Sisters

I can't believe it is almost Halloween already. Minnesota was hit with our first snowfall, just a light dusting, but we had the coldest beginning ever of October for Minnesota! We spent the past weekend at the cabin, changing out the summer toys for the winter toys. Mike and I put our waiters on at 8am and rode the wave runners over to the landing- brrrrrrr!!! The snowmobiles are out and ready to go. I am looking forward to a winter of skiing, sledding, snowshoeing, and snowmobiling with the girls. Winter is so long in Minnesota, you have to make the best of it!

The girls have really been playing together a lot lately. Abby's language is really coming along, with 2 and 3 word sentences now and new words everyday. And my goodness, can this girl eat. The other night she ate more pizza than I did! She is starting to like to play princess with Emma and I hear them giggling in the playroom now all the time. There is still a lot of fights and "MINE" going on, but there are also great streches of harmonious play. I am getting glimpses of them as friends and it is really nice. Emma is still enjoying gymnastics and her favorite is the beam and forward rolls. Abby will be starting a gymanstics class with me next week. They are also staying busy with school. Emma is starting to read and also loves doing her math workbook- in fact this what she wants for her birthday! Abby is a fearless, crazy girl- jumping off and climbing up things all the time. Always running everywhere. She loves playing mama and pushing her babies in her stroller. She does not like it when she doesn't get her way and when we put her in time out, she immediately starts batting her eyelashing and saying "sorry mama". I seem to have 2 girls who know how to turn on the charm.

Still Here

Whew...it has been a busy couple of months with lots of changes. It seemed like Labor Day hit and our lives started to get crazy. Emma started at school 3 days a week, Abby had her two classes, gymnastics, I was volunteering on two committees, helping out a Sunday school class at church, and trying desperately to find a new sitter to help out when I had to work 3 days a week. It was too much, something had to give. I was spending my time at work worrying about our (young!) sitter with the girls and by the time we paid her, I was making very little money. I was starting to feel really stressed and our lives just felt chaotic. So we made the decision for me to stop working for now. It immediately lessened the stress on all of us and made everything just run smoother. It also forced me to look within and do some work on myself to keep the stress from spiraling into the anxiety I suffered postpartum with Abby. I started doing yoga and meditation and though I have always been a runner and perfer my workouts much more fast paced, I have learned a lot about slowing down and it has been really nice.

Emma is loving school and has the same teacher as last year which has been nice. She is making new friends and is now learning Spanish as part of her curriculum and shares new words with me everyday. Abby is also loving her ECFE class with me along with our storytimes on Mondays. It is fun to have time just with Abby and I feel like I can now see her full personality coming out. Emma is at school 9-3 on Fridays and it has been a lot for her. She takes her regular preschool class in the morning and then kindergarten readiness in the afternoon. Friday nights have not been fun after picking her up- she cried over everything and is just overtired. This may be another thing that we cut from our schedules to just make our lives more peaceful- but she really loves it, so we have to just see how it goes.

We have made a couple trips to the orchard for apples and rasberries and a trip to the farm to feed the animals and enjoy the fall colors. Mike and I just got back from a trip to Chicago with NO KIDS for our anniversary. It was so much fun and wonderful to reconnect. We had a fancy dinner on the 95th floor of the Hancock building, did some shopping on Michigan Ave, took in the ferries wheel at Navy Pier, took a river cruise, and saw a Cubs game at Wrigley Field. It was so much fun. We forgot how easy it is to travel without kids and felt so free and giddy all weekend. We slept for 12 hours straight the first night- with NO ONE waking us up....it was luxiourious. Thanks to mom and dad who kept the kids spoiled and loved all weekend long.

So fall is moving on at much saner pace for us and we are stopping to enjoy the colors and tastes of the season. Here are some pics from the first day of school, the farm, chicago.