Laowai

Bea turned seven today. She had a really good day at school and was all smiles when she got home. Her classmates made a book – each of them writing and making a drawing of what they would like to give her for her birthday. 99% of the pages were filled with pictures of penguins. A real penguin, a penguin world, a penguin cake… all written in cute first grader spelled words. So she is still in her penguin stage and we wonder if a day will come when she isn’t obsessed by all things penguin. This has been a big year for Bea – I think she has tackled lots of scary things. One thing that I will remember about this year has just come about recently – reading. Nothing compares to the swell of pride I’ve felt listening to her tentative quiet voice saying words I thought she didn’t know. It’s one of those things that catches you by surprise – just how proud you can feel. Brian and I filled her bed with balloons last night and I made her a penguin cake. It’s nice that it still feels easy to please her with simple things and it’s fun to watch her excitement. She’s having some friends over this weekend for a party.

I don’t want to rush things, but I am so curious about who this girl of ours is going to become. We love her dearly.

The girls and I spent a long weekend in Michigan. We went to the zoo and rode the carousel and Bea got to do quite a bit of skiing with Grandpa. Lots of smiles.

Claire and I take an art class on Wednesdays. We really enjoy it – the focused together time is great and I love the projects we’ve done. Today the kids made self portraits. Below is the snowman that we created over a couple classes. She has ballet class right after so she is always in her tutu making art.

but I think we have a dancing prodigy on our hands. 

That girl – she’s just all about dancing and ballet lately. She goes on and on talking about her ballet class. She’s forever saying “Mom, mom watch me” before she shows me some new moves. She wears her ballet shoes to bed most days and Angelina Ballerina is always on the ipad. She really has more musical sense than anyone in the family. Just look at how she feels the music. Oh our funny little ballerina I can’t get enough of your dancing.

Hello mittens. Hello neighborhood. Hello icicles. Hello crunching boots. Hello snow shovel. Hello old houses. Hello snowballs. Hello rosey cheeks. Hello sunshine. Hello snow piles. Hello cold trees. Hello my girls.

We are getting more snow and we tackled another carpet removal project today.

The upstairs looks good – the wood matches our bedroom – original to the house. It needs to be cleaned up, but I think we are going to be happy with it.

Unfortunately the wood on the stairs does not match the rest of the wood. Not sure what we will do. Maybe it can be made to match – or maybe I will paint it to match the trim. I’m thinking we will eventually have a carpet runner on the stairs.

The upstairs floor is in good enough condition to just leave it and live with it for a while. But the stairs look pretty rough so maybe that will force us to make a decision sooner than later. We are thinking of putting wood in the living room and we want it all to flow. At least now we know what we have to deal with.

Wow what a snowy and cold winter we’ve had so far. Four snow days – but they should call them cold days because it was the below zero temps that really did it.

We had a bit of cabin fever. We had to do some painting… with balloons.

Some people wore their jammies most of the day.

Our windows are terrible. We can’t see out because of all the frost.

I did a little sewing – the Washi Dress pattern from Made by Rae – looks pretty summery huh.

We made some Valentine’s Day cards.

We watched a bunch of TV – here’s our cork wall.

George ate some banannas.

Brian made fire.

Hope you are staying warm.