Happy New Year!

Christmas

We've had a really good winter break so far. It started with a visit to the vet for Bella. We found out she is an obese cat! She is now on a diet. We hope to have her down by 2lbs by her visit next year. A few days before Christmas we went to an ice carving party. It was so cool to see guys take chain saws to blocks of ice and transform them into beautiful sculptures.

Christmas Eve and Christmas day were full of family, laughs, and good food. Felicity and an American Girl Coconut were the big hits. Here are just a few highlights.

It's beginning to look alot like.....

Christmas

Perfect Fall Day

Catching up

It's been a few weeks since I posted. I usually post on Sundays. Two weeks ago was Halloween and then last Sunday we went to the Gaeta's house to watch the Brown's game. First Halloween. Kyla had asked if she could trick or treat with Maria. So we headed to their house for a cookout followed by trick or treating. The kids were excited from the very beginning.

We all ate and then the kids got into their costumes. Maria was a candy corn witch, Peter was Ironman, Kyla was Wordgirl. They were ready to go. They were able to start without coats, but luckily Jon brought them along, it got quite chilly after the sun went down.

Happy after a successful night

The following weekend we celebrated Jan's birthday. We went to Becky's Bistro for dinner and then came back to our house for cake. I made a chocolate layer cake with cream cheese frosting. The frosting was so good - even Jon couldn't stop sticking his finger in the bowl for "just one more taste".

Today (Thursday) Kyla is home with a fever. I hope she's able to go to school tomorrow. We have a pretty busy weekend ahead again. Art class on Saturday, horseback riding on Sunday and then the Adelman's for the Brown's game and chili.

The Weekend

Another gorgeous weekend. Third one in a row. Very unusual but I'm not complaining. On Saturday, after Kyla's art class we went to a Halloween party at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. They always have really fun events. On Sunday, since it was in the mid 70's and sunny, Kyla and Jon grabbed their bikes and headed to the Metroparks. This was after Kyla's horseback riding lesson. Next weekend is Halloween. We'll be going to Stamatis for a cookout before trick-or-treating. It would be so nice to have this weather next weekend, too.

The weekend

We had another really great weekend. It wasn't as warm as last weekend, but we still had abundant sunshine and temps in the 60's. Perfect fall weather. Kyla started another session of art classes at the museum. We love being down in University circle. Especially on days when we can enjoy being outside as well as inside the museums. After class, Jon and Kyla played hide and seek on Wade Oval and then we headed over to the Natural History Museum so Kyla could climb on Steggie.

Today Kyla had her second horseback riding lesson. She seems to be really enjoying it. My only complaint is that it's a large class, so they don't get a good deal of time on the horse. They are learning alot about horses though, from grooming to tacking. When we got home from horseback riding lessons there was a message on the answering machine for Kyla. It was her friend Kendall asking her if she wanted to come over to play. Kyla was so excited she could barely contain herself. She called Kendall back (she was so nervous to make the call herself) and after telling Kendall she wanted to have a playdate, the moms got on the phone and made the arrangement. Kyla and Kendall are like two peas in a pod. Both only children, and both have summer birthdays. And because neither of them has older siblings, they're not as worldly as some of the other kids. I'm sure Kyla will have a huge grin on her face when I pick her up.

Last Wednesday we had quite a scare. The bus was late dropping Kyla off so I called the school. The school said she was in the bus line, but the driver confirmed she was not on the bus. So for about 20 minutes I didn't know where Kyla was. My thoughts went to very bad places. After sprinting out of work, I got a call from the principal saying that Kyla was on the bus. Apparently the bus driver asked if there was a Kayla on the bus. When she didn't answer (because that's not her name), he just sped Roland. What I later learned after many calls to the school and the transportation department to find out how this happened was that our bus stop had changed. There's construction on Roland and it's too hard for buses to tun onto Roland because of it. We were supposed to get a phone call but we didn't. Had we known, yiayia would have been standing on Ridgebury and would have seen the bus, and the bus driver would have seen her. Kyla was a little shaken up but not as bad as I would have thought.