Laowai

and I got a very nice penguin cake.

I wish she would stop growing so fast. I love the wild abandon dancing sessions in her crazy patterned stripey outfit. She’s pretty much done napping, but once in a while she’ll fall asleep while we rock in the rocking chair. I can’t help thinking – is this the last time she will sleep in my arms with her sweet little head on my shoulder?

Yesterday she licked the car. She told me that she thought she had a really big paper cut on her bum and she also cut a hole in her pants. I guess I need to supervise her craftiness a bit more.

Here she is dancing in the sunshine – I love those pigtails:

I love this craft. It’s just two pieces of cardboard painted. I found it on the Made by Joel blog last year and modified the feathers a bit this year.

It’s Wednesday. Not much is happening around here. Brian is traveling again so it’s just the girls and I all the time – gets a little tiring – uhg. It got cold here suddenly and we even had some snow on Monday. Bea was very disappointed when it was melted by the following afternoon. The cold has started me thinking about Christmas and crafts. I got all the wallpaper off the walls in our TV room and now I need to scrub the paste off with hot water. I keep telling myself that it won’t get done unless I work on it, but I find it hard to get motivated after the girls have gone to bed. So slow progress.

I bought some beautiful summery fabric to make Claire two duvet covers. They’ll be Christmas gifts. I’m hoping she likes them because there’s purple and there are strawberries: two of her favorite things.

Trader Joe’s makes me happy:

Here’s a squirrel sleeping in the tree in our backyard. The view out my window is so different here at our new house. I used to have a sweeping veiw of lake Zurich with the alps in the distance. I could see a huge sky and all the weather moving by. Now I have trees right next to the house and I see little birds and squirrels so close to the window. I keep the bird bath full and love to notice that it gets lots of use. It’s a more intimate view but I like it too.

I wish we could teleport Grandma to our house each night at bedtime. She’s the very best at reading bedtime stories.

I also wish we could somehow smother her with love like this every moment of every day.

Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion and there was a lot of it this past weekend. We remembered my Father-in-law and reconnected with so many family and friends. I think Doug would have liked that.

Here is an awsome photo of Doug that I had never seen before. He’s accepting some sort of important horticultural award from Nancy Reagan!

Yesterday Brian’s Dad died.

I can’t seem to write anything that expresses my feelings properly or honors Doug enough – especially when this is the place where I complain about laundry and show pictures of ugly wallpaper. We’re heading to Michigan to be near everyone who loved him. Here are some of our favorite pictures of our beloved Grandpa Doug: 

a big pile of golden leaves.