Holy cow! I've almost documented the year! I love the idea of doing the blog more often - I always love the idea of doing the blog more often and then, somehow, a year goes by. Maybe this year ...
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| Following her sister Lucy's lead (who got her ears pierced on her birthday), Sofie got her ears pierced the day after Halloween, which was the day after her last soccer game (which was rained out and didn't happen, but whatevs). |
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| A fun scooter ride in the neighborhood. |
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| Sofie opted out of a scooter and chose her own two feet. |
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| Lucy is also a scooter-er - but hard to get a picture of - this girl kind of hates getting her picture taken or wants to be goofy in the picture. I don't blame her, I guess, in the day of "take a picture every five minutes because I have a camera on my phone" kids probably feel like the paparazzi is following them whenever they are with their parents. |
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| Official transition ceremony for Lucy to go from being a Daisy to a Brownie. Sofie (still a Daisy) was the flag bearer. |
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| This is a picture of our last Family Feast at A Child's Way - a bitter-sweet pic for sure. I remember when Lucy started there I thought we would be at that preschool forever and it went so fast. It has been such a wonderful start for our children's educational journey. I have to admit, though, I get excited thinking about them all being in one school next year! |
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| Annual Turkey Trot! I love this tradition so much! We get up fairly early on Thanksgiving morning and do a Turkey Trot at the school. The girls run a couple of laps and then I usually do the adult 2-mile run. There is a 5-mile run that I continue to aim for and determined to do next year. |
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| One of our new favorite traditions is the Oregon Garden. We spend the night and walk around in their Christmas Village set up in the woods. It is so much fun. This year we did it Thanksgiving weekend and it was a great way to kick off the Christmas season. |
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| The ever-popular "bathroom garden" in the children's section of the Oregon Garden. |
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| Sweet Sof sitting by the fire. |
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| Emma enjoying hot cocoa. |
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| Christmas card pic this year! |
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| Emma singing at the tree lighting ceremony at Bethany Village with her daycare class. |
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| This is just from the waiting room at Red Robin, but I thought it was such a cute pic. |
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| This Wednesday (yes! I'm already on to blogging about the current week!!!) I took a much-needed personal day, did some shopping and had lunch with each girl at school. It was truly wonderful and I plan to make it a tradition to take a personal day during the Christmas Season each year. |
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| Emma didn't have lunch, but I took her to preschool. |
Well, folks, there you have it! An up-to-date (for the moment) blog. It was actually really fun to look over the past year and relive the memories. My Thanksgiving quote for the calendar this year says "If you are thankful, what do you do? You share." (W. Clement Stone). I truly am so thankful and if there is one thing that I have learned during my four decades on this planet it's that love it honestly, truly the only thing that matters. Not only loving your family and friends who are (usually) easy to love, but loving those whose stories you don't know, who may disagree with you, or may be from a culture or faith that is foreign to you. Love. Love. Love. It is all there is. It is the only thing that gives this life any meaning. (There's my soapbox for the day.) Now - off to Christmas in Dairyville at Alpenrose Dairy. Maybe I'll blog about it later - or maybe you'll have to wait a year.
