Riley's High Speed Skate

Riley's Skating Super Status

Turn on your volume and listen to what Daddy has to say on this video!

Her First "Report Card" - She Passed!

Riley had her last skating class of session one, level one last night. We have really liked her teacher, Miss Megan, and hopefull the teacher at level 2 is just as nice, because Riley passed! Honestly, Josh and I both thought she would have to take level 1 again before she made it to level 2, because this is not uncommon in early skating, but she rocked the ice last night and did a great job! I'll post video in a bit too. She has made a lot of progress since her Nov. 16th debut. Go back and check it out on the Hockey 101 tabs to the right:)

P.S. Josh was really annoyed with me for this tope picture. I tied a jingle bell to Riley's skate and you could hear it all the way at the top of the bleachers:) Hey, it's the week before Christmas!

Holidazzle - Part 2

Top to bottom:
Santa sits on his lighted reindeer float
Snowflakes have been in the parade forever. I secretly want to be one someday!
Captain Hook (no Tinkerbell on this float...weird!)
City Bus (not sure the purpose of this one, but it's one of the best lit floats

Holidazzle - Part 1

Here's some of the highlights of the Holidazzle Parade in Downtown Minneapolis, for those of you out-of-towners:)

Top to bottom:
"String" of holiday lights (this is an updated version but some form of these lights have been in the parade a long time!)
Choir float (I include, only because 100 years ago, I got to perform on this float with my high school choir. I know...Dork!)
Twin Snowman (fairly new, but one of my faves)
Pinnochio (fairly new)

Mom and Dad's Anniversary/Adult Christmas

We had to do a little gift opening ahead of time this year for two reasons. One, it's getting harder to open everything with the kids around because if we do it early on Christmas Eve we mess with nap times and if we do it later, it messes with bedtimes, and Second and probably the most significant reason is that Meg could go into labor at any point now and Christmas Eve might turn interesting real quickly! So we decided to do the adult gifts this weekend at the same time we celebrated Mom and Dad's anniversary. That way, Christmas Eve is all about the kids!

Thanks Mom and Dad for sharing your anniversary and thanks everyone for the great gifts! As you can tell, Adrienne liked "mo-mo's kiki" best, but we feel pretty spoiled all around! We are so lucky to have a wonderful family and that's the best gift of all:)

Pre-Dazzle

Since this was the last weekend for Holidazzle, we decided to take Riley on Friday night. Not knowing exactly what time it started, but knowing is was around 6ish or 6:30, Riley and I headed down to meet Daddy at 4:30 and stake our place in the skyway so we wouldn't have to freeze. Riley did amazingly well sitting in that space for 2 hours until the parade started. I'll post parade shots later in the week after a few more important events.