Bowling!

Some friends invited us over to their condo complex the other night to go bowling. If only we all had bowling alleys at home. This was Amelia's first time bowling and she LOVED it. She didn't pay any attention to how many pins were knocked down, she was just interested in throwing the ball. However, she did manage to get a spare.




Amelia with her friend Miriam. This is the look I get when I ask for a nice smile.

Elsa is 9 months old!

Elsa loves:

Being out of the house.
Riding in the car.
Her dad.
Car keys.
Balls being tossed.
Sucking the three middle fingers on her right hand.
Watching her big sister.
Apples and prunes.

She also loves going to bed. She does a few happy kicks, rolls over, sticks her fingers in her mouth, and we don't hear from her for about 12 hours. Amelia likes to climb into Elsa's crib in the morning and load it up with toys and entertain her while we get a few extra minutes in bed...


Apparently, she also loves going to movies. Last week we took the girls to see "Tale of Despereaux" and we weren't really sure if Elsa would sit through much of it. But she sat on Ben's lap for the entire movie and never made a peep. She chewed on toys and watched the movie the whole time. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, but I'll take it.

She is crawling now and making me realize how dusty my floors are. Somehow she always ends up under the desk or under a chair.

Her smile is pretty much the best part of my day. Hooray for Elsa!


(She loves being in this jumper, but she was mostly laughing at Ben and Amelia who were tossing a ball around. She loves playing with Amelia, even when a ball is being thrown at her face.)

Sew fabulous!

My mom made the most beautiful dresses for the girls. Awhile ago I bought a dress pattern and some fabric to make Amelia a dress. I finally pulled out the pattern and panicked and did what I usually do...I handed it over to my mom. She did an amazing job and even got fancy and used her serger. She also managed to squeeze out a dress for Elsa with the left over fabric.

Thanks mom!

(Amelia was not happy that I made her go outside for a photo shoot)

Sew fabulous!

My mom made the most beautiful dresses for the girls. Awhile ago I bought a dress pattern and some fabric to make Amelia a dress. I finally pulled out the pattern and panicked and did what I usually do...I handed it over to my mom. She did an amazing job and even got fancy and used her serger. She also managed to squeeze out a dress for Elsa with the left over fabric.

Thanks mom!

(Amelia was not happy that I made her go outside for a photo shoot)

Dear Valentine

Amelia LOVED Valentine's Day. She loved getting packages and letters in the mail. She had fun making Valentine cards for people and was so excited about her Valentine party at school. She got excited about everything that was heart-shaped. During dinner one night she was studying the bottle of poppyseed dressing very carefully and then announced that some of the little seeds were in the shape of hearts.

After her party at school, she sat at the table for a long time going through all of her Valentine cards from her classmates. She knew who all of them were from.

Here is her own interpretation of what the cards said:

Birds and Planes

The other day we met Ben at Gravelly Point after work. I feel like I'm always posting pictures of Gravelly Point but we never seem to grow tired of watching the airplanes there. Elsa didn't seem to mind the loud noise and Amelia loved laying down on the blanket and waiting for the next airplane to appear right over our heads. We walked along the path for awhile and enjoyed the warmer weather. We came to a huge flock of geese and Amelia quickly sent them scattering.










Ben and Amelia chase geese right into rush hour traffic.

Partly sleepy with a chance of showers overnight?

Before I went to bed last night, I went into Amelia's room to check on her. I was not expecting to find this:

It works!

I have never been able to get my stove top as clean as I want. That is until I discovered Fast Orange pumice hand cleaner at the auto parts store. Maybe I'm the last one to discover this cleaning gem, but it worked miracles on my stove top.

I hang my head in shame as I show you the before picture of my stove. Perhaps our family's collective love of bacon is to blame. And the fact that I don't always promptly clean up spills on the stove before they've been sufficiently fossilized.



Ta-da!


(I'm also a fan of the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, although I use the cheaper Target brand, which is great for getting scuff marks and all sorts of things off of walls and doors.)

Ben just saw this post and is mocking me for a) being such a dork about cleaning and b) actually taking a picture of the stove before I cleaned it and c) posting about it.

Baltimore for a day.

My favorite thing about Ben's job is that he has every other Friday off. It's nice to go and explore places without the weekend crowds. We headed to Baltimore this last Friday.


Walking around the Inner Harbor. For some reason we always seem to go to Baltimore when it's freezing outside.


Our first stop was the fabulous Children's Museum, Port Discovery...

They had just opened this new "market" for kids to do their own shopping and check out at a real register.




Amelia's favorite part was this huge room full of water activities. Luckily they provided raincoats.





Elsa spent most of her time sucking on my camera bag strap.


Amelia also had fun in the "diner" and took her job as a waitress very seriously.



The only picture of me. Awesome.






Elsa is always up for anything and is content in whatever situation we stick her in.


Did I mention it was freezing outside?

After warming up with some soup and hot chocolate for dinner, we headed to the Baltimore Aquarium. We had never seen the dolphin show there before so we checked that out.


What?!?!