Jazzie and Tahlia

Year of change

Well, another year has come to an end. I can honestly say that it has been a year of transformation for me. I lost over 100 pounds, ran a half marathon AND a full marathon. I feel better about myself than I have in years. I've learned to let go of negativity in my life. I've learned to say no more often. I've learned that I am stronger than I thought I was. I've learned that a few people in my life weren't able to accept the new me, but I've also learned to not let that bother me. It is what it is.

Half marathon:

Full marathon:

Before and after:

Matt and I have attended the annual OVV Gala for several years. This was the first year I bought a sassy dress and felt fabulous:

Happy New Year, everyone. I'm looking forward to what 2012 has to offer. I hope it's as great as 2011 was!

Too cool for school

We've really been enjoying our holiday break! The day before Christmas we went downtown to see the Christmas train display and to see Santa. While Tahlia enjoyed riding the kids train...

And seeing Santa...

Jazzie refused to do either. Her response as to why: "Because I am too awesome for that"...

Well, I guess this girl is definitely too cool for school :-)

Christmas morning

The girls coming down the steps. Of course Tahlia had to stop and pose for the camera:

Opening gifts!

Among the gifts were a disco light:

Magic tricks:

A Shake It Up CD:

The one thing both girls wanted more than anything was an iPod Touch. Santa didn't bring them last year, but they were hopeful for this year. Santa left two large boxes with a note "open last" on them, and I could see the look of disappointment on the girls' faces. Once again, no iTouch :-(

Little did they know that Santa tricked them and that stuffed inside the boxes were two brand new iPod Touches. To say the girls were excited is an understatement :-)

And now it's the day after Christmas. It's been fun and for as much I enjoy Christmas, I am always very ready to have my house back to normal. So, this afternoon I put ALL of the Christmas stuff away. 

Aaah.... life is good :-)

Making a gingerbread house - part 2

Well, we've learned a few things from making a gingerbread house from scratch:

• When making the roof, make sure you roll it out thin enough. Ours was too thick and heavy and we ended up having to use cardboard for the roof.
• The entire process is very time consuming. We made our house in four steps: making the dough, cutting the shapes and baking it, assembling it and finally, decorating it.
• Homemade gingerbread tastes REALLY good!
• It is a great family project. I think we'll make this a tradition :-)

Ready to make the icing!

Ready to assemble:

And now for the best part, the decorating!!!

Tada!

Making a gingerbread house - part 1

One thing that Jazzie wanted to do while on winter break was make a gingerbread house from scratch.

I usually take the easy way out and buy the kit, but I thought it would be a fun learning experience to make our own gingerbread and cut out our own house. So, I found a recipe for gingerbread, printed out a template for the house and we got to work.

We started this morning by making the gingerbread dough:

Daddy got in on the action!

A big batch of gingerbread is chilling...

We took a break for lunch and then went back to work on rolling out the dough and cutting the house shapes.

This is what happens when you forget to put your apron back on:

The aftermath:

But hey - we had fun, so it didn't matter. The kitchen is clean again. Tomorrow we will be making the icing so we can assemble and decorate our house. Stay tuned!

Holiday Break is here

Today was our first full day of holiday break. Last year I had every intention of doing all kinds of fun, wintery, "Christmassy" things with the girls, but didn't end up doing all the things I imagined we would. I felt bad and guilty about it for weeks after the the kids went back to school. I am determined not to have this happen again this year. I will not be filled with regret again!

This evening we went to the Cincinnati Zoo for their annual Festival of Lights. We walked around the zoo, admiring all the pretty lights while eating cinnamon roasted almonds (Tahlia LOVED them!). We even got to see some animals and a few characters (like Frosty):

Writing a letter to Santa:

My diva's:

How I wish they could see her now...

We went to school last night to watch the fourth grade classes perform "North Pole Musical". Jazzie's homeroom class was dressed as elves and she looked so cute ;-)

The students did a really good job. I was truly impressed and enjoyed the performance very much. It was very entertaining.

As I was sitting in the audience, watching my girl sing and dance and looking so cute in her elf outfit, I was overcome with pride and love for her. And I started to think about her birth parents. How I wish they could have been there to see Jazzie. To see how happy she is. To see how loved she is. To see how amazing she is.

I'm not sure if they ever even knew she was deaf, but how I wish they could see how far she has come. Here was this deaf child, standing on the stage of her school, singing and dancing with her peers. And she was good.

She is good and I'm so thankful she's ours...

Joy, love and soap

Each year I struggle to come up with a small token of appreciation for the teachers and some of the other staff members at school. I always chip in money for the class gift, but I like for the girls to give a little something to their teachers as well. Pinterest came to my rescue! So many great ideas on the site!

I bought a bunch of soap at Bath & Body Works. We printed out tags with the words: "Wishing you a holiday season full of joy, love and hope  soap"...

Jazzie signed the tags and wrapped them around the soap bottles:

Cute, no?

The original post where I got this idea is here.

You can find the printable for the tags here.

Yoga and stretching with Jazzie

My girl is one limber and flexible girl!

Silly Santa

Good Luck Jack

The girls love watching Good Luck Charlie on Disney Channel. It's a show about an older sister who makes a video diary for her little sister Charlie. She ends each entry by saying "Good luck, Charlie"...

The girls have been playing around with the Flip camera and this evening I found this video made by Jazzie where she is talking about her birth parents. I had no idea the girls were making video diaries for their nephew. Seriously, how cute is this?

St. Nicholas Day

Today is St. Nicholas Day. I have vivid memories of celebrating this holiday as a child in Holland. We would get lots of presents and the night before, we would put out our shoe and find goodies in it the following day. We would always get our initial in chocolate and I have continued this tradition with my girls. They love it :-)

Weekend Pictures

Jazzie and I went through all of our games. We have SO many and I really wanted to donate some to less fortunate children. Believe it or not, these aren't even all of the games we own. Now to decide which ones we don't really use anymore...

We visited with Matt's 98 year old grandmother...

Played on the Photo Booth...

Did some wine tasting...

Relax, it's just grape juice ;-)

Went for my daily 5K run, despite to cold...

Decorated our Christmas tree...

Love hanging with my girls!

Nail polish

It's hard for me to admit that the girls are getting to the age where they are (kind of) able to put on their own nail polish. Where did my babies go????

Jazzie actually does a pretty decent job by herself: