Christmas pigs

So you get an idea of how delighted Allie was with her pigs on Christmas morning:

Flashback

 Just found some cute pictures from the month when Nicole turned three:

Boat in the living room and birthday preparations

The girls told us today that they were making a boat in the living room to travel to a different land.  Then Allie laid a brown pillow on the floor and called it "chocolate puddles."  Our living room has been many places and experienced a lot.

Allie's card before the stage where she adds more letters that have no meaning and paints all over it:

I asked her what to write in the birthday card.  She said, "You got a surprise."

"I'm gonna do a 'Y' and a 'O.'  What does that spell?"

"Yo."

"Yeah!  Yo!"

More birthday party themed pictures from this week:

Allison traced but the color design is hers!

Thank you note

 I forgot to post this thank you note, written by Nicole a day or two after our Halloween party last year:

Such a sweetheart!

Go ye heros

That song from Pirates of Penzance, where the Major General's daughters are singing to the policemen:

Go, ye heroes, go to glory,
Though you die in combat gory,
Ye shall live in song and story.
Go to immortality!
Go to death, and go to slaughter;
Die, and every Cornish daughter
With her tears your grave shall water.
Go, ye heroes, go and die! Go, ye heroes, go and die!

https://youtu.be/pmBq_xtuOUM?t=103

...It's a whole new experience when your 3-year-old and 7-year-old are belting it out in the middle of your condominium community.

Little Nicole

I found this picture today, from October 3, 2014.  Poor little Nicole.  I took her with me to a free Neon Trees concert and stubbornly stayed until they played their most famous song (which wasn't until the very end).  She was only a year and four months!

Food critic

We have joked for some time that Allison is a bit of a food connoisseur. When she eats new foods, she adopts a quizzical expression, taking time to thoroughly examine the new substance. We have come to realize that she prefers to eat many foods one at a time: she likes strawberries, but not with milk; peanut butter, but not with bread.  Hand her a sandwich or a quesadilla, and she will dissect it, always eating it in the messiest way.  If you ever try to get her to eat something, she will cower, mistrustfully.  Never offer her food, or it will immediately become an object of suspicion.  To top it off, she is also terrific at throwing up unwanted foods.