saturday morning

Tim spends his Saturday mornings on the bike. This morning he's on his trainer in the living room, spinning and watching an Ironman video. Maia is riveted watching the video with Daddy. Eliana is riveted watching Daddy. I'm doing our taxes. (Less riveted.) Everyone is content.

valentine creations

Maia and I have been having a little fun getting ready for Valentine's day this week.

We learned how to make a flourless chocolate cake that Tim can enjoy while he's avoiding wheat -- surprisingly decadent, by the way. (Thanks for the tip, Bri!)

And we decided to make Valentines for some of Maia's friends using lots of scrap paper and old supplies from my scrapping box. Though the novelty wore off on her after a while and I ended up finishing them up myself, it was still fun to start these together. Here's a little sampling in case you've got scraps of your own and a little time on your hands tomorrow...














Happy Valentine's!

As a friend of mine wrote on facebook this week, after losing his mom to a difficult illness,

"Life is short... hug someone you love NOW!"

So here comes my virtual hug... O

bathing beauty

I couldn't resist taking a few bathtime pictures of Eliana this week. Those little body parts are so stinkin cute.

ninety one

Today is my grandma's 91st birthday.

Yesterday, we spent part of the afternoon with her to have some tea and cake, go for a little walk and just enjoy being together. Totally worth the drive.

Visiting Grandma in a crowd often makes it difficult for her to hear and converse. And as with each year that is passing, I find she is reverting more often to Dutch (her first language) and I rely more and more on my mom for translation. But yesterday, Grandma was sharper and wittier than I'd seen her in years. She was fully present, speaking a lot in English, even cracking jokes.

(This year we decided not to gather the extended family on one day, but instead to plan for each family to visit her on different weekends. That way we would be less likely to overwhelm her and she could celebrate her birthday for weeks and weeks! Good call.)

Here are a few pics, adding a generation at a time...




Of course, half the fun of being together is watching the little people. It was especially fun to watch Eliana (almost 9 months) and her cousin Gideon (12 months) interact.





I took a couple of videos to capture the various things happening in the room. This one catches the end of her birthday song... it was grandma's idea to start the "How old are you now" verse. I love that.



Happy 91st birthday, Grandma.

january getaway

It seems it has become a family tradition to get away for a mini winter holiday as a family in January. Anyone who knows me well knows that enjoying winter can be somewhat of a chore for me, so a holiday that embraces the season by including some snowshoeing in a peaceful forest is a good thing. (And we had one glorious afternoon with soft falling snow that even included a lengthy fox sighting. Very memorable.) While being out in a winter wonderland is great, so is spending a little time indoors somewhere warm and balmy. Somewhere that helps shake the belief that we're stuck in Narnia for the hundred-year winter! A couple of hours at Bird Kingdom in Niagara Falls was, well... not balmy... but green at least. The cacophony of the birds gave a hint of warmer weather too. At the very least, the girls loved it.




















Maia was rather hilarious to watch, as she is capable of both stalking a bird and being freaked out by the thought of it approaching her. But those moments are rare. She seems to have gained her dad's capacity for watching a creature up close or even touching it without having any fear of it -- lots of caution, but usually no fear.



They have a reptile section with snakes, frogs and turtles too. She pet a boa constrictor and a number of turtles. Here she and her dad are carrying on a one-sided conversation with an amphibian while checking out the feel of his skin.


I seem to recall she was very compassionately asking if it was lonely without its friends nearby.



We actually visited Bird Kingdom last year -- almost a full year ago. Here I was then:



I stood in about the same spot and asked Tim to take another photo of me a year later. Can you detect the slight change in the more recent photo? :)


We haven't had a family photo taken in a while, so I set one up with a timer. It's hard to believe how big Eliana is until I see her in a family photo for some perspective.


The laughter of these two girls is still the best sound of my life.

la tienda

Some of you know that our Clinton church family supports a young Canadian woman who now lives mainly in the Dominican Republic. Rachel Sticklee is devoting her life to working with a group of Haitian refugees who live in the DR. She has started an art co-op called LaTienda and has taught this group of about 20 women how to make beautiful jewelry and other art items so that they may sell it in order to support themselves and their families without resorting to prostitution or rummaging through garbage for food. Her ministry has had a profound effect on the lives of these women.

Over the Christmas holidays there was a murder in the village where Rachel works. As a result, the Haitians have all been displaced and most are in hiding as life is very unsafe there right now. Therefore, the future of the co-op is uncertain. (You can visit Rachel’s blog for a more detailed account of the situation.)

During this time, the women are producing red hemp bracelets in order to raise funds and keep the co-op from “going in the red”. If you feel compelled to help this mission, please let me know and I will order you a bracelet ($11 each). There is also a wide selection of other jewelry made by these ladies, if you’d like to help in a larger way. It's gorgeous stuff, and makes for a great gift -- for any woman in your life and for the women that Rachel supports. Just pop me an email if you'd like to order any, or would like to know more.