Visit with Granny Smith and a Christmas Contusion

Today, the girls and I got to visit with my Grandma (getting ready to turn 93) for a few hours at my mom and dad's. Nina and Lyla had a lot of fun showing Granny Smith their dolls, dressing up in dresses for her, and showing her how much energy two toddlers have! We had a great time visiting with Grandma and look forward to seeing her again tomorrow before her trip home on Wednesday.

Well, we made our first trip to the ER with Nina yesterday evening. It sounds much worse than it was. She really wasn't in bad shape, and we were a little hesitant at first in what to do, but the on-call doctor at our pediatric practice said we definitely needed to take her to the ER, so we did. Nina was getting ready to practice riding on her scooter outside, when she was just standing on it, got distracted, lost her balance, and fell to the side with the scooter. When she did, the scooter handle bar hit her hard in the nose. There was blood and lots of crying, but we thought everything was going to be fine. After a few hours, we noticed increased swelling on one side of her nose, so the dr. told us to take her to the ER to get it checked out and make sure that everything was lined up the way it should be. The good news was that the ER doctor took a look at her nose, and everything looked good. He didn't think it was broken, but thought it was just going to be a bad bruise. To Nina's credit, after the bloody nose incident, she got back out there on her scooter and kept on riding. Good for her!

Merry Christmas 2009

Merry Christmas everyone! I have to say that I'm a little sad the day is almost over. We had a great time celebrating Christmas as our family then with my family after that, and we had a fun night last night celebrating Christmas Eve with lots more family. To check out all the pictures from Christmas and read the captions, click HERE.

The Last Hurrah!

Today's snow event might be the last hurrah of the snow fun for awhile. With Christmas right around the corner, and the snow becoming less of a novelty each day, there was one last big exciting snow surprise for the girls - their very own backyard luge run. Nina had a blast! Lyla rode quite a few times with Nina and twice by herself. Nina, though, was queen of the luge. She had an awesome time and stayed out there riding for about two hours.

Mark shot this video on one of her final runs - trying to beat her speed record. (In way of explanation - her record mentioned on the golf course was a sledding hill Mark and Nina were at yesterday.)

Snow Day 2

I think the lawn ornament gods must be laughing at me... Lyla was ready early this morning with her mittens and Nina's Ugg boots Nina got out after lunch and had fun in the tunnels that Mark made her.Lyla even gave the snow tunnel a try, but needed a little help from dad to get the courage to go through.

Finally, our driveway and sidewalks are completely cleared off, but the rest of our street still has a ways to go!

Snow Day

As predicted, this snow storm has packed a whopping amount of snow with it. It didn't start snowing until last night, but the snow hasn't stopped falling, and it's still coming down! The day has included Mark seeing if he could wear his snow bibs from when he was in high school, the girls playing in the snow, Nina climbing her snow mountain, some crafts, and lots of time shovelling snow. I think tomorrow will be much of the same (you can click on the collage to see it bigger)!

Date Night

This month, it was my turn to take Nina on a date night. We decided to go to the movies to see Disney's new Princess and the Frog. It was a first for Nina as she's never been to a movie theater before, and we were two of the six total people in the theater! We finished our date night with a pizza dinner with Mark and Lyla, and I definitely enjoyed my girl date with Nina.

Sisterly Love

This picture cracks me up because Lyla looks like she's getting ready to deck Nina. I can't remember what she was so fired up about because I didn't even notice that Lyla did this until I went back and looked at my pictures, but I had to smile because if the big sister glow ever fades, Nina might have her hands full!

IJM Dinner 2009

On Thursday evening, we had the opportunity to go to the annual benefit dinner again for the International Justice Mission. For those of you who weren't following our blog when we went last year, IJM is a human rights agency that secures justice for victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression. They are a team of lawyers, investigators, and aftercare professionals who work to ensure victim rescue and aftercare and who prosecute perpetrators and help promote functioning public justice systems. Similar to last year, the traffic getting there was crazy, but this time there was no torrential downpoar, so that helped. The facts of human injustice are always startling, and even the stories of victory and success they share are never easy to hear, but it can't help but make you come away feeling very grateful. You feel grateful that there are people really committed to simply showing up on the behalf of those who are suffering, and in a world of slavery, human trafficking, and oppression we can realize we have so much to be thankful for just to live in freedom. I can truely say that both Mark and I have such a respect for what the people at IJM are doing, and we really considered it a priviledge to be back at the event again this year.

Role Reversal

The other morning, Nina and Lyla wanted to play baby. They were looking for a bottle, so I dug one of the bottles Lyla used to use out of the cabinet. This time, instead of playing Lyla was the baby, Nina was the baby instead. I think Lyla liked the role reversal! Now, doesn't this look like the life? Mark and I were getting dinner ready in the kitchen when we looked into the family room and saw both of our daughters just relaxing on the lounge chairs. It must be nice to sit in a warm blanket and watch the news while everyone else gets your dinner ready!

Tree Decorating

This year was a first for us. Ever since Mark and I have been married, we've always gone to a tree farm to get our Christmas tree. We bundled up, took the saw, tromped around in the field until we found our perfect tree, then Mark would cut it down and we'd pull it back to the car. Even with the kids in tow, we've always gotten out tree that way until this year. There is still a lot of snow on the ground, and we didn't feel like waiting until it all melts and dries up to go get our tree, so we decided to do Christmas trees the Costco way. This was the first year our Costco sold live trees, so we gave it a try and actually loved the tree we got. Plus, it was so easy. It makes me wonder if we'll be back to the tree farm next year or back our local Costco...

