Four years together as a family!

I can't believe that it's already been four years and yet it feels like we've always been together.  To celebrate, we finally got to go up the Space Needle.  Every time Esther sees it, she wants to go to the top so we finally obliged.  We had brunch at the restaurant while it slowly rotated.  Esther kept trying to lean against the wall only to have it move on her.

Checking out the windy city.  Esther said it looked just like a map.

I love this picture of Gene.

We headed back inside out of the wind when, what to our wondering eyes should appear, but Space Santa and his rocket ship.  After getting a photo snapped with the Big Guy, we headed down to the gift shop.  They had tons of robot stuff...and Esther got some of it.  We had a good day.

'Tis the Season

I thought this year might be the year we could actually stop worrying about our Christmas tree being knocked over and ornaments being shattered.  Now that our cat is too old to care, and Esther is old enough to know better, I thought finally our tree would be able to have ornaments at the bottom and not look naked from the waist down.  But alas...not with our one-year old pup around.  Luckily, I realized my folly before we purchased a tree and before any ornaments were mauled.  We opted for a little 3-foot tree that could sit on a table... & Esther was fine with finding an "Ollie-sized tree".  Gene was overjoyed when "tying down the tree" this year meant opening up the trunk and throwing the little bugger in.  I'm happy to report that no ornaments have been harmed as of this post...and the tree looks almost as pretty as a big tree would have.

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This way, Esther can enjoy the tree and eat cereal at the same time.  Win-win.

Here's the pup in question, enjoying the snow.

This month, Esther's preschool got to go to "Creation Station", which is an art/play/recycled materials studio. They have lots of crazy stuff the kids get to use to make whatever they can dream up (from tubing, foam pieces, medical supplies (non hazardous), old computer stuff, Cd's, wine labels, you-name-it).

Can you guess where we are planning to have E's fifth birthday party?

A random and cute picture.