Holiday Roundup

I'm sure you're on pins and needles waiting to hear about the Chocolate 5K and how that turned out. Update on that coming shortly. In the meantime let's wrap up the year with holidays in review. Seems so long ago that we were trick-or-treating, and without coats and mittens! We put the pirate costume in the dress-up bin and moved on to sparkly witch for the candy extravaganza. Last year's trick was distracting the candy givers with her smile and emptying their bowls before they realized it. This year, Katy managed to sneak her way into four houses and get all the way to the couch before I could grab her. Even when I warned people to block the entry. She's a sly one! No one seemed to mind though and she made out like a bandit again. Which was nice because we were able to repurpose some of the candy for the advent calendar later :-)

Seems as if I have no pictures of Thanksgiving, so I'll include a picture I'm thankful for. We watched Choo Choo Bob quite a bit a while ago and we finally met the man himself in person at the History Center on Thanksgiving weekend. Not afraid to admit I've got a celebrity crush on him! And he did get Katy to smile, even if she didn't actually look at the camera. That's huge!

Christmas was a whirlwind and celebrated at home and also in San Diego. We met Santa at Macy's and mailed off a letter of wishes. This year's wish? A purple sled. She told Santa all about how last year's sled only lasted one run before breaking up.

We picked up a tree at our favorite lot down the street. No Santa sightings there this year. Also, it was super cold.

We listened to some beautiful music by our friend Catherine and her church choir. And by that I mean we listened a bit and walked around some more.

I managed to get one shot of my two girls together. We need better lighting in the house to capture them well. And more cooperation on both parts, just sayin.

Finally it was time for Christmin! Katy picked her own dress out this year. Turns out she and Nana wanted the same dress but we ended up getting it after the annual shopping trip. They have good taste!

We actually set out treats for Santa this year. First year that Katy's understood what that meant. She was pretty excited for him to eat the treats. And she wanted to help him by drinking the milk for him. hmm.

Can you guess what's in the big box! One lucky girl gets a purple sled (which, as of February hasn't been used yet. yikes where's the snow?).

Riley is as enthused as always. zzzz

And really, it's all about the boxes.

On Christmas day, Katy and I flew to San Diego to spread the Christmas cheer. Aunt Susan and Uncle Erik set us all up with matching Elf jammies. Ain't nobody as cool as us!

We went down to the harbor for a balloon parade and connected with our friends Richard and Sara. The kids had fun watching all the big balloons go by.

But the army trucks were a bit loud for one little one...

We had an open house for friends and Katy got to play with Medi and Maddie and I got to see Lisa, Kate, Annie and also we had a special visit from cousin Angela!

The girls can sure be goofy! It was fun to see everyone again. We miss you guys!

The next day, while Susan and I shopped, Erik took Katy skating. Ice skating! In San Diego of all places. She was ecstatic! We topped off the trip with a train ride at Balboa Park. We love our visits to Aunt and Uncle and it was sure nice to get out of the winter for a bit.

We arrived home just in time for new year's celebrations. Katy's friends Brody and Piper invited us to a fun kid party and it was the perfect ending to the year. Just enough fun and dancing and no hangover. Win win in my book. Happy New Year!

Experimenting with our Easter eggs

I still have a beautiful post in the works to highlight our last vacation but it's taking a while to sort through all of the photos. Needless to say it will make you want to put your toes in the sand right then and there. At least it does for me. Stay tuned for that, but in the meantime...

We (well, I) wanted to try something new for coloring eggs this year. Mostly because I have to take quite a few deep breaths to have Katy dipping spoons into big bowls of staining colored vinegar water and it was too cold to do it outside like last year. She tends to not be the most gentle when it comes to stirring and dipping and I'm not ready to have colored kitchen furniture and flooring.

So, I scoured the internet for other ideas and landed on one that worked out great for us! Just to be safe we did it at Nana and Papa's house. LOL! There were many different variations on this theme but I like where our version landed.

First we assembled everything I thought we'd need. Plastic wrap, food coloring, coffee filters, vinegar and water mixed in a spray bottle and a big space covered in plastic. The sprinkles, stickers and markers were there for additional decoration, should the coloring not work as planned.

We used coffee filters instead of paper towels like most of the sites did. I guess I was thinking eggs are round, coffee filters are round, why not? I dampened them with the spray bottle (worst spray bottle ever in fact but then I was only out $1 when I tossed it after we were done).

We used the food coloring, dropping it onto the filter. I played art director and we stuck to only one or two colors per egg (I try really hard not to but sometimes I can't help it!). When sufficiently covered, I got the filter more damp with the d@&# spray bottle, put the egg in the center and rolled it up, trying to get all sides of the egg touching the colored parts. Katy liked every many drops and I was a bit more shy with mine but both ways worked out.

Each egg got rolled up in plastic wrap and put it's own bucket for 'marinating'. The cup wasn't really necessary but I did it because I brought the cups and by golly I was going to use them.

We tried two using her neon washable paint because I thought it might be more fun if everything was washable :-D but they didn't work out so well. Not too much color and then it all came off on my hands when the egg got some condensation on it. Oh well, at least it washed off easily!

Voila! The eggs are unwrapped to reveal a very cool pattern. Even the ones that I thought would be black from all of the drops of color were rich and colorful.

Here they are all together. Katy's are the more heavily covered ones and you don't really see all the definition of the fun color blends. She really like to use the green and blue. I mixed it up a bit and love all of them!

Unfortunately I don't have a final shot in a pretty plate setting with Easter grass and candy and whatnot but Easter plans got up-ended a little with Nana taking a few days off in the hospital. Everything is all right and she is fine (whew!) but fancy Easter plates got knocked off the list of things to do in the hustle. And, I found a fun use for the eggs so they got used up before the plating would have happened anyway. Look for that post coming soon!

How did you color your eggs this year?