Mia's Top 10

1

 I try to bask in the rare still and lady-like moments we catch of Mia... 

 

 ...because this chickadee is a mover and a shaker in every sense 

(we to appreciate the moving and shaking too)!

2

Here she is moving and shaking on the make-shift bungee swing 

Dad made her out of Gma's exercise bands:

3

Dad is also proud that his girl is NOT a fair-weather athlete.  

Mia would take her daily cruise in our sub-freezing whether with nothing more than her birthday suit 

if mom didn't always cramp her style.

4

Moving and shaking while trying to be helpful:

5

Some more moving...

 6

Some more shaking (or "shimmying," to be exact)...

7

...and a little something more to go with that shake!

8

Lately, Mia finds it comical to escape and hide when I'm not looking. She knows that one of my pet peeves is  retrieving her from the glories of Gma's kitchen just beyond the door at the top of the stairs back to our basement abode.  Thus, when Mia decides that the ennui of Mom's routine needs to be spiced up a bit, she will make a break for it! Today she must have noticed her tactics becoming stale because when I went to steal her from the usual pre-freedom perch (see the photo below), 

I found her, instead, crouched sneakily behind the dryer in our laundry room. 

9

Casually putting Beyonce to shame...

10

My favorite milestone this month:

mastering the toilet.  Hooray!

Holiday Season, Part Two

Mia and cousin Talan jollifully celebrating by Great-Gma R's fire on Christmas 'Eve:

Loves for Mia's sweet Great-Gma R who is so ahead of the gift-giving game that present opening is just as much a surprise to her as it is to her recipients. 

Her Christmas shopping is usually done before March and all is wrapped by Easter! 

The usual excitement of Christmas morning was deflated a bit this year. 

We had so wanted to be in our new house for the holidays (moving day, by the way, will officially occur this week instead) and even worse, Mia woke up feeling crummy. 

It literally took us a valuable hour (the church hour was fast approaching) to convince her to open her stocking...let alone open a present.  She just wanted to go back to bed!

Once she had tasted a few of her stocking goodies however, she had picked up a little steam:

            Having Christmas on a Sunday was really quite nice.  Our ward is blessed with tons of musical talent...particularly a harpist, so our meeting was perfectly ethereal. 

It was also a bitter-sweet ending to six years of attending this ward (well, a life-time of attendance for David...six years for me).  We will miss seeing both the temple and Gma K sitting next to us each Sunday.

For a touch of nostalgia, Mia wore the Christmas dress my mom had made for me when I was her age (complete with giant white collar) but topped it off with a most appropriate new Christmas coat.

Post-church celebrations with our fun R family:  Mia was so pleased with her new purple tutu.

We got to celebrate with Gma K and my siblings the following day.  

Mia was feeling much more seasonable after a long, sound sleep.

Gma K made Mia a night gown that, along with her purple tutu, 

has been the most key piece in her wardrobe these past two weeks.

Holiday Season, Part One

Let's start with the annual traditions...  

gingerbread-house-making at Gma K's

(my brother is missing, but we get the added bonus of extra special friends!):

Mia and Dad took their                            Me, our sweet Su, and our respective g.b. houses:
decorating very seriously:

Next tradition...

non-Relief Society craft day with R girls:

Our results were reminiscent of Cinderella, because, with Su as the exception,

 not one of the felt slippers we each made fit our chubby feet!

 Trimming the tree:

Our Santa experiences get better by a few degrees each year.  

No wailing like last time...just a little apprehension.

 (This guy also had a genuine Santa beard. Surely that helps!).

 Mia has entered the glamour phase.  

She anxiously awaits Sunday dress-up time and I revel in her photo-shoot cooperation!

I finally made a stocking for Mia.  Up to this point, overflowing stockings from grandmas have sufficed.

Here I am singing my heart out at our stake Christmas production/extravaganza.  This program was intense!

 And one of the more awkward moments of our lives...posing in a live nativity for the same production 

(live, that is, except for the red-headed doll I was holding.  We were, obviously, aiming for authenticity).

My sister, Arianna, is at13 years old one of the youngest members of our city's Youth Symphony.  They are incredible so I thought it was a good idea to record some of their Carol of the Bells...until my Mom gestured to me that filming is not allowed.  Therefore, the song abruptly ends just as it's getting good!

Mia's Top 10

1

Maple Leaf Rag:

2

Showing her sweet Great-Gma R how to get her groove on.  We all could use a few tips from Mia.  

She knows how to dance and can effortlessly move in ways that I can't even dream up

It is obviously an inherent gift.

3

Some more dancing-  a variation on tap:

4

Whipping up some "Reduced Guilt" brownies from TJ's:  

Mia is a fabulous kitchen helper.

5

She is rather possessive of her grandpa.  

When cousins get within a certain proximity,  Mia gets ready to stake out territory.

6

On the very day she was scheduled for her flu shot,  Mia woke up with a fever, wouldn't eat, and just wanted to be still-- an oddity because she has an immune system of steel, can always eat, is ON the move at all times, but most of all, because the illness lasted for approximately 4 hours.  The moment Dad walked in the door from work, Mia shed her resting apparatus and was ready for dinner.  

It was strange.  What type of illness does this?  

And I have to admit-as crummy as it feels to watch one's baby suffer through sickness, 

I was in raptures over her snuggliness. 

7

Mia likes her Dad.

8

Dancing again:

9

Mia gets so much hair time of her own that she is quick to dish it out.  

She usually implores, very sweetly, "Mommy, I will fix you, okaaay?" 

10

Izzy spends most of her time lately as a surprisingly tolerant body pillow.

Giving of Thanks, 2011

We all know that to express gratitude for the relationships 

& cushy blessings we have is usually a giant understatement, 

so I will let it just continue to be obvious that I have the BEST family in the world and I'm glad.  

I like where I live, what I know, what I have, what I've learned, it's nice to be healthy.  

Really, I'm grateful for these things every day, so is it okay that on Thanksgiving, although I revel in the former, for me it's all about...

...the food?

I collect recipes weeks in advance and dream about them all the while feeling especially grateful for access to a huge variety of relatively inexpensive ingredients.

Here is our traditional spread at Gma K's-  the 1/3 times a year the china & silver are put to work 

(do people still put these things on their wedding registries?  

It is a treat to eat off of fancy dinnerware, but incredibly useless the rest of the time):

 Variation on sides this year (in addition to the usual...):

Curried Brussels Sprouts       Coriander Cauliflower                 Sweet Potatoes in a Buttery-Lime Syrup

 

This is my favorite cranberry relish (with green apple and orange). 

We have it every year, but I never get sick of looking at it:

The regular pies were around, but my mom makes the best trifle and it tops them all!

(She always does everything from scratch, including the butterscotch pudding 

which I am certain would include a dollop of scrambled eggs if I made it myself)-

This one:  Gingerbread & Pumpkin Creme!

One (type of) Graduation Down...A Lot More to Go

Last night was David's graduation from Fire Academy, something he's been doing in a volunteer capacity during all his spare time lately.  He loves it, so it has been worth the sacrifice of having him away and super busy to see how excited he gets about this stuff (And how could he not?  Cutting apart cars with really powerful tools, playing with fire, squirting stuff with giant hoses, oh...and saving people's lives...  it's like a bunch of little boys on steroids). 

Dad got to show off his engine to Mia.  She was pretty excited about an up-close-and-personal fire truck!   

Here is the big solemn fire-fighting oath-taking moment:

...and here is further evidence of my "little boy in grown-up body" theory: