Concerts and popcorn

Eliza's preschool put on an adorable Christmas presentation. It was just precious.
The second graders put on a pj-themed Christmas concert! Here Abby is rockin' out to Rap on the Rooftop. It was hilarious. And she can really dance. I hope to upload video another day when I have a few extra minutes...stay tunes.
Just another day in packing popcorn.

Liza comes to town!

We were really lucky that Liza (my youngest sister) planned a road trip across the country just so she could see us! :) Ok, so there were other work-involved motives, but we are so glad she stopped in and hung out with us for a few days! It was great to all get to spend time and get to know each other more!

Liza got in on the Christmas puzzle...and finished it up for us...but she was the cool aunt and let Eliza put in the last piece!
A work of art.
Liza also got in on another bit Christmas fun. The Christmas pickle. Yep. It's a pickle ornament and it's traditionally (in Germany) the last ornament to go on the tree. Then the kids see who can find it first, and a prize is given. Well we had an assortment of wee prizes and played a bunch of times. Never has a pickle been more fun!
Next time you come, Liza make it in the summer and we'll show you the great outdoor fun that Wisconsin has to offer! Love ya!

A Thanksgiving to write home about

We were so happy to have family come for Thanksgiving!! Jared, Heidi, and their girls came all the way from Bentonville, Arkansas!

Before this: (yum!)
We decorated sugar cookies, made these: (gum drop turkeys, anyone?)
Played a mean turkey bowl in the very cold back yard, and sewed these: (dressed as princesses, of course)
Which eventually became these: (Abby was loving it! She sewed every vegetable possible!)

We also visited the Milwaukee Public Museum, took a tour of Daniel's office,
and began our Christmas puzzle! With intensity! What a great week!
The Christmas puzzle (for you non-immediate-family readers) had been done in my home growing up every year since I can remember. (You'll see the finished product in the next post or two.) Some of us siblings gravitated to the same section each year and worked tirelessly until it was done. I also remember my Dad staying up late to finish the hardest parts so it would be done by Christmas. A few years ago my sister, Anne, found this exact puzzle (with no pieces missing!) on ebay and gave it to us for Christmas! Was that the coolest gift or what!? I've had it for several years now but the kids were too young and I had no place to put and leave it up. I have just had the box out for decoration. But finally it is time! This is the beginning of the Christmas puzzle tradition for this Stewart family! Thanks, Anne!!

Thanks again, Craigslist

And just a few days before Thanksgiving.

Eliza turns 5!

Our little darling! She's five! Birthday mornings are always fun--that's when we unwrap family presents! This year Eliza got the beloved pillow pet. We hid it in the dryer! It was a fun treasure hunt.

She also got a tub pink wafer cookies. I only mention it because she asked for them consistently every time we went grocery shopping! She was SO SURPRISED and ever so pleased to unwrap her very own tub!! And what a great sharer she was!Eliza chose Chuck E. Cheese for her "family outing plus a couple friends" party. We did it on her bday, which was a weeknight. Wow--it was a quiet night at Chuck E. Cheese! Made for a stress-free, fun night! The girls loved the little merry-go-round,
all the kids loved the pizza,and the Ariel cake,
and this bike thing that takes you higher and higher as you pedal was a favorite for sure!!
The girls were adorable and had a wonderful time.

And the pin! The pin Eliza is wearing was given to us from Cece, a friend on our block in NYC. This was back when Andrew was turning five. I have saved it for each kid since.

Hooray for turning five!

Utah 2010

I've avoided it. Blogging about it anyway, even though it was a most wonderful, memorable vacation!

Obstacle 1: So much happened. So many fantastic moments. How do you even begin?

Obstacle 2: All pix taken with my side of the family are stuck on a memory card so far nobody can read. And its camera is broken.

Obstacle 3: All the other pictures add up to about three million (between families), how do I even choose?

Obstacle 4: My new camera (purchased on the trip) took great pix that take muuuuuch longer to upload. Sigh.

NONETHELESS, it is time do so something! I adore the pictures my SIL, Michelle took and played around with. So I will share 4 of my favorites with you!

This is me and my sweetheart in SLC touring the Conference Center. We always look this good.

Andrew spending time with the horses. This is always a highlight of the ranch trip.
Abby gets daring at the beaver dams. There were some great moments of hiking, building with river rocks, and jumping in freezing water.
And Eliza. Again in SLC. I will have this up on my wall, enlarged. I will.

I am just sorry that I'm not recording all of the fun we had. And I'm sorry I've yet to retrieve my family's pictures--we had a great time together!!

I love you all, both sides, up and down and around!! Thanks for a wonderful August!

One thing I never thought I'd hear.

The family is driving home together. Eliza is exhausted and wanting to be back already. Abby encouragingly says, "Eliza! Look, there's the dump! We're almost home!"

It's true. Warms my heart.

A birthday for the Dad

When November comes it brings Daniel's birthday!! The kids and I had fun planning some fun birthday signs, gifts, and a little dinner out with some friends. Eliza insisted on him wearing the hat (she had been wearing it the two days previous with great anticipation).
We took Daniel out to dinner at a pizza buffet place (Tazino's) with a few friends. I decided to do the real number of candles this time, instead of faking it like we sometimes do for ourselves. Wow, what a glow!
Daniel surprised us all by blowing every candle out with one quick POOF! I completely missed the shot, so this is a reenactment.
Happy Birthday, Daniel! We love you more than we can express in one day!

