Thoroughly Modern Lizzie

As most of you probably know, Hannah gave up dance this year in favor of singing more. In fact, she just made it into District Chorus!
But Lizzie decided to increase her participation in dance and was accepted into her dance studio's rep company a year ago. This means that she needs to take MORE dance. And she needs to be in MORE productions.
This means that she takes two ballet classes per week and has added modern dance to her repertoire. once a week. (That's in addition to rehearsals for Nutcracker on Wednesdays and Saturdays.) This past week they had parent visitation at the school and while I skipped ballet (it's ALL barre work and it's very very very quiet) I was intrigued by modern.
My thoughts on modern dance are thus:
1) The music is MUCH better. It was Adele and Justin Timberlake
2) Lizzie is going to have six pack abs in about a week -- most of the warmups (probably all of the warmups) involve the core. Lizzie often complains of a stomach ache on weekends and now I know why!
3) Lizzie is not really a fan of modern dance. Too few rules. And she says the music is too loud. :/

Here are some photos of her being all modern. Oh and if you notice anything, check out how deeply she concentrates -- she's VERY serious about dance:

Streeeeetttttccccchhhhhing:

Working with her teacher Miss Diane:

This is some sort of spot and spin across the room thing:

Way Back Weekly

I recently found an old snapfish account that contained photos of Hannah and Lizzie when they were about two years old. Oh the CUTENESS!!! I was surprised though, how much they are still the same and how much they are very different.

This picture reminded me how gorgeous my girls were and still are! It also reminded me that they (and still do!) want cat. Back when this picture was taken though, Lizzie was very disappointed that for reasons of physics and genetics she could not actually BE a cat. Instead she'd crawl all over the house and even wanted me to put her food on the floor so she could eat it there, like a cat. This picture was from Halloween when they were three:

And in this picture they are dancing and happy at two years old. It's nearly impossible to get them to dance spontaneously these days. And smiles are more often scowls (that tween thing can be TOUGH!) but I CAN still make them laugh and they STILL have messy hair and we STILL have a messy house, so those things have stayed the same (although the house has changed!)

Here they are .. still 2 and I think this was early summer. Stuff that's stayed the same? Well, they both still like to hang out on the hammock. But never with each other and certainly not playing with each other and LAUGHING. Once in a while I'll catch them being nice to each other and laughing together, but in general the sport of the day is annoying each other (but they seem to like it and the minute anyone ELSE tries to mess with one sister, the other sister will usually come to her aid.)

This picture made me laugh out loud, which Hannah and Lizzie can still do with great regularity. This was breakfast at the old house and the girls are two. I took a bunch of photos to turn into a photo book for Rob for his birthday in March (you can see there's a little snow on the ground in the back yard) and it was a day in the life of Hannah and Liz. The reason this picture cracks me up is because Hannah had finished her breakfast and cleared the dishes and then gone into the fridge to find some more food (a no-no then and now) and came out with a bottle of Worcestershire sauce that she wanted to share with her sister. I love that Hannah looks like she's presenting Lizzie with a bottle of wine and Lizzie looks like she's inspecting the label! (No I didn't let her put some on her froot loops!)

Halloween in '13

I thought I should post this before I'm all backed up with birthday/Thanksgiving and Christmas photos!
In short, Halloween was great. Although I am not a huge fan of the candy my girls bring home, I do love the dress up/make up creativity part of the holiday.
This year Hannah was a vampire zombie. Technically that can't exist anywhere but in the mind of a 10-year-old (since a vampire is already dead they are also already undead but not in the way zombies are....)
Lizzie actually wanted to be a centaur. Seriously, just let that sit in your brain for a little while. I explained to her that 1) it was a terrible idea; 2) there are no centaur costumes at Walmart; 3) It would be impossible to create a centaur; and 4) it was a terrible idea. So from centaur we moved on to EVERY. OTHER. COSTUME. IN. THE. FREE. WORLD. First it was vampire, then princess, then spy, then horse, then squirrel, then Elf on the Shelf (which was my idea and actually quite brilliant, but ultimately rejected) and then finally after we had looked online at EVERY. SINGLE. COSTUME. IN. THE. FREE. WORLD. Lizzie decided on being a spy, except that all the spy costumes were modeled by boys which meant a girl could not be a spy.
Eventually, about 15 minutes after I had poked my eyes out with a stick for comic relief, she decided she wanted to be a gangster. She had no idea what a gangster was, but she liked the costume so we went with it. I ordered the costume for 2-day delivery which was good because I had to alter it. And then I made her a huge money bag out of a pillow case.
The end result was that they were both adorable and I was exhausted. Here are some pictures of the day:
This is Hannah as the zombie vampire carrying the train of her friend Analisa AKA the evil queen from "The Huntsman."

And Lizzie the happy gangster:

I don't know how Hannah's hair held up all day, but it really did. I re-teased it and did more makeup when she got home from school (the school forbids blood, gore or any guns).  Lizzie was really pretty easy as all I had to do was turn her hat around the right way! So here's how they looked just before going out to Trick or Treat, especially scary in black and white:

Lizzie in living color:

 Hannah in undead color:

Oh, and while I was uploading these I noticed that I hadn't posted pictures of our pumpkin carving this year. Rob was visiting his mom at the shore, so the girls and I went out and picked out a couple (actually several more that we didn't carve!) and we made them into jack-o-lanterns and ate the delicious pumpkin seeds the next day. Here they are getting all the guts out. I carved and cooked, but I do not like the slime. I also had them give me a rough pencil drawing on the pumpkin of what they wanted it to look like and I took it from there.

