Birthday Party

Monday is a hard day to have a birthday. Especially if you have to go to school and your mom has to got to work. We tried to make the best of it though. I set out her pile of presents last night so she would see them this morning.

In fact Chloe was so excited that I didn't even have to wake her up this morning. She bounced through her door and into the bathrrom where I was getting ready announcing, "I'M NINE!" Just prior to six this morning.

I let her choose three presents to open this morning.

As you can see Alexa was a big help.

After we got home from work, school, and Alexa's dance class. She opened the rest.

We then had her special birthday choice dinner (don't get too excited it involved french fries). Then it was time for cake and ice cream.

She went to bed a happy and tired nine year old working her way thorugh the new books she got for her birthday.

A Stocking Stuffer

Nine years ago today Chloe Lynn came into this world and the wonderful nurses put her in her very own Christmas stocking.

So I, of course had her test it out yesterday for a bit of comparison.

How did she get that big?

It's a Birthday and Christmas Kind of Weekend

This weekend involved a lot of cooking. It is kind of crazy everything that has gone into the last few days. First off remember our garden pumpkin? Well, this is what he looks like now.

Oh yeah, he looks like this too.

That was baking item number one. Well, one and two combine since I has to cook the pumpkin and the seeds. Chloe already ate all the seeds though. Then there was this...

for a certain someone who is turning nine tomorrow.

And these

to take to school.

Then there was the pause in baking to get the Christmas tree up. An adventure that was made all the more interesting when it nearly fell off the car on the way home.

But it looks nice now.

We decorated the dog too.

Cabbie was thrilled. I swear he is thinking, "Ever stinking year they drag this stuff out."
Then there were the gingerbread men (and women) that Alexa wanted to bake.

My helpers worked really hard on those.

There was even a mommy gingerbread woman for me.

She was yummy. I ate her for dessert.

The Quote Addiction

It is altogether possible that I have a problems with my growing attachment to quotes. I like to think that it is a healthy appreciation of  language, and people who put words together well to capture some extremely powerful messages. Last night while I was wrapping birthday presents, I had the TV on. I can't even remember what the show was now as I wasn't really paying a lot of attention. At some point there came the discussion of the new movie by Matt Damon "We Bought a Zoo." Now I have been a Matt Damon fan since my graduate school days in Boston when the movie "Good Will Hunting" came out. This new movie I can connect to as well. Apparently he is playing a single dad. This just goes to show how things have changed for Matt and I from our college days in Boston (OK so he wasn't actually in college) to single parenthood. At any rate the movie trailer shows him talking to his son and he says, "All you need is 20 seconds of insane courage, and I promise you something great will come of it." Now I know Matt Damon is only the one speaking the words; he didn't actually write them. Since I am too lazy to research the actual author, lets just say that line alone makes me want to see this movie. In reality since it is coming out on Christmas, I will probably see it some time next year via Netflix. But you know, that's OK because it is still a great line.

When I Grow Up Song

Chloe's Winter Concert

Chloe had a winter concert tonight at school. I took a video of each of the three songs they sang that I will try to post. I can never be sure that the Blogger site will cooperate and load them if the video is longer than a few seconds. Sometimes it takes so long that I give up. I took a few pictures of her though.

Here she is before the concert starts waiting with her class on the mat. It was night time and not at all sunny, but they were suppose to bring sunglasses as a prop for one of the songs.

This is when they were getting all arranged on the risers. She is in the middle with her friends Madeline and Sami on her right (our left).

I LOVE this picture! She is trying to squeeze into her spot for the final song.



And then there was a Pumpkin

The last item from our garden is finally ready to be eaten. Alexa's pumpkin that we had to pick before it was completely orange in order to save it from the frost, is finally ripe.

She thought it need to be dressed up for the picture.

And then Chloe wanted her picture taken with the pumpkin too, but Lexa dove into the background.

So Chloe moved to the couch and I snapped this photo just before Alexa dove into that picture.

And then she asked me to take this picture of her as a tree.

I don't know where it all went wrong I was just trying to document the end of our gardening season. We will let you know how the pumpkin muffins and pumpkin bread turn out though.