thanksgiving 2011

We had a lovely thanksgiving this year with the Svane's (our next door neighbors) and Allie. Chuck's culinary skills executed an amazingly delicious turkey along enough sides to feed an army. By the end of the evening, we were stuffed and our house was well played in (aka. trashed). Bring on the holidays!

OCCUPY living room

love

tooth brushing

Esther is learning some skills from her big sister.
She has 3 little teeth so far and we are waiting on the 4th! (If you can believe it, she's has had only 1 top tooth for at least a month and the other one still can't be seen)

peek...

a boo!

field trip to the ferry building with sweet peas

Dottie's preschool went on a field trip to the Ferry Building downtown yesterday to check out the farmer's marker because they are doing a unit on fruits and vegetables. I was lucky enough to help as a chaperone and because Chuck works right across the street, he came for a bit too. The kids all got assigned a kind of fruit or vegetable that they had to look for in the market and purchase.
This week, they will make vegetable soup at school and have the fruit for snacks.

Vegas!

Dottie, Esther, and I traveled to Vegas to meet up with Chuck after a business trip this past week. We did it up complete with gondola ride, the circus, a trip to Paris and New York, a visit to the lions, iced hot chocolate at Serendipity, and pretty much anything and everything Vegas has to offer that didn't include gambling. We had a fantastic time but I am pretty sure at the end of it all on Sunday, we were absolutely Vegased out! The kids were so pooped out that Esther slept in until 10:00 this morning and Dottie until 8:30...

A huge highlight of the trip was the constant game of bride spotting which was even more fun because we were there on 11/11/11. They were expecting around 5,00 weddings that day and I am pretty sure we saw at least 400 of the brides. Dottie would shout out, "Mom, there's a bride!!...There's a bride!!...She's so beautiful!". One of them even gave her a bouquet! On our 10 minute gondola ride, we witnessed 2 weddings and an engagement. Vegas is one crazy place!

To see even more pictures of our trip, CLICK HERE.

good buddies...

dottie and boone.
she still claims that he will be her future husband...
we're pretty okay with that because he is pretty darn cute. she just has to wait at least 20-30 years!

esther and dot

DOTTIEEEEEEEE

for some reason or another, dottie insists that all of her "E's" must look like combs.

miss. moustache

esther was not feeling the love of the moustache at boone's birthday party last night...

halloween 2011

This year Dottie went out as 2 scoops of ice cream (sadly I couldn't pull it together to make one of the scoops mint chip and unfortunately many people thought she was a cupcake which she was quick to correct them on it!) and Esther was a very cute little pink piggy (she actually even kept the costume on the whole night)!

The whole day was a complete success. Chuck came home from work early so we could all head to a party at Dottie's school and then on to Cortland Street in our neighborhood for trick or treating. We ended the eve with a little hanging out at friends houses afterwards. Esther loved her first lollipop ever and I am pretty sure Dottie has had only 1 or 2 pieces of candy total. The rest she is sorting and sorting and then sorting again. The highlight of her evening (besides trick or treating of course!) was handing out candy at Kim and Jon's house. She treated it like a very, very important job and could not be distracted by anyone or anything.

Too see even more pictures of our halloween, CLICK HERE.

elmo

have you ever met a kid who doesn't love elmo?

pumpkins

we stopped by a little pumpkin patch in pacifica right before swim class today to pick up some pumpkins for carving this weekend and snapped this quick pic

curls

as esther's hair starts to get a little longer, it is looking like it's starting to get a little curly!

sun

the weather has been unbelievable lately and we have been enjoying not having to bundle the kids up. a rare thing in SF

face painting!

with ella and erna at noe valley harvest festival

gymnastics

Dottie recently started a friday morning gymnastics class with her friends Frannie and Maisie (far left in the first picture). So fun to watch to girls tumbling and jumping and balancing together. She loves it and Esther can't wait to be able to take a class soon too! She "scoot, scoot, scoots" all over the mats during the class as you can see in the 3rd picture.

broccoli!

not sure if she actually digests it but esther sure does like playing with broccoli

neela and ashwin

We finally got a chance to meet mindy and gautam's new baby girl, Neela, yesterday! She is as sweet and as pretty as it gets. We had a great lunch together and dottie and ashwin (19 months) got the lead out together at the playground before and after we dined.

ONE!

esther turned 1 on saturday! both sets of grandparents came out for the big day and besides esther being under the weather, we had a lovely weekend. more pictures to come...

stop!

dottie has been learning about signs and shapes at school this week and she came home with this super stop sign today...

Sewickley visit 2011

At the end of August, we headed to Pittsburgh to see family and friends. We were thrilled that Tom, Julie, Ellis, and Sadie Grey were able to join for a good portion of the visit so Dottie was in absolute heaven running around with her cousins! This was the first time visiting my parents new house (which was built on the same property as the house I moved to when I was 10) and it was for sure as perfect for my parents as they had said it was! The kids swam, ran around in the sprinkler, created a big piece of art for the "kids room" in the new house, took lots of visit to town, and just had fun being together. We did lots of catching up and I was happy to be able to attend one of my oldest and dearest friend Sarah's baby shower and met several babies for the first time (twins Georgia and Mack, Grant, and Collins). It was a great visit and even the flight home solo with the 2 kids didn't end up being so bad! (Tom was also kind enough to take some pictures of the family in my parents yard similar to ones we took last year but Esther wasn't in them!)

To see more pictures from our trip, CLICK HERE.