Some Fun Photos

She's got her dad's mischievous look.

Emma was trying to hide. She never did get in those dense grasses.

Emma pretending to be a squirrel.

Sucesses and Flops

I thought I'd share a couple of my recent baking experiences. The first here are mini chocolate chip cupcakes; the cupcakes and the chocolate chips are mini. (Mini chocolate chips are my favorite creation!) For those who are wondering, for the frosting I started with a small bit of red, and as I frosted each cupcake I just added, to the superfluous colored frosting, a spoon of white frosting and more food coloring, in the direction that I wanted the colors to go.
This, below, was Strawberries and Cream Cheesecake, a Martha Stewart recipe, that I had been really excited to make. I was able to use one of my $5 vanilla beans and the strawberries were roasted! However, despite extending the baking time (because cheesecakes make me nervous) and cooling on a wire rack it was still mushy inside! The recipe said to refrigerate it for 4 hours, so I assumed that that meant to take it out of the spring form pan; this is what happened when I did. I did eat the 1/4-1/2" of cheesecake on the very top that did get firm. It was very good!

My Girls

This past weekend 5 girls from our former (sob!) synagogue and youth group came to visit! It was so great to see them, and it felt so great that they made the effort to drive all the way down here. (I say "effort" because 4 hours is not something that I look forward to, especially when it involves my kids sitting in the back seat, and so I forget that when you're in your late teens a road trip is fun! They came late on Thursday night and we stayed up late talking and then on Friday them and I went to D.C. to see the sights. It is different from NYC as that it is more of a walking city, and I say that because the sights are spread out, yet in the same vicinity, so we walked a ton, but the attractions weren't spread out enough to hop back on the metro, and the metro is not nearly as extensive as the NYC subway. So, needless to say, a couple of the girls (I won't name names) were pretty exhausted from walking. Then to top the day off we went to a museum :) as you can expect, those who don't really like walking wouldn't pick a museum as a fun thing to do with friends!
On Saturday we went to service, came home for lunch, and then the girls went to play ultimate frisbee with Matt and the youth from Son of David. That evening the girls and I went to Tysons Corner Center, a humungus mall, to shop and have dinner; and they set out for home the next morning. It was a great weekend, and Emma was so super excited to have her "best friends" around to lavish her with attention!

Swimming Lessons!

Emma had her first swimming lesson on Wednesday! We had been preparing her for a couple of days that she would be taking lessons in a pool, and with a teacher. She slept late that day, but we managed to even slip a video in between dinner and making sure we got to the pool early so we could check it out. When we got there all the parents were huddled in a small hallway watching their kids. 10 minutes to six came and those parents were let in to gather their kids, while we were let in to drop our off. So, we got all Emma's clothes off and took a couple pictures while waiting for the teacher to appear. Siri was screaming the usual, "Wassat?" that echoed way too much in that room! When her name was called to go to her class we ushered her towards the group and her teacher and she was sooo cute as she asked the teacher her name. I have to admit that I had tears in my eyes...it was just so cute! Then we had to leave, which drove Matt crazy, but is understandable that parents would be a HUGE distraction. I took a few pictures through the ladie's locker room door. It was so cute to see her interacting with her teacher, Miss Nadia, and having a good time in a class setting. She needs that!

Passover!

We were actually proactive about passover this year! I have to admit that I am often exhausted even thinking about a holiday that lasts a whole week! Those really don't exist in Christianity, so I am sometimes daunted by the thought of 7 full days, but this year was great. We planned 2 seders to have at our home, two of which we invited guests to and they were great, though I don't think I could do more than two! The second was on Sunday and we invited two families with two kids each that are similar in age to Emma and Siri. We were scheduled to start at 4 so that dinner (3/4 of the way through a typical seder) would land at an appropriate time for the kids, and I put together my own Haggadah (seder booklet) designed for kids. It had black and white pictures for coloring and included all the main point of a seder. My purpose was to expose young kids to the elements of a typical seder without all the talking and explaining of everything. When they are older they will start to ask about that stuff, but in the meantime they should know what to expect at passover. Anyway, it went great. We sang the passover songs, drank our cups 4 times, the kids each decorated their own "Elijah's cup," and they searched for the afikomen...then we ate dessert and put on a Little Einsteins video! That day was definitely the highlight for me this passover...fun with friends and teaching the kids about their faith!

Oh...to Pass the Time...

It's another "cold" day here. ( And for all the northerners...its also windy, so it's supposed to feel like 36 degrees...and I saw flakes briefly!) Spring is here, but slow to warm things up, so another day inside is the schedule for today. It's better anyway, since the boogers are flowing, to not aggravate the colds any more than necessary. So, in the 45 minutes since lunch ended many things have happened. Emma has baked about 20 cakes, one for everyone, including baby Noah from New York. Siri has learned to catapult her body from the little stool to the coffee table, climb up, and once she's on top, and take all the kleenexes out of the box. Siri has also managed to put most of her running boogers on the nice couch since she climbs with her head. Yes, I had my blinders on to most of this, but when they were both standing on the coffee table and safety became a serious issue I referred them to the gigantic TV box that we have from Matt's new LCD 42" "toy."


This is Siri swiping one of Emma's "cakes."




...And Emma retrieving it.

Activities to Make the Time Pass

Matt was gone for a couple of days for meetings, and so to keep the three of us from getting sick of each other and to keep it interesting I've been doing more projects. One day I thought I'd try to make our own "gingerbread" houses out of graham crackers and royal icing, but apparently, explaining the disgusting taste, the icing that comes with the store-bought kits is basically edible glue. I made edible play dough and thought I could trick them for awhile, but Emma immediately asked if she could eat it and Siri (since she doesn't talk) put it in her mouth right away. I made Emma play with it for a little while before I let her eat it. And surprisingly they didn't eat too much. I thought self-control would go out the window with this activity, but they only ate a small bit and wanted to get down to play.

This is dance time, after bath time.