Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Updates

Long time no update! A lot has been going on around here. The girls had their 4th birthday back in February but the day of their party also brought hardships to our family: Shawn was hospitalized later that evening. Things have yet to get back to normal as he continues to search for the best treatment program for his needs but the girls have been amazing troopers through it all. We see Abba every chance we get and fortunately lately that has been a more frequent occurrence. But the girls and I have been doing quite well (as you can tell from the pictures and videos from the last four months).

They had their second haircut a few weeks ago, Eliana ending up with an adorable bob that is slightly longer in the front than in the back and Bracha's hair is still as long as ever, just with a couple inches fewer of split ends. As you can probably tell from the pics, she gets two pigtails every morning. Keeps the lice away, tfu tfu tfu. Every Sunday lick clockwork we go to English story time after gan, hitting up the nearby library as well. I thought a little variety in bedtime stories would offer a nice changce from the same stories we read for years. Boy was I wrong. We must have checked out Camilla's New Hairdo, Goldie Locks Has Chicken Pox, and The Gruffalo's Child more than all the other kids who have every checked out any of them, combined! Eliana even knows the first two by heart, which I must admit is kinda nice since the other day I fell asleep in the middle of 'reading them their bedtime story' which I fortunately didn't even have to read at all. But it's gotten to the point where it completely defeats the purpose or borrowing library books to discover new stories and I've had to implement a new rule: at least half of all books checked out must be new (to us). May this be our biggest problem in life!!!

The girls love cooking and baking with me which brings me back to my own childhood memories of baking with my father. Of course, the times have changed so my four-year-olds know how to roll sushi, a food I never ate before I was nearly 20. In fact, here is Eliana helping me bake the chewy chocolate chip peanut butter bars we made for Savta's surprise 70th birthday party:

And here they are, along with their cousin, Reuben (via Skype) at the party:

That's it for now. I will try to upload some videos in the next few days. Let me leave you with two final scrumptious pictures of my not-so babies...with ice-cream punims (strike a pose!) and pretzels:

Even more pictures

Shavuot's Har Sinai cake

One day watching tv...

Ima made us pretty earings!