 

This is Hannah's pumpkin that she named Frank. I have no idea why and find it best in these situations to just go with it. So here is Frank and his big smile:

And here is Lizzie's nameless pumpkin. It's a cat, which should surprise no one who knows her as she is regularly and loudly begging for a cat. So I made her one:

Way Back Weekly

I love this picture!
When I do my life coaching I often tell clients who are grieving to look at things like pictures they haven't seen before or memories that suddenly surface as gifts from loved ones who have moved on.
That's certainly the way I felt when I came upon this picture in a bunch of pictures that my dad gave me when we were in the Poconos this summer.

This picture was taken at my parents' 25 wedding party, which I've written about before in a Way Back post (it was a surprise party planned by the kids and attended by friends and family who had been at the original wedding as well as some "newer" friends.) I have looked at pictures from this party for nearly 30 years, yet somehow had never seen this one. I love the look on my brother's face (who was proudly a Mama's boy!) and my mom's smile as she laughs at something Aunt Brenda is telling her (Aunt Brenda is in the mirror behind them in the original picture). It's just so "them."

There were a few other pictures of the 25th (held at the Peter Pratt Inn in Yorktown) that you may see in the future, but this one jumped right out at me, so I had to share it with all of you!

FireFall

One of the best things about living in Pennsylvania is fall. The older I get the less I like winter (or maybe it's the more dependent I get on having to drive everywhere!) but there is no substitute for fall. And I have to say that this fall has been quite nice. The leaves haven't really changed ... they just kind of rusted and fell onto my front yard ... but the air has been crisp and cool and the breeze almost always brings the smell of burning leaves.
This past weekend we were the cause of some of that burning and not because I forgot to extinguish the candles I like to have lit in the bathrooms!
As you may recall we lost a tree last fall (several actually) in a freak storm and we gave most of the wood away. This past weekend though, we decided to burn the remainder of it and toast some marshmallows.
Here is the photographic evidence!

First of all we never do anything in the backyard without Hannah setting up a "stand." Here she has decided to provide us with marshmallows. Free. (Usually we get charged ... I cannot tell you the number of bracelets I have purchased and then given back to her over the past week...)

Here she is at the table with a sample marshmallow. I have to tell you that both girls remembered our fire safety from the previous week's camp out. In fact, when Rob asked Lizzie what she learned about fire safety her response was, "We learned that you've got to put your hair up or wear a bandanna so it doesn't catch on fire (insert long pause while she looks at his head) so ... you're good." Seriously that kid cracks me up. That's Rob there guarding the fire, which he built.

 

 Here's a close-up of the fire. It burned a good long time and many, many marshmallows were consumed:

Here's one right here. Hannah liked catching them on fire, but she didn't like eating them all burned. It was a conundrum.

 

Even Cash got in on the fun ...

... but I think it was just for the marshmallows... see how he's sizing up Lizzie's? Yummy, yummy! Although in the interest of full disclosure Hannah tried to give him her burned marshmallow from the previous picture and he refused to eat it, too. He's kind of picky that way.

We hope you are enjoying fall wherever you are, too!

Fun with Texting

Lizzie spent her summer doing math and she got pretty good at it (she's gotten nearly perfect grades on the tests she's taken since the year began) AND she earned an iPod Touch.
Rob already had one, so the two of them text each other ALL. THE. TIME. She's upstairs, he's downstairs, and they text.
Once in a while Hannah takes my iPad and gets in on the fun. Here is an "exchange" between Hannah and Lizzie, which pretty much mirrors how they actually speak to each other in real life:

Hannah: Liz
Hannah: Liz
Hannah: Liz
Hannah: Are You Alive?
Hannah: Are You Alive?
Hannah: I Love Pandas and Elephants
Hannah: Lizzie
Hannah: Hi Liz
Hannah: You are a weird goofball
Lizzie: Ugh
Hannah: Okay, you are cute
Lizzie: Ugh

Lizzie has also gotten a couple of aps for the iPod that let her do fun stuff. One is an ap where you take a picture of an animal and then you line up the mouth and eyes and you record your voice (you can disguise your voice in different ways) so that it looks like the animal is talking. Lizzie is currently obsessed with making these and when she is done she texts the to me and Rob. Here are a couple of the funnier ones:

The Horse Video

The Cat Video

Girls in Trees 2

 We like trees in this family. The girls like to climb them and I like to take pictures of them:

In fact, sometimes I like to take pictures of them climbing them, such a in this post from a few years ago (late 2008.) And I use the term a few years ago loosely since honestly it seems like just a few days ago (and unbelievably on Halloween we will begin our seventh year in this house!) that I posted those photos.
If you don't want to click, here's an example:
Cute, aren't they?


In fact yesterday (or really a couple of yesterdays ago) I snapped this shot of Hannah and Lizzie and a tree. This tree is the same tree as above (it's a very interesting tree -- kind of a camo tree!) and it's at Poole Forge, which is (as regular blog readers know) one of my favorite places to take photos.
My how my girls have grown!! But they are still cute!!