Fashion Friday!

It's been a while since I have posted any of the outfits that Madeline has put together, so on this glorious day off (which for some gosh awful reason had me up and awake at 4:30am when I could be sleeping in late) I thought I'd add a little something to the fashionista world.

Yes, she does pose. Yes, she does it with attitude.


I still don't understand why she thinks this matches.

I also noticed that these pictures were all taken as we were heading out the door somewhere - so yes, we do go out in public like this! It is amazing the big smiles you get from people when they see a little girl just excited and loving (or oblivious!) to what she's wearing.

Celebrating over the weekend...

恭禧发财 - Gong Xi Fa Cai - wishing you to be prosperous in the coming year

Saturday we spent a good 7 hours at the CACC. We signed up to help set up for the New Year Celebration, so Ron was moving tables, chairs, setting things up while I helped decorate and setting the tables until it was time for Madeline to practice with the dance troop for the performance that night.

There were 14 different performances on the schedule, the children's dance troop were to perform 4 different dances. Madeline was in one of them - the swallow dance.

Here is Madeline getting ready for the big show! Her shirt says it all...She's full of sugar but can turn on the spice in a heartbeat =)

Here she is in her costume, yes that frilly pink feathers on her wings was my homework assignment that happily I finished in time *grin*

They practiced and practiced and even did a dress rehearsal in one of the classrooms before going onstage.

In the end they did a great job. Bill filmed and took pictures...I'll post the link to the dances when he loads them online for the grandparents to check out. I spent the majority of the time back stage helping herd 4-8 yr olds and organizing costumes, flower balls, etc. I didn't see all of the performances either & we missed the Lion dance which kicked off the evening. Madeline was not amused, she was sooo looking forward to seeing it.

Sunday we went to the Delaware Art Museum.

Beautiful glass in the main entrance windows! It was a celebration for the Chinese New Year done in partnership with Chinese School.

In class the kids had made art projects which were on display at the Museum. Madeline, who remember, wants to be an artist, was very excited to see the lantern she made hanging in an art museum!

Art from the kids in the class were hung around several areas while there were other activities going on, such as having your name written in Chinese calligraphy.

Lots of craft areas, and a shadow puppet show titled "Tiger Tales"...

learning how to play with a chinese yo-yo (Madeline was better at it than Ron!)

Madeline was happy to finally see the Lion dance - my favorite!

新年快乐 - Xin Nian Kuai Le - Happy New Year

This coming week we have 2 more dance performances at different places around the town plus gymnastics. It's going to be a busy week again, and more snow is forecast for tonight!

I Heart Faces: Dancing Challenge

I Heart Faces Challenge this week is dancing...so here is a picture taken at the MD Renaissance Faire this past fall.

Xin Nian Kuai Le - Happy Year of the Tiger

Had a lovely day celebrating - part 2 is tomorrow, don't worry, there will be pictures, but in the mean time...

From our family to yours, wishing you Xin Nian Kuai Le

38.2 inches...

That's the official amount of snow that came down where we lived...yes it's combined between the 2 blizzards in less than a week. The first one was 25.4 inches was all light powdery stuff - which was great and very easy to shovel. The second one was 12.8 inches of heavy wet snow which was very hard to shovel and also resulted in us losing power for about 12 hours.


We shoveled the snow multiple times, played Princess of the mountain - not King of the mountain, well, because Madeline is a Princess and most definitely not a boy so it can't be King - or so I was told. We practiced throwing snow balls and kept warm as best as possible because, without electricity... we had no heat! All 3 of us ended up piling into one big bed around 6:30 all in our pjs with tons of blankets on us playing word games in the dark until around 8 when we decided it was time to try and get some sleep.


The power actually came back on and stayed on around 11:30 last night so now our pellet stove is working but we're still having issues with our regular heat - Ron gets to figure that one out.


There are several cars just stopped on the road as I look out our window which means they got stuck trying to get out and are now abandoned making any plowing that hopefully will take place sometime today difficult to say the least.

But I know we'll be having some fun outside shoveling yet again =) And did I read that there may be snow again on Monday?!?

Snow-pocalypse?

Well, the record breaking Mid-Atlantic storm hit...we got a good amount of snow, probably around 2 feet when you don't take into account the drifting from all of the wind (then, in some places it would be 3.5 ft or more!) We spent a bit of time shoveling the driveway (a couple of times) and Madeline had a blast playing in the snow in her brand new snow pants. It's amazing how well they work in keeping you warm! Next is to try and find actual snow gloves that fit her tiny hands...her gloves just didn't cut it.

There was quite a bit of climbing around in the snow and only one attempt at a snow angel as she said that the snow was too deep.

But it wasn't too deep for her to pretend to be "swimming"

I think you can tell by the look on her face that she was having a lot of fun.

Throwing snow balls was also a fun pass time...they started out small, but...

soon they were almost as big as she is. Thankfully Daddy was the primary target =)

Photo of the back patio around mid-day...note the snow against the fence in the back.

This whole snow thing would be much more enjoyable if I didn't have to think about how to get to DC tomorrow for work - looks like I won't be able to get there until Monday sometime...