Principal Honor Roll!

Renato and I got to surprise Elise at her awards ceremony today, and boy was it worth it.

She got all A's this quarter, which puts her on the Principal's honor roll. That is one step up from High Honor Roll last quarter, so yeah for all A's and YEAH for improving. Our girl LOVES to read, and she is a wiz at math. She loves school so much, it is one of her favorite games to play at home.

When she first saw us - we got a BIG smile.  Then she kept waving to us all through the program.  We got kisses, high fives, thumbs up and lots and lots of waves.

At the end she was not following her class out of the room.  She get motining us to come over and was VERY insistant.  I finally got to her and she wanted me to go home and get her charm necklace so she could put her new charm on it....RIGHT NOW.  I managed to convince her that we could do that after school, but she is strong willed one!  We now have all of the awards on the charm necklace.

Way to go Elise.  We love you!

Groundbreaking!

Audrey's choir was asked to sing at the groundbreaking ceremony for the new Elementary School in our neighborhood.

It was a very foggy and cold morning! She did awesome.  They sang the National Anthem and Old Dan Tucker.  Great choir, despite the cold.  Turns out the Renato is going to work on the school, so he came over to check out the job for Monday and got to watch the concert in his overalls and hard hat.  He got preferred parking too.  That hard hat gets him into anything.

Third row from the bottom, fifth girl from the right.  This was their practice.  They had to take their coats off after this warm up, and then stand in the FREEZING cold to perform.  What a sacrifice!

Way to go Audrey!

I'm in Heaven! I'm turning 7!

It took awhile to explain to Elise that she could have more than one birthday party, but she finally caught on. She was pretty excited to get to pick dinner (black beans, rice and steak), get her box of Reeses Puff's for breakfast (a terrible tradition I have started), and choose Costco pumpkin pie for her "cake". (Which was totally easy for me, and I swear that is what she wanted).

Can you tell that I have a little bit of ribbon left from the reception?

Here is our birthday girl all ready for our Costco outing Saturday morning.  I took this at a funny angle, so you see all scarf and very little girl!  Grandma Ann made the scarf for Christmas.

She loved having us sing!

She got lots of help opening the presents.  She was most excited about the Squinkies.  I have to admit that she did ask for them for Christmas, but it took me forever to figure out what they were becuase she called them sqeakies.  When I did finally find them I wanted nothing to do with them.  They looked pretty dumb to me.  Anyway, clearly I know nothing, since she did not forget about them after Christmas and she was most excited about that gift.  She also got some new clothes, new books, and a camera to play with.  We read our new books yesterday, Elise is such a great reader!

The funniest part of the night was when she opened Grandma and Grandpa's card and out fell the cash.  Audrey was FURIOUS!   What she got money?  She does not deserve money!  It went on for some time.  When Elise opened the camera, that was it...Audrey was sure we had lost our minds and were treating her little sister like a GROWNUP!  I actually have most of the argument on video, but I decided not to post it.  (OK, I hate posting videos...it is too hard!).  Audrey left soon after for a birthday party.  We told her to be sure not to yell at the birthday girl while she was opening her gifts.  :)

You say it's your birthday!

We have had a few January birthday's! Here is the youngest, my GREAT nephew Michael turned one. I think he looks like he knows how to party in style.  Don't he look like he is rocking out to some good classic rock?  I think his Grandpa would be so proud if it were so.

Apparently he just picked up the cake with both hands and dug in.  What smart kid! 

Hummm, eating the presents.  Not so sure about this choice Michael!  Thomas, big brother, was very helpful in unwraping. 

Happy Birthday Michael!  We love you.

Sisters? Weekend

These are way old, and I don't have to add the narrative, so fill in the blanks. Yes, it was sister's weekend, and no all these people are not my sisters. I suppose we love them all anyway.

Happy New Year!

On Tuesday we decided that the storm was heading in, so we had better get on the road and get up to Ana and Juan's cabin for New Years.  We got there with no trouble at all, and it started to snow as we pulled into the parking lot.  Joe and James were there as well, and we loved our vacation.  We were glad that the weather forced us to take another day off.

This is the view from our bedroom window.

Staying warm and dry and having fun inside!

This was the first time that Renato had to venture out into the cold.  I had him put on my coat and was mothering him too much and gave him my hat.  See how he is mocking me.  :)

This is day one, and we thought wow that is a lot of snow.

This is the next day!  So glad we did not try to drive in that!

Renato and I went down and he started to shovel.  The snow was good dry power, so I could brush a lot of it off.

Here is my snow removal crew.

I was a lot of moral support.

Then we walked back up this path back to the condo!  See our warm outfits!

This is Toby, the very smart dog who did not want to go outside at all!

We did puzzels, played games, ate lots of yummy food, watched movies, and slept in.

We ventured out one day to get milk at the store.  It was so so so so cold.  It was still snowing this day and the wind was blowing.  That made it feel even colder. 

Then, the sun came out.  No more clouds, and anyone who has spent anytime in cold country will know that means even COLDER!  It was about -15 below.  We spent a lot of time watching people from the family room window!

We figure about 5 feet.

Now we were trying to take a picture of the two us - ya know you hold out the camera and take the picture.  I do it all the time!  But this is what happened....

Then James said he would take the pic, and do you see what Renato is trying to do?  Rabbit ears....we clearly had cabin fever by this point.

And then it was time to go.  Look what a great job he did of getting all the snow off and keeping the car clear of ice!

This is the path that was earlier COVERD totally in snow.  It is practically bear now.

Ana and Renato.

Down the hill and back to Ana and Juan's.  On the way home we stopped to do a little WalMart Christmas clearence shopping.  We found some fun deals, the best were red chargers to go with my Christmas china, and some gold ones to go with Renato's china that was his Mothers and came from Germany.  Aren't they pretty!  To be totally honest, I need to see if I can find just one more set in silver....to go with my china.  My Grandma would be so proud.

And then, the MOST exciting thing happened!  We found a Cafe Rio!!

It has been almost 5 years since I have had a grilled steak salad, and I practically jumped from the moving vehicle.  Everyone was very kind to humor me and we had the best lunch ever!

After that HUGE salad, we still stopped in St. George for frozen custard - concrete.  YUMMY.  I really don't need to eat again for a very long time!

We had such a wonderful New Year with Ana and Juan and the boys.  Thank you for a great vacation, now come and visit us!