Maeve and Lilly

Lilly began bugging me early about doing a lemonade stand this morning. I really didn’t want to be bothered and kept putting her off. She was very persistent and quickly enlisted her sister as a business partner and nuisance-in-arms. When they made motions to cut open the lemon from the fruit basket, I gave in.

“OK. But you guys are going to have to do it yourselves and put up your own money.” They quickly agreed. I figured this would be a valuable lesson about not thinking a business plan through. (Selling lemonade in a semi-rural area on a road with no sidewalks and a speed limit of 40 mph?!?)

Off we went to Pick’n'Save for cups and lemonade mix (total cost $6). I got them started and helped put signs on either side of the road to entice approaching traffic. Right away they started flagging people down and most of their customers paid double their 50-cent price. An ambulance crew even stopped, turned on their lights and bought three cups for $5.

At the end of the day after backing out their change and their expenses, the little stinkers ended up making a profit of $16.60. The age-old marketing lesson that was reinforced (for me at least) was that cute girls can sell anything. Hopefully the girls learned something more pragmatic and less demeaning. The planning ahead and thinking through details was great but I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about the $$ in their eyes. How I hope I haven’t just created another generation of capitalists.

I drove to Toledo with the girls and meet Nanny and Grampy at exit 52 off the Ohio Turnpike. The girls then spent three glorious weeks in Canandaigua with their cousins, first Ethan and Aidan, and then Liam. There was lots of boating, swimming, ice cream, amusement parks, shopping, and quality time with Nanny and Grampy. They were a bit homesick, but I think the fun and excitement far outweighed it. Three weeks later I, the Fords, and the girls did the trip in reverse, again driving 850 miles in 14 hours. Whew. It was good to have them home again, just in time for school.

Maeve was wearing a bunch of bracelets this morning and I casually made some reference to Madonna. Who? they asked. I grabbed the first self-titled CD (yes, I have it on vinyl too — call it a guilty pleasure). Of course they wanted to hear it. We’ve all been singing “Lucky Star” at the top of our lungs.

Photos from the train journey to New York and back are now up. Marvel at the beauty of the girls and giggle and the antics with their baby cousin Adrianna.

At left, Maeve in the Rochester station with a freight train hurtling by outside.

I think it was Thanksgiving weekend that we decided to take the train to New York for Christmas. This was the first time since 2004 that we’d make the trek to see Nanny and Grampy for the holiday and the girls were jazzed. In an effort to minimize the amount of luggage schlepped back and forth to NY, Santa shipped a bunch of stuff by way of Amazon.

We also opened some of the larger/more-fragile presents on Tuesday night, the day before we left. The girls were especially excited about their Ugg-knock-off boots. Also of note was the ream of copy paper that Maeve got (this in an effort to keep paper from disappearing from Momma’s office due to Maeve’s art addiction).

Wednesday (12/23) at 2pm, we drove to the Park’n'Ride and waited in the freezing sleet for the Van Galder bus to Chicago. The decision to leave the driving to someone else was a good one. While we relaxed in the back of the double-decker bus, the traffic crawled along the icy Interstate passed car after car in the ditch. Four hours later we were delivered to the front door of Union Station.

After checking our bags and grabbing a bite to eat, we boarded (senior citizens and families traveling with small children first, thank you very much) the Lakeside Express at 9pm. We were just in coach so we put the girls’ seats back, covered them with a pink Hello Kitty blanket and told them it was bedtime. They were a bit concerned that the lights were still on and annoyed that the old Indian gentlemen in front of them was on his phone the entire night. (“Haylo? Yays, I em on deh trayn.”) I think they fell asleep sometime after 10 and woke up around 4:30. I managed to get them back to sleep for a few hours. We rolled into Rochester at 9:30 (15 minutes early!) and saw Nanny and Grampy waiting for us.

Christmas Eve was a blur of making rice pudding, eating Pontillo’s pizza, and a party at cousin Liz’s house. Maeve soundly trounced Uncle Jimmy in a drawing contest before we headed home. Christmas morning dawned with an obscene number of presents under the tree. Despite the quantities, the girls managed to get through them in record time. Prize possessions now include Lilly’s Guitar Hero for DS and Maeve’s music sequencer/sampler. We spent the rest of the day in front of the fire waiting for word about the arduous journey of Uncle Joe and his family from Oklahoma. The girls went to bed disappointed that their cousins Adrianna and Alexis would not be here when they woke up.

Two days later, the crew from Oklahoma made it. The girls cooed and fussed over 15-month Adrianna and giggled awestruck around 16-year-old Alexis. On Monday, the day of our departure, it finally started snowing and the girls were able to get outside with Uncle Joe for some frolicking. The afternoon was spent packing and preparing for our 11pm train.

Just in time for the deluge of Christmas photos, I got the rest of the photographic documentation for Fall up for your viewing enjoyment. Take a look.

We spent a quiet Thanksgiving at home. The girls enthusiastically pitched in with the shopping and the preparation. Pies, cornbread, mashed potatoes, and cranberries all were group efforts. Though both Maeve and Lilly promised they would  try the Tofurky this year, only Lilly actually did. She liked OK, but was a bit off put by the sweetness of the orange-juice/brown-sugar marinade I had used. We spent the rest of the day lounging in a stupor in front of our first fire of the season.

Friday we headed north to pick up our Christmas tree at Smoky Hollow Farms. Part of the attraction there is always the wagon rides pulled by intimidatingly gigantic and beautiful Belgian Draft Horses. The other part is the complimentary hot cider and hot chocolate in the restored barn. Back home we dragged out all the Christmas paraphernalia from the basement and got the tree up, the stockings hung, the Christmas music playing, and the electric candles in the porch windows. We decorated the tree, Rockwellian style, in front of the fire while listening to the Nutcracker and Low.

We left costume prep until the last minute again this year. There was not quite as much wailing and gnashing of teeth as I expected. We were writing in the studio, so to speak — trying to figure what the costumes were going to be based on what we could find in the picked over racks at the Halloween Express Superstore (TM, I’m sure). We grabbed some fake blood and some fangs and swung over to JoAnne’s Fabrics for a piece of sparkly spiderweb material and called it good.

Lilly (and her friend Sonja, naturally) were vampires. Maeve described herself as “a dead ballerina trick-or-treating.” (I remember it being “a dead zombie cheerleader” but there appears to be some revisionism going on by others in the household.) Wednesday morning I applied blood to Lilly’s fangs and created an oozing scar on Maeve’s forehead for the big Halloween parade at school. Maeve’s scar was apparently so realistic that when she looked in the mirror she claimed she was feeling a little dizzy because it was “so freaky.”

We spun around the neighborhood Friday night, but the chill in the air (hovering just above freezing) exerted more influence over the length of our outing than the allure of more candy. As usual, the girls sorted through their haul and donated a shocking amount of candy to the Great Pumpkin (the legendary spirit that leaves a few dollars in exchange for extra candy to be distributed to less-fortunate children). Maeve was particularly magnanimous, ruthlessly discarding 75% of her take.

We had the first Irish Dance Performance of the new season today at the Monroe Street Festival. It was a beautiful day and it was nice to see the girls dance in wigs and dresses. I hadn’t seen them perform in quite some time and was quite impressed with their fluidity and confidence.

All right… Finally. Here are some brand-spankin’-new photos. You got yer Summer pictures and you got yer back-to-school pictures. Have at ‘em.