cuties

This is the 2009 calendar for our local YMCA. Do you recognize anyone?



Soren and Reese had a long weekend of togetherness. That always starts out great, but eventually they start bickering. Tuesday night I made them each go find something to do alone because they were having a hard time getting along. Reese loves to write and has started to sound out words. She wrote Soren this note and slid it under her door.


Reese pronounces love as "lub", so she wrote: Soren I lub u from Reese.

Love it.

I promise this is NOT a repeat blog!

Another swim meet. 3 more personal bests for Soren. Wow. No pictures :( I had to be a timer.

Today she swam the 100 free in 1:18.99 (2 seconds faster than her previous best); 50 back in 39.97 (1 second faster) and the 100 IM in 1:27 (this was her first time to swim this event). She got second place in the free and first place in both the back and IM.

Grandma Charlotte came down for the weekend which means the girls are having a very spoiled weekend; that is always fun.

We booked our accommodations for Ironman Cozumel 2009. We are staying the week of Thanksgiving; I am excited to take the girls to a "real" beach. We are working hard to convince everyone to come celebrate the holiday with us - the more the merrier!

Celebrating Soren's 10th Birthday...again

With a birthday that comes over the Christmas holidays you get jipped when it comes to having friends around, so we waited until today to have a party for Soren. She chose to do a mall scavenger hunt and it went really well, especially considering the fact that I did not put any work into it. We found some scavenger hunt lists online, printed them out and took off with 6 giggly girls. Nana and I took the kids to the mall with their list and told them to see how many things they could check off in one hour. A great success as far as birthdays go. Happy Birthday, again, Soren!

loaded up and ready to go

Some of the things we had to do:

doing the wave

wearing sunglasses

one of the tasks was to buy a piece of gum. what we ended up with was a bag of 6 colossal gum balls which made for lovely colored mouths for the rest of the trip!

rather than having another birthday cake, Soren and her friends each chose something from the cookie place in the mall. We decided to take our choices with us and eat some dinner before enjoying the sweets

straws were quite the entertainment at dinner

just in case we had not ingested enough sugar (colossal gum balls, cookies, endless sprite...) the waitress brought out a chocolate shake in honor of Soren's birthday

more straw fun

My blue ribbon girl

Before we left on our Christmas trip to Colorado, Soren competed in her last BC meet. We knew that she had done very well; she got all BB times and moved up a category. Last night we found out just how well she actually did that day. She swam in 4 events and as you can see, she won 1st place in all of her races. I was amazed when I found out. There were 14 to 16 heats of 8 girls each in these races and she beat them all! Here are her results:

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50 yd Fly 40.00

200 yd IM 3:11.43

100 yd breast 1:42.15

50 yd free 35.39

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She was very excited to see that all of her hard work is really paying off. Nice job Soren!

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A Reese Story

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On the way to school Reese says "mom, wouldn't it be cool if we had to live at church and at school?"

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me "oh, yea, that would be neat!"

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reese "we could get all of the people in the United States and Galveston and Africa and they would fill up all of the houses and then we would have to live at church!"

Good Times at Grandma's House

We spent the last precious days of our holiday break at Grandma Charlotte's house. Grandma's house has the coolest toys ever because they are not really toys, but she lets the girls play with them anyway! When the weather is nice (84 degrees in January is pretty nice if you ask me) the girls spend their time in the back yard where they have a golf cart with an acre to drive on and they each have their own house. Endless hours of fun.

reese's house

soren's house

reese has become quite a good driver; it is pretty cute

soren rings the bell to be picked up by the driver

Soren's Birthday and the New Year

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SOREN!

On Tuesday, 12/30, Soren turned 10.

Wow.

When I turned 30 it did not bother me at all, but this bothers me. Maybe it is because Pete pointed out that she is a decade old and that she is half way to 20 and that ten years from now she will be in college. Thanks, Pete.

I cannot say enough good things about Soren. She is truly the sweetest, most obedient, loving kid I know. This holiday season has been interesting because there has not been a single thing that she can think of to ask for. She says she has everything she wants. So we did not buy her a birthday gift (I know, terrible!). Instead, we gave her cash that she is saving for her trip to Disney World this summer with Pops and Nana. Pete decorated the house after she went to bed and she was excited to wake up to some birthday festivities. We made muffins and cake and just played. Happy Birthday, Soren. We love you to the moon.

the "luau" themed decorations from dad

soren watches her friend tori light the candles

I hope all of your wishes come true!

soren asked for steak for her birthday dinner...but she decided that she likes dad's steaks even better!

Happy New Year!

For New Year's Eve we had a progressive dinner with all my awesome neighbors. It was a huge success, so much fun! We are definately doing another one. The main course was at our house and we seated 26 people in our kitchen and living room.

I hope you all had a very merry Christmas and a blessed new year!

the Lakeview Circle gang!