today's chilly weather is about as close as we are gonna get in south florida to a snow day.  i feel some hot cocoa commin' on. hope you all are nice and toasty wherever you may be.

thanksgiving weekend part 3 (gone to the dogs)

yeah, yeah, yeah,  i know.  it's a bit late. this thing has been sitting in my drafts for a week.  so here it is. 

the last day of our grand celebration we all, minus mauricio's brother, went for a walk with ALL the dogs!  including my in-law's dogs.  that makes 7!  i had to take my camera along to capture that parade. 

celena modeling the latest in workout gear. 

celena wanted a picture with all our dogs.  let's just say, cesar milan mauricio is not. it actually looks like he is trying to take a ride. whoa there! cowboy!

thanksgiving weekend part 2 (cityplace)

the day after thanksgiving we all had a great day. went to the track in the morning and cityplace in the afternoon/evening. we saw "a christmas carol" at the imax. it was a bit intense for gracie and she was a bit intense for me. in my opinion, it was an "ok" movie. but the company was great.after the movie we sauntered around cityplace a bit. there was a ballet group performing the nutcracker, so we watched for a little while. savannah had the best seat in the house.

tell me she's not the cauuutest!we did a little window shopping and wandered into a really fab store: restoration hardware. do you think they would mind if i just sat in their big comfy couches all day with my laptop? seriously, i want to live there! do you see what i mean?then we went into all the overpriced, but fun, boutiques and i think we may have made a few of the sales ladies annoyed and a bit nervous. but we just ignored them. tell me this girl isn't tres chic!and this one is totally hip. and this clock is way fun. it has a bell tower to go with. love it!love it even more at night.merry christmas!

thanksgiving weekend bash (part one)

i hope your thanksgiving didn't look like this. we had a fantastic thanksgiving weekend! mauricio's parents and brother came up from miami and one of his sisters came out from utah. everyone gathered at our house for the big feast. we fired up the pool heater so we could swim, we watched A TON of movies, did crafts, went to city place, went walking and ate LOTS of food. a good time was had by all.

aunt celena brought a fun kit to make christmas ornaments. the girls adore their aunt celena.

sarah the cover girl.

one little, two little, three little indians

every year at the girls' elementary school they have a kindergarten indian pow-wow. this year it was gracie's turn. they make a vest and head bands and practice their thanksgiving songs to perform for the parents.

since i am all about being lazy time efficiency, we used savannah's from three years ago. (that she also used in preschool. dang! i should be a poster child for a reusing campaign.) we did add a few more "indian" drawings and her hand print. it was very cute and they were adorable as always.

rock star indian.

all hail the honor student

this was sarah's 1st, and hopefully not last, honor roll assembly for middle school. this is her first one ever for that matter. they don't do them in our elementary school here. (whatever!)

anyhoo, the story behind this is that she set a goal to make straight a's this quarter. the week of finals she had almost all a's except a few b's in a couple of classes. of course she was sick finals week and had to really hussle to get those last few assignments done to bring up her grades. she did bring up 2 out of the 3 b's, but we wouldn't know for sure with math until she made up the final she missed while out sick. so she takes the test and totally aces it! yahoo!

to get an a you have to have 89.5% or above. guess what she ended up with?????? 89.3%!!!! are you kidding me????? i asked her if she asked her teacher for a quick extra credit. no! hopefully she will be more aggressive with that next time if she needs to be.

we are proud of her nonetheless. keep your fingers crossed for this quarter. so far, so good.

as you can see she really likes being in front of large audiences. the nerdettes.

an evening at the beach

one evening after dropping mauricio's mom at the train station we decided to take a detour and ended up at the beach. it was a perfect evening. i LOVE the beach when it's chilly and windy. believe it or not though, there were some people actually IN the water. crazy tourists!

not as big as the ones in california but still beautiful.

gazing at the waves is always a breathtaking experience no matter how young or old you are.

nothing like a girl and her dog.

the wedding of the century

dum-dum-de-dum!

in the kindergarten this year there was a wedding. yes, i said a wedding in kindergarten. it was to bind forever in holy matrimony the letters q & u. it was adorable. all of kindergarten attended in their best attire and since one of gracie's teachers was in charge of it, her class was able to participate. gracie was one of the bridesmaids! isn't that a hoot?

here is the principal presiding over the ceremony.

there was even a wedding cake!

everyone had to bring a "gift" for show & tell that started with "qu". gracie brought a "quillow". if you don't know what that is please try to figure it out by the context clues and picture.

here she is with just a few members of her posse at the "reception".

one of the top ten reasons why south florida is sooo grand

i took the little girls to the park one day during the 2 hours we have between school dismissal times and lookie what we saw. these were taken in mid-november. south florida does have it's perks. (you know, besides fabulous winter weather and me lounging by the pool all day sipping on dr. pepper.)