Holidazzle

In Minneapolis, from Thanksgiving through the New Year, there is a parade every Thursday through Sunday called the Holidazzle. It's short, but it's sparkly.

I'd never been, and neither had Maisie. So last night we went to check it out, and we had a lot of fun!

We got there about half an hour before the parade started. There was a person selling light-up wands, so we had to get one of those while we waited.

A person sitting next to us took this picture, which I thought turned out really well, especially given that Maisie is totally not into posing for pictures.

So anyway, we had a lot of fun!

Holidazzle is all about Christmas-y lights, and all the floats are covered with lights. The city actually turns out the street lights along the route, to better illuminate the floats.

This is the Christmas train. It was like a zoo train - there were children wearing lit-up animal costumes in the cars! It was very cute. Cinderella was the grand marshal, and Santa in his sleigh was the last float in the parade. Maisie was very impressed with both of those, as well as with the Wizard of Oz float in the middle - there was a wicked witch riding a bicycle! Very scary and cool.

All the floats were really sparkly and fun, and the parade was short, so it was over right around the time that Maisie started to get bored with it. We had a really good time, and I think we'll go again!

The next generation of Vikings fans

I don't know if you can tell, but both Dylan and Maisie are wearing their Vikings jerseys in this picture from last Sunday, when we watched the Vikes beat the Lions!

Ella has Vikings gear too, but she wasn't wearing it.

Skol Vikings!

Thank you

Maisie and I had a very crafty weekend! I love being able to do these kind of projects with her.

On Saturday, we made thank you cards (somewhat belatedly) for her birthday gifts.

As you can see, this is serious work. Maisie loves doing "stamping work" and really enjoyed the activity - she chose the cards, the stamp, and the stickers.

I think they turned out beautifully.


Her hands, though, were a different matter....

(and yes, that's a big ink splotch on her upper lip!)

We also had a crafty Sunday, but that'll have to wait for the next post.

Right now we need to say WELCOME! to Maisie and Ella's new cousins Sullivan and Ryley!! and yay for their mommies and daddies. We can't wait to meet you two!!

The Ella Report

I feel like we talk a lot about Maisie here, so I want to take a moment to get you up to date on Ella.

She's now completely recovered from her hospital stay. She's a fully healthy almost five month old baby, smiling and cooing and trying like crazy to be mobile!

Her big sister is one of her favorite people. Here, Maisie was running circles around Ella's bouncy chair singing DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD! DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD! Ella was trying so hard to watch Maisie that she almost flipped out of her chair!

Maisie loves to give Ella hugs and kisses, and Ella loves that too. She gets a huge smile on her face every time Maisie gets up near her face to say hi and kiss her!

We love our Ella! And it seems like she's pretty fond of us, too.

Maisie's birthday party

On Saturday, 10/31, we celebrated Maisie's 3rd birthday with our friends and family!

We held the party at the Minnesota Children's Museum. It was a wonderful Where the Wild Things Are themed party.

First they read the story, then they did a craft activity.

Here's Maisie (a witch) and Dylan (a vampire bat) decorating Wild Thing vests and terrible eyes. Scary!!

After the craft activity, we had a wild rumpus!!

You can see the Narcum family really got into the wild rumpus, which really comes as no surprise to those of us who know them!

After the rumpus and a hide-and-seek game, it was time for cake.

Maisie blew out all the candles!

We really had a great time. It was so fun to celebrate Maisie's birthday with our family and friends!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween, everyone!

In addition to the normal Halloween festivities, we held Maisie's 3rd birthday party on Saturday. I will write about it later, but tonight, I'm just too tired... apparently my children didn't get the memo about daylight savings time meaning that everyone gets an extra hour of sleep.