Happy Halloween 2015

Family Portraits

I love seeing the differences in the styles of the drawings my girls made.

This is Ellie's portrait of our family in Paris, including her imaginary pet unicorn (apparently she doesn't really exist, but Ellie wishes she did). I love the absolute perfection of everyone in the image. We are all in our places. We look happy, don't you think?

This is Addie's portrait of our family. Notice the life that she has given us! Can't you just feel our personalities? Daddy is dancing and singing to the music and the girls even have their arms around each other. If you ask me, it looks like the mommy in this picture couldn't be any happier.

What do you think of the differences in styles? Are they as apparent to you as they are to me?

Ellie's Drawings

Ellie's drawings still make me smile.

She knows how to make Mommie's day with thoughtful drawings representing the bond she has with her sister.  Doesn't that just melt your heart?

She has also started to draw silly photos to make us laugh.  You have to admit, you couldn't help but smile.

Wordless Wednesday

Addie's Drawings

I have to say that I'm always so impressed with Addie's drawings.  She always seems to choose to include a level of detail, character and life that far exceeds anything that even Ellie draws at age 8.  Below is a sample of artwork Addie has blessed us with in the recent couple of months.

Aspen tree in the fall, with a heart.  This was presented to me because she knew how much the autumn leaves make me think of her.

Our recent camping trip.  Notice how she included lots of stars and even shooting stars.  At the bottom, you can see our car, tents and happy camper people.

Kindergarten self portrait.  I love the details in her dress and shoes.  It matches her outfit nearly perfectly!

Sunflowers, only notice how one is even drawn from the side.  Seriously?  Is this girl really just in Kindergarten?

Night time lights.  Remember my recent post about her connection with Vincent Van Gogh and his love for the colors that the night brings with it?  Well, here is her version of Starry Night.  I love the building to the left, the stars in the sky and the city lights to the bottom right.  I know a good parent isn't supposed to compare her children, but Ellie has never drawn anything close to this level of abstraction.

The Cheese Importers.  This is one of our happy places to go to.  Look closely and you see the building's front door, windows and cafe bistro tables.  It makes me happy just looking at it.

101 dalmatians, including some sitting on the couch, and on the bed.  She did make it a point to tell me that there aren't really 101 dalmatians in the photo but she ran out of space and time to draw all the others.  She said we can just pretend that they're there, only they're off to the side of the paper.

Shame on me

It's been two months since I've written anything on my blog.  Shame on me!

Interesting observation, though - Life is good.

How is that an observation?  There was a time, not too long ago, that silence on my blog meant I was going through a difficult parenting time.  But not this time.

Life is good.  Parenting is good.

My girls are becoming people I sincerely love spending time with.  My little family of 4 are closer than ever and I believe that none of us really take it for granted.  Ellie & Addie both comment on how much they love their family and love their lives.  They say there isn't anything they would rather do than spend time with family.  Even more so than with friends.

I think that I'm not writing as much because in a lot of ways the girls have passed the stages in their childhood when they say funny things.  Oh, we laugh a lot, but most of the time it's about silliness that can't really be described in words.  There's fewer vocabulary mess-ups or innocent comments that seem inappropriate to adults.  There's fewer moments of "kids say the darn-est things."

I'm sincerely in love with my life.  I keep expecting today to be the day when things get turned around.  Surely one of these days Ellie is going to become a true tween-ager who starts to question whether or not her parents are as cool as they think they are.  One of these days the girls are going to stop getting along and realize that little sisters are annoying and big sisters are bossy.  One of these days Michael and I are going to find ourselves wondering what to do with our time because our daughters won't want to spend it with us.

But maybe, with a little bit of luck... we'll manage to skip that stage because right now we're building our relationships to be something special.  Maybe, just maybe...

A perfectly perfect day