Halloween 2010

I am sneaking this picture in the Halloween post. Across the street from us is this huge farm--acres and acres of corn. It's been fun to watch the combine come and harvest. There's Andrew out riding to get in on the dusty action. If there's something Wisconsin does right, it's the fall. What a mild, gorgeous season we have had!! After failing twice (going at the wrong time, rain) to get pumpkins at the pumpkin farm down the road, we opted for the ones in the box at the grocery store. It was still surprisingly fun and there was some thoughtful picking!

Here we are in character with our Jack-O-Lanterns.

And here are the kids in character with their costumes. Eliza is Rapunzel (she pronounces it, Reepunzel). Abby is "Sleeping Beauty." Get it, her pageant sash says "Beauty" and she is in her PJ's. All she wanted to wear was pajamas for Halloween so my friend came up with this brilliant solution. And Andrew is a Jedi knight. A reuse of a Yoda cloak I made him 2 years ago.
Trick-or-Treat!!
We trick-or-treated in Richfield and the houses are pretty spread out. Many of the trick-or-treaters we saw were sporting vehicles (be it a truck, SUV, Hummer, or smaller four-wheeler) with a trailer full of kids! Some had hay bales and the works. This one was even equipped with a grill in the trailer!! It was hilarious and they were having a great time! What a way to ride around the neighborhood!
Sorting and trading.
The glow...

And, voila! It's November!

Door County

Daniel, the awesome guy that he is, planned a little get-away for us for my birthday this year! We have not done this in ages. We had such a great time!! His Dad was coming out for work in Milwaukee, so his Mom decided to come along for the ride. She also became the babysitter. She is awesome! We drove up to Door County for our little trip. It was just breathtaking. First, we enjoyed a delicious dinner, walk along the bay, take-home desserts, and a darling bed and breakfast in Sturgeon Bay. The following morning we walked through a "fall fest" happening just a block from the B&B. This also included a car show--we took lots of pictures for Andrew.
We spent the rest of our day meandering up the peninsula and enjoying the sights. I was so stuffed from our amazing breakfast that Daniel ate at Al Johnson's. It is a Swedish Restaurant with loads of character. Our waitress was from Sweden, another was from Romania. They had a gift shop with lots of things from the Sweden, Norway, and Finland. But the funny thing was they roof their restaurant with sod! And have goats roaming around on top. I guess this is a thing they do in Sweden! Look in the window--you can see the waitresses in their traditional Swedish dress.These are some beautiful cliffs at one of the parks along the coast.

And this is my Ariel pose (according to Dorothy) on the edge of the cliff.
Some really beautiful scenery! We toured two lighthouses and learned about the people that lived at and operated the lighthouses. Also about the use of the waterways for ships, cargo, hazards, wrecks, etc. Quite an education, quite a life!
We couldn't have had a better time. It was great to know the kids were having a wonderful time with Grandma Stewart. She even gave them their first sewing lesson while we were gone. We came home to three new fleece pillows and three very happy kids.

Another birthday

They seem to come every year! We usually open gifts first thing in the morning--who can handle waiting!?The kids decorated the cake with my variety of frosting tips, they did a great job. The evening was full of fun and funny games. One of which was Abby's much awaited, much anticipated pin the chocolate chip on the cookie!!
Givin' it my best shot. Promise I wasn't peeking!
And yes, if you're confused, my birthday is in September. I'm a little behind in getting pictures up.

Bathroom before and after

This links to a more complete bathroom before picture, but here's another. More like a before "Andrew" picture. :)Daniel finished this a while ago. He worked so hard. He, with the generous help and education from some friends, removed the toilet, ripped up the floor and cut out some subflooring. This got rid of nasty stains and extra nasty smells from old leaking problems. He put new subflooring in, new plywood, backer board, tile, grouted it, sealed it, put in a new cabinet (because with all the ripping up, it came out too), put in the new sink, and redid the trim (funny how one thing leads to another). It is so new and clean now and everything works! And nothing stinks. What a guy. What a room.

Must be a combination...

...of my mother's flair and my Willowbrook upbringing that I love this so much.Eliza and her little friend (whose name is Katie Stewart, no joke!) gathered things from the yard and we tied them into this little piece of art. It makes me happy.

(And this is your peek at my new drapes hanging in the kitchen.)

Desk--before and after

I'm not ashamed. I picked this little beauty up off the side of the road several months ago. I though it had a great shape and since it was already painted it'd be easy to paint over.
The color wasn't quite what I expected, but I kept it. Debra (my MIL) got me these cute white accessories for my bday, I sewed some little curtains for the top cubbies, covered cardboard with the same fabric to cover the back where the holes were, and voila! I have a cute workspace and somewhere to stash my papers and craft stuff.

Swing

Don't hate me because my tree swing is beautiful.

No really. Don't you open someone's blog sometimes, see a beautiful/fun/wonderful thing they have/did and just think Arg! I hate her! I mean, Wow, she's so talented I just love what she is doing for her family.

Well, if I opened a picture of this tree swing in someone else's blog I would be trying really hard not to "hate" them.

Daniel put up these steps (for a future fort perhaps?) and more recently hung this swing. I just love it.