streets right away. The plows were out in force keep any bit of slush pushed back.

View of our backyard off our back deck... looks a little trashy back there... maybe some snow will help.

Our back deck

 By mid- to late afternoon, the snow really hadn't picked up very much. I must admit I was starting to doubt. Perhaps the "historic storm" was going to fizzle?

Back deck around 3:30 or so

The snow was starting to pile on the streets

The girls decided we needed to have a tea party ~ so tea and brownies it was (yeah, we pretty much stayed in our PJs).

The girls caught Nemo and were dragging him around the house. The noise inside sounded a lot like the snow plows outside!

I think Nemo "caught" us. Just before Daryl and I went to bed, I took this picture out our back door.

This is what the view looked like out our backdoor when we woke up the next morning. So much for the "fizzle" theory!

Our neighbor across the street... their side of the street got the snowdrifts. The front side of our house wasn't so bad.

This street comes right down to the front of our house. As you see, it hasn't been plowed yet, when it was...

A lot the snow from the previous pictures ended up in front of our house!

Hannah and Grace came outside with me for a little bit on Saturday... it was still REALLY windy and still snowing.

The steps down to our backyard was an huge snowdrift. We slid down it to get into the backyard. (Daryl cleared it out on Sunday.)

Grace and Hannah in the backyard.

Hannah "swimming" through the snow. This is the same place the turned over trashcan was in the earlier picture. Looks a little nicer, eh?

I don't have a picture of it, but Hannah and I climbed to the top of Beacon Street hill on Saturday afternoon. The cars were still banned from the streets and the streets still had a bit of snow on them. Twice we slid down the hill. That was fun! She would have kept doing it, but I was feeling self-conscious of the neighbors watching me unable to steer the sled. Next time... I'm just going to enjoy myself.

So we survived the Blizzard of 2013... no power lost, just a few tempers (as this came at the end of 3 consecutive weeks of illnesses)... Today the temperature is almost 50! cRazy!

Milestones

When I think of milestones, I typically think of children... first smile, sitting up, crawling, talking, walking, first day of school. As we get older, we still have milestones, they may not come as quickly as that first year of life, but they do still come.

Last week I hit a grown-up milestone, my car, the car I bought ALL BY MYSELF... with MY MONEY... went to that place that old cars with high miles, blown head gaskets, and smoke pouring out of their tail pipes go. Sniff. It was a bit more emotional than I expected. That was the car I drove to New England for the first time to visit Gordon-Conwell and then to live. That was the car we brought 2 of our 3 babies home from the hospital in. That car made many trips to PA, VA, GA. That car will filled to the brim with balloons and confetti dots (Daryl found some STILL while cleaning the car out to be towed.) That car took Daryl and I on dates both before and after marriage.

One of my early memories in that car was soon after I purchased it. (Did I mention that was a big deal for me?) My best friend, Kim, and I were going to a friends house. I was EXTREMELY paranoid about anything concerning the car (Did I mention that buying a car was a big deal?). Anyway, I started hearing this tapping noise coming from somewhere upfront. I think I flipped out a little a lot. Kim just burst out laughing. She had been tapping/kicking on the floor in front of her. I don't know if I was very gracious in my response... ok... Kim... it is funny NOW.

So goodbye, 1998 Chevy Malibu, thanks for doing your job for 15 years!

I must admit the timing of the end was about as good as it could be. Hannah had just transferred schools and was able to ride the bus in the morning. The car was towed just before the Nemo 2013, so we didn't have to worry about parking it. Very grateful for both.

1st Day of Kindergarten ~ Part 2

So we didn't quite expect to have 2 first days of kindergarten, but sometimes you just have to go with whatever life throws at you. For those of you who don't know the story... here it is in brief. Daryl and I chose to send Hannah to a charter school in Gloucester... it was only starting its 3rd year, but we like the community and arts emphasis, the warmth of the staff we met, the size of the school and an educational vision that focused on the strengths of the individual learner. What we did NOT realize was the weaknesses the board had in actually following through with that vision... unfortunately they were not able to smooth out the rough edges and the state board of education threatened to withdraw the charter of the school (forcing the board to give up that charter), which meant the school no longer was eligible for state funding after June.

Unfortunately, (another area we didn't ask the right questions about) the school was unable to fund its program through the end of the year and during the Christmas break, we received an email alerting us to the fact that we would need to make a decision about where to send Hannah in 2 months... no, 1 week... no, 3 days time.

We decided to send her to our "catchment" school in the City of Gloucester and they administration and teachers have been very kind and accommodating. We realize that it isn't an easy thing to absorb almost 100 students into a school system mid-year, but we have appreciated the welcome we have received.

So on January 10, 2013, Hannah has her 2nd first day of kindergarten.

These pictures were all taken in September, but I realized I never put them on the blog. Since this will eventually need to be the girls scrapbooks, I thought I should probably include them. Hannah has changed from these pictures, so I should really get some updated pictures of her going to school.

Hannah is doing well at her new school. Her best friend from the charter school is in her class (thanks to the wonderful principals at the charter and her new school!). We are very thankful for that!