New Pictures

And a Happy New Year

 

I know, it’s been forever since I put up a post, right?  I guess I was so intimidated by my Swiper pumpkin that I just didn’t feel like I could top it in any way.  So what has the little angel been up to since the last post?  Really, too much to talk about.  But here’s a brief synopsis:

Pumpkin patch and hayride field trip with her class, and that was followed up with Halloween (she was a cowgirl).  Following Halloween comes Thanksgiving, and her grandparents drove in from Chicago to come be thankful with us.  They weren’t thankful though that their car broke down while they were here and so they had to spend a few extra days hanging out with us.  We really loved having them.

Then we started getting ready for Christmas.  The tree was up, the lights and decorations were all looking lovely and festive.  We went to the Chesapeake Christmas parade and Kasia got to meet Santa.  Then she met him a week later at her schools breakfast with Santa.  She and the other kids put on a show for the adults with songs and costumes (Kasia was dressed as a Christmas tree ornament and sang “I’m a Little Ornament”).   Kasia couldn’t wait until Santa came to visit, and then visit he did.  We had a wonderful Christmas filled with presents, love and family (and bread pudding).  The day after Christmas we got a nice surprise in the form of a blizzard which dumped over a foot of snow on us.  Even more surprisingly was that it was the second big snow storm of our winter.  If this keeps up, I’m going to have to invest in a snow shovel.  So while Christmas wasn’t very white, the day after Christmas was extremely white. 

Then New Years came and went without much fanfare and Kasia went back to school.  Come to think of it, a lot has happened since October.  Kara and I both had grandparents pass away.  My grandfather passed away in early December and her grandmother passed a few days ago.  Both had been suffering for a long time and can now finally rest.

So what’s up next for us?  Well, I go back to school at the end of January.  I’m excited/anxious for that.  Kasia is doing well in school and is learning a lot.  She’s working on learning to write her last name right now, and hopefully by the time she’s a teenager she’ll have it down.

And if you’re wondering if my New Year’s resolution was to update this site more often, it isn’t.  I’d like to say that I will, but chances are I won’t.  But I’ll try to do it more than once every three months.  It’s just that the holidays are so busy.  You understand, right?  But I will try to put up new pictures soon.

Swiper No Swiping!

The whole week before Halloween, Nick Jr. kept showing little "How To" videos on carving creative pumpkins. One of the pumpkins they kept showing was a Swiper pumpkin, and naturally Kasia fell in love with it. So when we got our pumpkins the first thing she wanted to do was to car a Swiper pumpkin, and what with me being the wonderful dad that I am, I did my best to make the Swiper jack-o-lantern of her dreams.
I think that it turned out pretty good.

The Infamous Double Rainbow

It’s rare, but it does happen.  The Double Rainbow is a neat thing to see, and the other day we happened to have one.  I took a quick video of it, with sound effects and everything.  The second rainbow is very faint in the video, but it’s just a little bit above the one that’s easy to see.  And as a bonus, if you wish upon a double rainbow, your wish is guaranteed to come true.  So be prepared to bow down before me as I’m crowned King of the World (eat it James Cameron!).

Sick as a Dog (or a four year old girl)

 

Not everything was great with Kasia’s first field trip.  When she came, she became noticeably ill.  After she took a brief nap (which she never does) it was obvious that something was wrong.  We took her to the doctor that night, and sure enough, she was struck down with the dreaded pink eye.

The whole next week turned in to a slew of other illnesses.  Her pink eye cleared up, but she then caught a cold. That kept her out of school for a few more days, and then she had something else wrong with her.  So again, we went to the doctor, and this time she had an ear infection.  So we got some medicine for that, and that cleared up as well.  Finally.  After a week of being sick, Kasia finally got healthy again.

And then Kara got sick.  And then I got sick.  Eventually, we’re all going to get better and our house will be the very model of health.  Hopefully that will happen sometime before Christmas.

Apple Picking Field Trip

Kasia went on her first ever field trip with her pre-school in September. The whole class went out to Knotts Island to go apple picking. Suffice it to say, Kasia had a great time wandering in between the various apple trees and picking everything and anything that slightly resembled an apple. Kasia was initially going with the philosophy of "quantity over quality." We quickly had to correct this view and had her picking some high quality apples in no time. And pick them she did. We left with a bag over-flowing with apples of all kinds, and despite the fact that Kasia won't eat them, she had a great time picking them. Kara was able to turn the pile of apples in to two very delicious apple pies (which I enjoyed very much).

Kasia's pre-school and her teacher Miss Debbie

After the apple picking was finished, the class then took the ferry back home. We really lucked out in that the weather was absolutely perfect for a field trip and ferry ride. It was sunny, warm (but not too warm), with low humidity. You could not have asked for better weather for being outdoors. Kasia loved the ferry ride almost as much as picking apples. She and her friends were able to run amok around the ferry, and just have a great time.

It was the first of many field trips that she's going to be going on this year, and this one certainly set the bar pretty high.

Hurricane Earl Ruins Our Day

So there's this hurricane churning out in the ocean that is coming our way, and it has completely ruined our day. The schools are closed today, and probably tomorrow, because of this thing, and that means Kasia doesn't have pre-school today. Now, the little girl who was screaming and crying on her first day because she was at school and just wanted to go home was no at home and screaming and crying because she couldn't go to school. Over and over she just kept crying "I WANT TO GO TO SCHOOL TODAY!!!" It's amazing what a few days can do.

Now, instead of doing all the stuff I had planned for the day, I instead have to move all our lovely patio furniture in to the garage so that it doesn't blow away. And the sad part is that we're probably not going to get all that much of a storm anyway. I may be wrong, but this isn't the first storm that they have hyped as being the big one that's going to get us all. A few years ago, tropical storm Hanna was supposed to be the big one. That one ended without it even raining here, and the worst damage I had was a shingle blew off my roof. And I spent that day moving my neighbor's patio furniture because I didn't have any of my own.

So we'll see how it all turns out. It's supposed to be at its closest late tonight. We'll probably get a good breeze and some nice kite flying weather, but I don't anticipate anything bad. The really bad thing is that apparently since the state of North Carolina is in a state of emergency, the sale of alcohol is prohibited. Now how am I going to throw a hurricane party if I can't buy beer and margaritas?