We got a digital camera now which means the site will be updated more frequently, we hope. We took some photos of the girls playing in our first snowfall of the season. All the kids from the neighborhood came out to shovel, have snowball fights, and go sledding.

The girls are excited about Hanukkah and will be going to their first ballet, The Nutcracker, this weekend as one of their gifts. Be sure to fight hunger this season by clicking for cans. Campbell's donates a can of soup for each unique click they get!

see december 2003 photos »
see xmas 2003 photos »

Kathy's added some more recipes to the site and there's now a complete chronology of the girl's portraits in the photos section. Of course, there are now new recent photos posted of the girls in the photos section.

Gillie had her birthday party last month at Chuck E. Cheese's. While it's not necessarily a parent's first choice, this was what Gillie wanted. Carly enjoyed the party so much that she's contemplating having her next birthday party there, although I think we'll try to steer her towards the gymnastics academy. You'll also find photos from Halloween. It was freezing out and the girls wore many layers. Gillie borrowed a great cat costume and Carly went as a fairy princess. Around here, though, any day can turn into a day involving costumes!

see november 2003 photos »

We hope you enjoy our re-design. The photo archives have been re-worked to allow for a slide-show format. As always, you can click on any of the photos in the archive to get a full-screen version. The links page has added favorites of which we hope to include Gillie and Carly's favorite links soon. We've changed website hosts and so there should no longer be the annoying ad banners that you might have seen from Geocities. The home page has taken on a diary-style format through which we will archive each update so that we can look back on past entries. Welcome to our improved website!

Gillie and Carly had a great trip to Philly and D.C. They visited Scott's family and friends in Philadelphia and Columbia, MD, and that was just the first 24 hours of the trip! We spent a week in Gaithersburg, MD. They really enjoyed spending a whole week with their cousin Anna Lisa! We visited a neat water park that had pools for people of every size. Kathy went down the water slide and Scott went down the water tube for the first time. We also visited a large public playground that had a giant castle to run around in and a smaller but quite intricate pirate ship to play in. We enjoyed great home-cooked meals and Scott and Kathy even got out to see a movie, Pirates of the Carribbean, which was excellent. Look in the August Photos pages where we've captured all the events for you to enjoy!

Gillie started school last week and was really looking forward to Kindergarten. Even though it's only for half a day, she's always coming home with new details about life at school. It's a slight difference from day care but she loves the proximity to the local playground.

Carly handled her second time on an airplane like an old pro. Her and Gillie each traveled with their own mini Dora-the-Explorer tote bag so that their blankies and favorite stuffed buddies could be at hand at all times. Her most memorable part of the vacation was tasting homemade rainbow sherbet that actually had purple (grape flavor) in it. For Kathy's upcoming birthday, we took a very short, one-night vacation camping at Kohler-Andrae state park about an hour north of where we live. The girls' camping experience was limited to the backyard up until now. They enjoyed running along the "clean" waters of Lake Michigan (clean compared to in Milwaukee) and playing on the playground in the sand dunes at the state park.

Carly was apprehensive about starting pre-school and we feared it would be a rough transition. A week later, she's already told us that she never wants to leave her pre-school to head off to Kindergarten next year. Her pre-school room is more structured than Gillie's ever was. There are rotating responsibilities in the class each day and Carly can't get her words out fast enough at the end of each school day to tell about how she got to be a lunch aide, a leader out to the playground, or the bell-ringer. There's some leftover birthday and block party photos in the August photos section, along with the recent vacation photos.

see august 2003 photos »