Anna Grows

Ahhhh....it seems like only yesterday that Anna got her first tooth. Now it is gone. Anna will remember Martin Luther King Day as the day her tooth came out. This is a major life event...especially among the kindergarten crowd. After recounting numerous stories about her friends losing teeth and what happened, now Anna can now tell her own tooth story. She even called Grandma to announce the big event. The tooth fairy visited last night and left her $1, which is the going rate for teeth in Northern Virginia these days ( note: the tooth fairy was very happy that Anna opted to leave her tooth on her nightstand rather than under her pillow) . Anna, who is learning math, calculated that she will have $20 by the time all her baby teeth are gone. Speaking of school, January 6 was the kindergarten "I Have a Dream" assembly before the entire school. All of the kindergardeners dressed up like what they wanted to be when they grow up and announced it before the whole school (An...

It was a whirlwind Christmas this year! The main whirlwind revolved around the completion of the kitchen renovation. It ended up not being so much complete but rather operational. The second big event of the holidays was the arrival of Grandma and Grandpa who joined in the Christmas festivities AND the kitchen renovation. The third big event was Anna's Christmas pagent at school. The kitchen renovation went right down to the wire with everything operational the night before Grandma and Grandpa arrived (the tile backsplace and cabinet knobs/handles still need to be added....maybe next week). As a result, the house remained a construction zone with few Christmas decorations to be found. Thanks to a lot of help from Grandma and Grandpa, everything got unpacked and the Christmas tree went up! Grandma and Grandpa had quite a busy week. They arrived Tuesday morning after a flight delay just in time to see Anna in the Christmas pagent (Anna got to g o up on stage along with the o...

The holidays are here at last! While this year's Christmas season is dominated about completion of the kitchen renovation (the Christmas gift that will keep on giving for years to come), we did manage to take a beautiful day off from the remodal work to enjoy some of the many great holiday activities Washington has to offer. We made our way dowtown to the Botanical Gardens for the annual train display. This activity has clearly grown in popularity as we had to wait for 30 minutes just to get in. The wait was worth it as once again they had a spectacular train display (complete with Thomas the Train) along with beautiful flowers and replicas of the various monuments around DC. After lunch at the Native American history museum, we headed over to the White House to check out the Christmas tree display. This year was a disappointment to say the least. The tree was more of a Charley Brown tree (lights were lying in a pool around the bottom because the tree was so much shorter than in pr...

It was a lovely Thanksgiving weekend with sunny skies and temperatures in the 60s - perfect for a weekend in New York to celebrate. In order to avoid the Thanksgiving traffic rush, Joe, Theresa & Anna opted to head out early Thanksgiving morning. The target departure time was 6 AM. The actual departure time was more like 7:15 AM following an extended clothing discussion with the resident fashionista (aka Anna) and a requisite stop at Dunkin Doughnuts. Since Thanksgiving dinner was not until 4 PM and the family made it to New York by 11:30 AM, we grabbed a sandwich in Jersey City (and adventure unto itself....Theresa felt the cheerful "historic district" signs were a bit misleading) and headed to liberty park to enjoy the beautiful weather. The park offered spectacular views of lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty. Following some time at the park, we headed to Uncle John and Aunt Yvonne's for Thanksgiving dinner. The dinner was great with all of the Fagella b...

It was a fun-filled Halloween weekend for Anna. We say weekend because somehow Halloween has expanded from a one night event in which kids go trick-or-treating from house to house. Now it is an entire week holiday extravaganza complete with decorations & lights, multiple parties, trick-or-treating at malls and other venues, and countless pounds of candy. Anna's costume of choice this year was a fairy and she commissioned Grandma to make her attire. Grandma was up to the challenge and made a beautiful blue fairy costume with lots of sparkle - just what every 5 year old girl wants. The fairy and princess attire were the costume of choice for the 5 year old girl crowd this year (at least judging from Anna's friends). Anna kicked off the party weekend with a Halloween party at Ms. Be's on October 28. Since she was out of school for the day, she got to hang out with her friends and do a little trick-or-treating around the neighborhood. That night was "Trunk or Trea...

Today was the first day of full fledged kitchen demolition and the last day with a working sink/counter space. We spent the weekend clearing out cabinets, packing boxes, and figuring out how to convert the laundry room to a temporary kitchen of sorts. There are several things to consider when you are without a kitchen. Here are the lessons so far. First, it is very challenging to get Anna to wear her shoes when she is at home. Thanks to the construction, barefoot is not an option. Shoes are a must. Second, it is important to make the Halloween cookies while you still have counter space. That mission was accomplished tonight when the frosting/decorating was completed. Third, you should really think about the layout of your satellite kitchen. We spent a large portion of the evening running between the laundry room, the basement, and the kitchen trying to make simple things like a sandwich (the lettuce was upstairs, the bread was in the basement, and the meat was in the laundry room...

At last the rain took a break so that we were able to enjoy a spectacular Columbus Day weekend with sunny skies and temperatures hovering around 80 degrees! It was a perfect weekend to pick pumpkins and Pauletta & Wil organized a pumpkin picking outing at Belvadere Plantation near Fredricksburg, VA (http://www.belvedereplantation.com). Anna and her parents were a bit too ambitious in their efforts to take advantage of the nice weather and decided to pack up the car with the camping gear to take Anna on her first camp out at a local park following the pumpkin picking. First, the family got stuck in traffic in Fairfax City, VA thanks to the local fall festival (EVERYONE in the Washington area was out to enjoy the gorgeous weather). Then there was the traffic on I-95 south. Why - no one ever really knows. Finally we arrived at the pumpkin patch 2 hours late. The pumpkin patch was not just any pumpkin patch. There were go carts, pig races, zip lines, slides, a rope swing in the ba...