Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving from 2 of our little turkeys!

H

Andantino

TinyDancer is flying through her violin book! She recently (hmmm - not sure if I can still say "recent" since the recital was the day before Halloween 8 ) ) played this piece for her recital. It is called 'Andantino'.

Since the recital was the day before Halloween the kids were allowed/encouraged to wear their costumes. She was so excited to wear her witch costume.

Enjoy!

7 months old

RainbowBaby is 7 months old. I can't believe it!


She's got two teeth and recently had a double ear infection. We've managed to survive both. Hopefully she will go back to sleeping through the night in her own bed. If not, Stranger and I will once again have a little alarm clock sleeping with us. 8 )

Halloween 2010

Happy belated Halloween!


The girls had a great Halloween this year. TinyDancer wanted everyone to have matching witch costumes this year. I found a pattern for a tinkerbell costume on one of the craft blogs that I like. We used that pattern/idea but made the costumes black with a purple glittery tulle skirt instead of the tinkerbell colors. We used the girls bathing suits to make the pattern for the leotards. Once we figured out how to do the leotards it was easy! Here are some pictures of the girls in their costumes:


TinyDancer - alwasy willing to pose

EasternStar - not too sure what this is all about yet. She caught on pretty quickly this year! The poor thing - we cut her leotard a little to small. She didn't seem to mind though.

RainbowBaby was all smiles. She got a suprising amount of candy! She didn't get a brim on her witch hat - we thought that would be too overwhelming for her little head.

Charity Walk

Every year our local children's hospital has a big fundraiser. A BIG one. We've participated the past few years to raise money for the hospice program that helped us with SleepingAngel. Hospice of course is not a big money raiser for the hospital. Or any money raiser at all as all (or at least most) of the services are provided free of charge to the families. It is an organization that is close to our hearts.

Here are some pictures of us before the walk. The walk is pretty easy - just a flat 1 mile or 2 mile walk around a historic amusement park in the area. I'm so proud of EasternStar - she insisted on walking the entire course!

You can see that we made special shirts for SleepingAngel. RainbowBaby wasn't big enough for a picture of SleepingAngel so she just had a picture of a flower on her tummy. The girls shirts say "My little sister" and "My big sister". On our backs we put the quote from her memorial card:

"A beautiful flower
Lent not given,
To bud on Earth
and bloom in Heaven"



After the walk there are art activities for the kids, lunch, and you can ride some of the rides. The girls chose to get their faces painted first. EasternStar wasn't too sure about it, but TinyDancer was eating it up!

There wasn't much for RainbowBaby to do, so while the big girls and Stranger rode the rides, we hung out and played in the leaves.

SleepingAngel's Birthday

I took a little unplanned vacation from blogging. Good thing this is just a hobby and not my real gig! Over the next few days I hope to catch up. There are some pics of EasternStar's party and Halloween that I hope to post soon.


Here are some pictures from SleepingAngel's birthday back in October. We try to celebrate the day and the special time that we got with her.

We started out by getting bagels from our favorite bagel store and then heading to her special park to leave balloons and flowers at her special spot.

Flowers and balloons

We always get enough flowers to bring some home that way we can enjoy her special birthday flowers too.

Stranger with our flowers to bring home

The girls have also decided that they need matching flowers to bring home. They've asked for bud vases to put on their dressers for their flowers. Of course by they, I really mean TinyDancer. She does a lot of talking for EasternStar. 8 )

EasternStar with her roses to come home

TinyDancer with her roses

We usually bring a cupcake to leave on her stone. This year the cupcakes weren't ready in time so we got special chocolate chip cookies instead. We left her half of one "since she's a baby".

Birthday cookie

Our hospice program gave us a lot of suggestions on how to 'celebrate' the day. One that we really liked was to have a balloon launch and send balloons to Heaven with messages attached. We didn't do messages this year, but we had a lot of balloons!

Even RainbowBaby picked out a balloon

There they go......

Almost gone!

Cupcakes decorated by TinyDancer and EasternStar

We made it through the day and what we think of as SleepingAngel's "special time" - the two weeks that we got to spend with her at home. I guess that we are getting through it better each year. The first year I made no plans during her time. It was too hard. The next year got a little better. This year, a little better. That two weeks is still a touchy time for us. The emotions run closer to the surface. If only we could escape the real world for a few days.