Thursday, December 23, 2010

Blast off to Atlanta




Todd took the girls for an early Thanksgiving/Christmas visit to see his dad. I joined them later in the week. Todd says the flight was uneventful, which is what a mother wants to hear when her husband takes to the sky with her two precious baby girls. Once they got to Atlanta Grandma Dyer spoiled them rotten. She had a Dora tent for them to sleep in and Dora sleeping bags to sleep under. They had Dora sippy cups if they got thirsty and teddy bears to comfort them if they got lonely. They had clothes to model and little fairies and doggies to play with. We also had a visit to the aquarium and the park; they made cookies with Grandma, and most importantly lots of tickle time with the grandparents.

Halloween spookiest night you never seen




I don't know if that is the correct line to that song, but that is the way Bella sang it. And she sang it all month long. Before we were even in the month of October, I had seen a princess yellow dress on sale and had purchased it for Bella, thinking that I could convenience her to be Belle from Beauty and the Beast (I knew Bella would want to be Aurora because she wears pink, but even I get tired of pink sometimes). I also bought a blue dress so Becca could be Cinderella. Well, my first hurdle was educating Bella as to who Belle was. I had to break out the VCR to show her the movie. But as soon as that yellow dress came in the mail, Bella did not want to take it off. She would get home from school and immediately disrobe and put the dress on. Grammy's annual Halloween party was the first of many opportunities to dress up, and that was the only time Becca was willing to be a princess like sister. After that she found Bella's old butterfly costume and was in love. In fact she loved wearing the head gear to the costume. Wouldn't take it off. She'd rather sweat than let you take it off.
We did our annual visit to the pumpkin patch that is on the way to the girls school and picked out a few pumpkins. And this year I took the afternoon off, and just the girls went to the Owens Farm pumpkin patch. They thought the hayride and maze was a lot of fun. It's amazing what little it takes to entertain them because I kept thinking how lame it was compared to the one we've been to in Michigan. We also fed some goats, but we didn't wind up staying too long because all t
he hay made Becca start coughing. We also did the fall festival at the girls' school, but somehow missed all the trucks with all the treats. Oh well - not like we don't STILL have Halloween candy left over. And then on Halloween night we tried to do too much by going to our church's Trunk and Treats AND make the neighborhood parade. Well, apparently at the neighborhood party they ran out of pizza, so the parade started early, and we missed all the neighborhood kids. But Todd still took our girls and the girls of our Karen neighbor to neighbor family trick or treating. Poor Todd took off through the neighborhood
with six girls, only three of which spoke English
- and I'm counting Becca in that number. It was fun to do something with our Karen friends outside of their apartment complex. It took a little while to build a relationship with them before we felt comfortable asking the parents if we could take their girls with us somewhere. I think all the girls had fun that night.