A story about barrettes...

One of our wonderful friends, Chevy, spent the better part of an evening telling AnaSofia her hair was "BEAUTIFUL!" as she was pulling it all on top of AnaSofia's head in a little ponytail. AnaSofia is now in LOVE with barettes and anyone that looks like Chevy (we have twice been out and she will yell "Chevy! Chevy!" to random strangers - if they ignore her, she will try to engage them by fluffing her hair and saying "beu ful"). Soren and I alternate between being horrified she is already playing with her hair/worrying about beauty and feeling bad for her when strangers ignore her (how hard is it to smile at kids? I mean come on!). Regardless, it has made it much easier to convince her all her lovely barrettes from FarMor are not as scary as she once thought (and much needed to hold back her flop of stick straight angel hair!). So THANK YOU Chevy!

AnaSofia's half birthday...

Can't help but celebrate the 18 month milestone, especially when FarMor and FarFar are here! We all went out "geocaching" to find a small box in a hidden, significant place using GPS. Has anyone else heard of this? It is a huge phenomenon all around the world where people treasure hunt for these boxes in hard to find places. Kind of neat and I can see AnaSofia LOVING it when she is a bit older. Later we had cake and ice cream and looked at photos from Africa where Soren's oldest sister lives. It was a special day! In the last photo, she is saying "Cheers!" in Danish to her FarFar, we are now doing that OFTEN at meals...

Danish Celebration!

We crammed as many people into our house as possible this weekend. AnaSofia's birthday (exactly six months ago!) was 25 people OUTSIDE and we managed to fit 23 people INSIDE for a traditional Danish Christmas lunch. It was SO GREAT to see all our friends, share Soren's parents with them and watch the kids go crazy together. We started at 2:30 and were partying well after midnight. It was a day to be remembered for a long time! We are so grateful for Soren's Mom and Dad and all their cooking and good cheer!

The Danish have arrived!

Soren's parents (AnaSofia's FarFar and FarMor)have arrived. We are VERY excited for the next two weeks!!! Wishing you all a blissful New Year! I feel that 2008 is going to be a fantastic year for us all!

La Nina winter!

We are getting pounded here with snow! Our snowblower broke down weeks ago and it is quite the drama trying to get it going again so we have been shoveling snow like crazy to keep up with the storms. Our driveway and paths keep getting smaller and smaller. We woke up after a snowy night to the front door in snow right up to the window! I LOVE it because it is so beautiful, warm, lots to do outside and mostly sunny. It is always a bummer to me when it is a COLD winter with little snow. AnaSofia and I have been out and about to the neighbors delivering homemade bread (no I am not that ambitious, a long story about a recipe from Trish that had 10 c of flour listed twice and I thought, oh I just wrote it twice... no, really was 20 c of flour, which equals a hell of a lot of bread!). AnaSofia enjoys the visits because I take her down the side of the road on her sled which she LOVES and neighbors tend to have candy canes and other unauthorized treats to bribe her into letting them hold her! We have been also been out with the backpack and snowshoes to check out the pond - looks like we aren't the only ones! There were 7 deer out back one morning!

Christmas!

It's been awhile! AnaSofia and I went to NY for a LONG time this year. It was so fantastic to spend so much time with my parents, catch up with old friends I haven't seen in ages but still have a huge connection with and to just relax and enjoy the anticipation of Christmas. My sister's family arrived on the 23rd and Thomas (almost 3) and AnaSofia had a BLAST together. They slept on different schedules, ate at different times (of course, ha ha!) but played together so well that I realize what a shame it is that they cannot see each other everyday. Soren rolled into town last, (which means he got last dibs on sleeping quarters!) and we all had a sweet, special Christmas together. It was a once in a lifetime trip. SO MANY fun photos but I tried to limit it to just a few, I added some more to AnaSofia's album as she is quite the model and loves to pose so we have a few really cute ones. Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday too, you were in our thoughts!