Christmas pictures

Just a few pictures from Christmas. Elise had a great time hanging out with her Pepe, making cookies and mulled spiced cider and opening up lots of cool presents. We made a yummy lobster pot pie for dinner on Christmas eve. Hope everyone had a nice holiday!

Merry Christmas

Holly just discovered that batman cannot fly. I always thought he could. Mike laughs at me about this but I think Spiderman is way better. All Batman is is a rich guy who buys things that give him the illusion of flying. No powers. Boo.

Merry Christmas!! pictures to come...

Early Christmas

Grandparents...they always find a way to one up you. An innocent trip around the neighborhood and we came home with this:

Oh come on...

These are the questions that have been pouring from the mouth of our three year old:

"Will Santa get burned in the fireplace when he comes down the chimney?"

"Can I go to the north pole to see Santa's house?" [no Elise] "but on the map I saw it's part of the earth so I know I can go there."

"What would happen if I saw Santa? Would he not be magic anymore?"

"Why do all the Santas look different?"

"Reindeer can't fly, that's silly."

"If Santa can see me all the time then is that like God?"

Ugg. Come on man, we thought we had a few more years of lying before this.

Cringe worthy anecdote-today Elise had her fingers in her nose, took out a prize, looked at it, said "wait." put it back in her nose and said "I don't want to be one those kids who picks their nose."

priceless.

Elise's First Christmas pageant

Tonight we celebrated both mom's birthday and Elise's first Christmas pageant-the first of many, I'm sure. It was such a heartwarming show and of course I got teary-eyed. She was just beautiful as an angel and did such a fantastic job singing and being part of the play. It was kind of a shocker-we figured she would be running around, being silly and causing mischief but she really held it together. It's hard to tell which one is Elise because while Mike was on video camera I had my little non-zooming camera. She is top row, last one to your right:

show and tell

I donate a considerable amount of time to Elise's classroom-between volunteering on busy days, helping with the school's big fundraiser, mystery reader, cooking helper-you name it. I'm one credit short of a room mother and as I have been participating in these events I can see how much effort so many of the parents put into their child's preschool experience. Let me say this is definitely not a "drop and run" school. There are also very few nannies-the parents are hands-on..even the celebrities.

The point of my ramble is I do my best to bring something to the

table..most often it's my time. Other parents do other things. Some donate an entire art room, some some donate an entire playground. Today, for a special kind of show and tell treat, the father of one of Elise's classmates flew his family's private helicopter to the school and landed it in the parking lot so all the kids could have a look. He, unquestionably, takes the cake for best parent involvement-at least in the eyes of the 3 and 4 year olds. I wish I could have taken pictures but I was busy helping to keep track of 19 kids.

The moral of the story is this, You do what you can and be the best you can be, but there will always be someone with a helicopter.

and there was a firetruck there too...

Angel-ironic?

Elise's costume for her Christmas pageant came today and it's so precious. We tried it on to make sure it was the right size and I had to take a picture. The pageant is next Thursday and I made sure to store the costume safely away (out of her reach) or we would have a house filled with feathers. I ordered it from Chasing Fireflies-a favorite online store of mine:

Whoa

I think I just figured out the movie Mulholland Drive. It has only taken me 20 viewings and 8 years to do so...Oh, what vivid dreams will bring to a gal when she's sleeping.

Did you eat a big meal or...?

Nice face Elise:

In case you have been living under a rock, I'm with child. Male child-more specifically. I am just about half-way through the pregnancy and today I reached a milestone that I knew would come eventually..maternity clothes. For the past few months I have been able to get away with my regular jeans (lately with the help of the Belly Band-what a godsend) and leggings. This is primarily because I am carrying higher and I did not gain any weight (in fact, lost) during first trimester due to really bad morning, afternoon and night sickness. For all of those I complained to incessantly, I apologize profusely. I am much better now:-)

Anyway, I digress. Today, with the help of the band, I attempted in vain to zip up my favorite designer jeans and nothing. I then proceeded to do my daily exercise routine and tried again later. Still nothing. I had to pull out the box labeled "maternity clothes" and rummage through them. Most of the pants still look ridiculous and too big but they are much more comfortable than my other ones.

We took a few pictures for our Christmas card (which was a tedious and mostly unsuccessful ordeal) and it's hard to tell in the shot but you can see the belly starting to make it's presence:-)

Oh Christmas Tree!

Behold our woodland tree:

It's a hedgehog wonderland! Those jerks at Pottery Barn may have thought they were onto something but the woodland animal tree was Holly's creation long before they ever advertised it. Yes, I always have beef with Pottery Barn, doesn't everyone? Also, our living room now does look eerily similar to the one in Baltimore as people have pointed out...

Elise is fired up for Christmas. Every day she gets to open an advent calendar door and to her, it's like a small miracle. It was for mom too when she was little!

Happy Holidays!

take note

Mike so lovingly just informed me that I included the picture with our sad looking gravy boat (yes, it's a measuring cup) in the previous post. Someone please buy the Froehlers a gravy boat for Christmas...

Daddy Spochen!

Last weekend we celebrated Mike's German heritage by making a traditional (to his family) German dinner. The recipe for spochens, which are a variant on potato dumplings, has been passed down for generations in Mike's family. It's a somewhat lengthy production and involves shredding potatoes, straining them through cheesecloth, rolling them into balls and boiling them. Personally and much to Mike's chagrin, I think they are rather bland but I'm not much into German food-all that meat and potato is just too much for me. Elise enjoyed helping him and "bonding" over the German heritage.

We ate them with gravy and a big yucky looking German sausage

Memories

Mike took this picture before we left Baltimore so we could have a reminder of what we were leaving behind..ah, the good old days!