Visit to Santa

On Sunday, our community had Santa visit along with a little holiday party. Nina was excited to visit Santa and really seemed to enjoy the whole experience.

Nina was a little shy when she got up to sit with Santa, but she still was excited. Lyla, not so much. This is actually the happiest face we have of her on the sleigh. Just after I snapped this picture, the bottom lip came out and the tears started. So, we got a picture of just Nina and Santa together.
Lyla spent much of the holiday party with this face. She was happy to hang around the cookie an juice table, and she liked checking out the decorated Christmas tree, but she wasn't having anything to do with Santa or his reindeer!

Wrestle Mania

The girls love to wrestle and rough house with Mark. It's funny that they don't want to ever do that with me, but they love to do it with him. I guess there's just something about dads that lends itself to rough housing. After all, Shen and I grew up as boxing mates for my dad - Sugar Ray Shenley and Tiger Beth (as he called us) were a pretty good tag-team combination. I'd say we're still pretty scrappy! :) Anyway, our girls love to wrestle around with Mark, and from the looks of it, he has a lot of fun too. Since I didn't get to take part in the wrestling, I got relegated to book reading...

Thanksgiving at Hartfield 2009

Happy Thanksgiving! We just got back this evening from our trip down to Hartfield. We spent the past couple days spending time with family, eating tons of good food, and keeping four busy girls entertained. Click HERE to see the pictures from our time in Hartfield. View the Slideshow option to read the captions.

Nina's Date Night

Mark and I decided that we're going to take turns taking Nina out on a date night once a month. It will be a special evening for just her and he or I, and we'll plan something fun to do together that she can look forward to. Tonight was her first date night, and it was with Mark. She was SO excited for date night. At the last minute, Lyla and I got invited to the dinner at Red Robin (thankfully b/c I would have been eating leftovers), then Lyla and I drove home and Mark and Nina went on for the rest of their special evening. They took a trip to the mall, and she got to pick out something special at the Disney store then they went out for ice cream and came back and watched a little of the new Tinkerbell movie together. I think they both had a really fun night!

A Girl Take on a Guy Thing

Yesterday was a nice autumn day, so after lunch we took some stale bread over to the pond to feed the ducks. We quickly exhausted all the bread we had so we kept walking. We came upon a section of the neighborhood where they're getting ready to put in some new construction houses and were using an excavator like this (photo courtesy of the John Deere website) to dig the big holes for the foundations. As we were walking by, I thought to myself that my girlfriends with little boys would love this. They could probaby pull up a couple lawn chairs and just sit and let the little boys watch the digging, lifting, and dumping all afternoon. However, I certainly didn't think Nina and Lyla would be so excited by it. They were watching intently and cheering when the excavator would dump its big load of dirt onto the pile. After awhile of watching the action, Nina says to me, "Mom, let's make up a dumper dance." I told her she was on her own for that one, but she actually made up quite an interesting little dance that simulated the action of the excavator and performed that over and over for another 15 minutes. It was very cute and showed me that little girls just might really like little boy things, just with a little girl twist on it.

Bizarro Girl

As I've mentioned before in another post, Lyla has quite a dichotomy in her personality. When we're out or amongst people she doesn't know well, she's quite shy and reserved. At home, she's a nut. This morning she went through Nina's closet and found these 3D glasses that came with a toy Nina got. She was cracking Nina and I up because she was a little thrown off by the change in perspective that the glasses gave her and was high-stepping, laughing while just running around the table, and giving us lots of funny looks with the glasses on. Here's our crazy Lyla.

Girls Night Out

Trust me, it wasn't the girls night out of the days of old. This time it was a girls night out that had on the agenda McDonalds and a trip to the mall. Mark had been away for a couple days on a scouting trip, and here at home it had been raining for three straight days. It was Friday night (not that it makes a difference anymore, sadly), and I was determined not to spend the evening at home again. When we're "out" and it's dark and raining and you're trying to get two kids in and out of carseats at each stop, and Lyla is climbing all over the McDonalds table knocking our food off and getting into everything, I remember why sometimes it's just more fun to stay home, but those of you who spend a lot of time alone with toddlers know you sometimes just need to get out - whatever the cost. Last night was one of those nights!

RSVP with Me

This video along with a FBI Press Release about 60 children rescued from sex slavery here in the U.S. in late October and this CNN article (about the rescue) were just a few of the newsworthy items on a great blog about human trafficking that I read today. It reminded me that I wanted to use a post on this blog to invite anyone in the DC Metro area to join Mark and I at this year's benefit dinner for the International Justice Mission. Those of you who follow this blog might remember that I did a post last year about our experience at the 2008 dinner. It was a great evening that helped continue to inspire us to seek to do more in the way of bringing an end to some of the horrible attrocities that are taking place in the world. The dinner this year is a month away - December 10th at 7pm in NW Washington, D.C., so if you'd like to know some more information, I can help you figure out any of the details, or even better, email me and say you'd like to come. We can sit at the same table and maybe there will be enough of us to fill a full table of ten!

(Update: ** We're registered under Mark Simpson, so if you want to go and sit at the same table, just put in Mark's name for who you'd like to sit with.)

Dads and Daughters

I am very thankful to have been born into a family with a great father. He has had a really important impact on us kids and our families, and I'm very thankful our girls have such a great grandfather. Happy Birthday, Dad! Since Mark, Nina, and Lyla looked so cute after church yesterday, I subjected them to getting their picture taken, but since the "photo session" only lasted 3 minutes, I didn't get many objections.

Eating grapes can be exhausting!