Thanksgiving and Tea Party

We went back 'home' for Thanksgiving. It was nice to see everyone. We rented a school gym and cafeteria this year which worked out good as the adults played some volleyball and the kids had lots of room to run around and play.
On Friday, we had a tea party to celebrate Maria's birthday. Fun was had by all. Now Logan wants one for his birthday too :) Thanks again Oma for all your effort and great tea supplies.

Maria's birthday

Maria turned 7 on Monday (I can't believe she's 7 already - where did all that time go?).
She had a wonderful birthday. In school, instead of journaling, all her classmates made her birthday cards. She even got a new book and pencil from her teacher (they are so nice!) She brought cookies for snack time and was able to pass them out to all her friends. Since there were extra's so got to pass them out to other teachers around the school. During lunchtime, everyone sang 'Happy Birthday' to her (and 3 other birthday celebrators).
That evening, we had the Hull's over for pizza, cake and ice cream.
We got her tickets to the Nutcracker ballet that is performing in a few weeks along with tickets to the Land of Sweets Tea Party with the characters. She loved it and is really excited to get dressed up and go!!
Happy Birthday sweetheart. We love you more than we can ever express! (Afterall, you are the reason Mom and Dad are a mom and dad.)

P.S. Happy 7th anniversary of parenting Dave. You are an awesome dad. There's no one else I'd rather share this experience with!

The Polar Express

We went to the Children's Dance Theatre's production of The Polar Express tonight. The kids loved it! Maria really wants to be a dancer now. She loved the ballet parts when the dancers were up on their toes. Raymond stood the entire show and watched it quietly. His favorite part was the hot chocolate song. And we didn't hear a peep out of Greta :)

I'm really glad we went (thanks Amy for suggesting it and organizing tickets). It was nice to get everyone dressed up for a show.

Houseguests

Two of my aunts and their families are visiting for the evening. We had a great night of chatting and playing cards (the women won!). We love having you visit. Already looking forward to the game in two years. Love you!

Pipsqueaks

We went to Pipsqueaks (an indoor play gym) for the first time today. It's been open ever since Maria was a baby, but for some reason we've never made it over. Today's playdate with Ed and Riley was here. I'm glad we finally got to check it out. It's a gymnasium that has a bunch of kid toys (riding cars, jungle gym, train table, etc..) and some tables for eating lunch. We had a picnic lunch and played for several hours. We realized that it is better to go over and after lunch as the place really cleared out. I had forgotten that some people have to go home for naptime :)

Children's Museum

We went to the Minnesota Children's Museum today up in St. Paul. The kids have been asking to go for months. Today ended up being Target Free Sunday, and we didn't have anything going on after church, so it worked great!
We were nervous that it would be packed (being free and all). There were signs posted in the parking garage asking you to leave your stroller in the car because of the number of people on the free days. We were pleasantly surprised to find that although it was busy, it wasn't much worse than when we've been there on a normal day. We haven't been to it in a while, so there were several new exhibits for us to check out.

Fun day Sunday!

Easy Breezy Voting

I took Ray to speech class today and had a hard time finding a parking spot as I hadn't realized that the school where he has speech was a voting place for people in that neighborhood.

On our way home, we stopped at our voting place. It was really easy and fast! We got in line behind about 5 others (would have been none in line if our last name started with M-Z). Took a few minutes and then got our ballot. In all, it only took us about 15 minutes total.
Way better than I was expecting :)

I've had this Obama song in my head all day

Election Eve

Why am I so nervous about the elections this year?

Sure, I really want Obama to win and don't want to go through the weeks of depression that seemed to occur in '04 when the country voted to keep Bush. But its not like I'm out there campaigning or volunteering, so I don't have much personally invested.

Or is it the anxiety of not being sure just how much time I need to plan to vote tomorrow. I will have Ray and Greta both with me when I go to vote, so I'm really hoping the lines aren't going to be as bad as they've been showing for the early voting in other states. I don't want to stand in line for an hour or more with such little ones. Maybe I'll bring a bag of books and snacks just in case.

Or maybe its knowing that I'll be glued to the computer and TV tomorrow waiting for any sign of Obama pulling ahead. It's going to be a late night!

P.S. Ray's preschool voted today. Their results had Obama winning. The teacher said that the class results have been pretty accurate over the last few elections. (I was surprised when we asked Ray about it that he was able to name both presidential candidates. Amazing how much they pick up).
Maria's school also voted last week and had Obama. But Lincoln appears to be a very liberal school. Hopefully the little ones are reflecting the opinions of their parents and we'll see the trend continue tomorrow.

Trick or Treat

Halloween was so much fun this year! I think it was that the weather was so mild so we didn't need to rush back home to get warm like most years. We were able to take our time and Greta was able to stay out too.
We did notice that we bought way too much candy to give away as there weren't as many tricker-or-treaters as in past years. I wonder if that was because it was a Friday, so people had bigger parties to go to?? I was expecting the opposite because the weather was so great.

By the way, I made the Dorothy costume :)