Megan & Hannah Pics - January 2013 (Great Wolf Lodge)

Happy New Year!! (because it's definitely January and not May - that is my story and I'm sticking to it)  Please see the link below for *recent* (remember people, it's January here) pictures of the ladies:

http://purdyfamilyest2005.shutterfly.com/pictures/415

We spent the days post-Christmas heavily invested in potty training our little one.  This was a battle of epic proportions.  Very, very dark times for our family.  If, hypothetically, I was writing this in May (which I am obviously not, since these pictures are all from January), I could happily report to you that the heavy lifting is done and we are more or less free of all of the nonsense that goes along with potty training, but since the date of this post is the end of January, I am only able to say at this time that things are touch and go, but trending up, and that we will definitely never be having another child to go through this with all over again - E.V.E.R.

The highlight of our month was our first trip to Great Wolf Lodge, an indoor waterpark in Traverse City.  Megan had been mostly apprehensive about the water until last fall, but something suddenly clicked with her and between November and January, she turned into a fearless little fish.  She had a random Thursday-Friday off of school later in the month, so we decided to make a long weekend of it and give the place a try. They L.O.V.E.D. every minute of it.  Hannah, who has never shared her sister's fear of the water (she is confident about her swimming abilities, to a fault), had mastered all the water slides her height permitted her to try within minutes of our arrival.  Megan was able to do all of the slides with a parent, and wasn't the slightest bit hesitant on trying them all, approximately one million times.

The resort has other non-water entertainment as well, including a nightly story time with their woodland creature themed friends.  We also signed up to have milk and cookies delivered to our room each night we were there by aforementioned woodland creatures, which was kind of fun.  We had warned the girls what was going to be happening each night.  Hannah answered the door to Violet the Wolf on night 1 (who she had just met and hugged at story time about a half hour prior), but her gut reaction to opening the door to a wolf - even a wolf bearing milk and cookies - was to slam the door right in her face.  I suppose I can't fault her that one... Thankfully Violet stuck around long enough for us to open the door, profusely apologize, and collect our bedtime snack.  We will definitely make a return visit, once we have lived down the shame of this one.

Megan & Hannah Pics - November/December 2012

Please follow the link below to the most recent pics of the little ladies. We have been a busy bunch, as I'm sure is the case with the rest of you. The holidays were wonderful, but I, for one, am doing okay with them being behind us. We had a great time celebrating Christmas, but holy crap, did we celebrate Christmas... a lot.
 

http://purdyfamilyest2005.shutterfly.com/pictures/217
 

We spent Thanksgiving in Fremont, enjoying a low key gathering with Kyle's family. We even got to spend some time with Aunt Marilyn and Uncle Larry, who traveled all the way from Connecticut. It was so great to see them! Megan's school has an annual kindergarten feast on the last day before the holiday. Each kindergarten class (there are 4) made something to contribute to the meal, and each parent is asked to donate a small item as well. Megan's class made cornbread, which is her favorite food on earth (comes with the Purdy genes), so she was especially excited to be a part of this.
 

We again opted to visit Santa at the John Ball Zoo in GR. We find him to be the most genuine Santa look-alike, and also not a total scheister like those losers at the mall. The zoo does an annual Christmas with the Animals party - zoo admission is free with a "present" for the animals (treats for them like peanut butter, jelly, or other little items) and the whole zoo is decked out for Christmas, with Santa and Mrs. Claus there and plenty of activities for the kids. We look forward to it every year.
 

We began a new Christmas tradition this year for the girls - the Elf on the Shelf. After hearing for a couple of years that this was right up my alley, curiousity finally got the better of me and we took the plunge. The basic premise is that the elf (who our girls promptly fell in love with and named Sparkle Teddy Bear - no, I'm not kidding) arrives from the North Pole to be Santa's eyes and ears on the ground (she appeared on December 1st). She disappears every night after bedtime to report back to Santa on their behavior, and reappears in a different place each day - until Christmas Eve, when she returns to the North Pole with Santa. We had so much fun with it. I've got pictures all saved up for her activites each day, which I have high hopes of eventually turning into a blog post, but as I suck at keeping the blog current, I would not recommend that anyone hold their breath).
 

We had a trip to Chicago planned for the second weekend in December. We had tickets to see the play Cinderella while in town. Cinderella was being played by Uncle Ryan's little sister Missy, so there was no way we wanted to miss this. With Megan's big wish from Santa being an American Girl doll, and a trip to Chicago already in the works, Sparkle Teddy Bear convinced Santa to deliver a couple of special gifts to the girls a little early (that is our story and we are sticking to it). On the morning we were to leave, two presents, a note from Sparkle Teddy Bear and a note from Santa to each girl appeared on our fireplace. Santa brought Megan her doll and Hannah even got a Bitty Baby (American Girl infant dolls), and Sparkle Teddy Bear arranged a tea party for them at the store that very afternoon. They were beyond thrilled!
 

We had great weather for the trip, and made it downtown in record time. We had time for swimming and relaxing before heading out for our tea party and to explore the store, which I will begrudgingly admit is actually kind of an awesome place. We then headed to Lincoln Park Zoo to catch the Zoo Lights (approximately 40 billion Christmas lights strung throughout the zoo). The next morning was the play (which was great!!!) and then we headed to the suburbs to visit with Aunt Becky and family for the afternoon/evening. It was so great to be able to see them, too! We hit Winter Wonderland at Navy Pier before leaving town the next day. It was an awesome trip and such a fun way to kick off the holidays.
 

We spent the next several weeks wrapped up in school parties, neighbor parties and family parties. Last year Megan and I started a new tradition in the neighborhood - the 12 days of Christmas cookies, where we baked and delivered one cookie per family member for 12 days. It was a hit, and this year the other neighbors were all interested in getting involved. There are six families back in our little area that are close, so we divided and each took two days for treat delivery. It was a ton of fun, though we are still detoxing from 12 extra days of holiday sugar intake.
 

The girls were very successful at being spoiled again, which will probably not shock anyone. It was a very Merry Christmas.
 

In other non-Christmas events, we have kept Megan active in swim lessons since September. Something has seemed to click with her, and all of a sudden she is swimming like a little fish. She has progressed two levels of swim classes since the fall (this was after stalling out at the same level for a couple of years!!), and Kyle had her at the Y just this past week, where she surprised him by swimming almost exclusively under water! She has come such a long way in such a short period of time! She will start her next lessons next weekend, and we booked a trip to Great Wolf Lodge (indoor waterpark in Traverse City) later in the month when she has a random two day break from school. Because she has been so cautious about the water, we didn't think this was something she would have previously enjoyed, but I'm certain it will be a whole different story now. She is reading with gusto and keeps a very busy social calendar - the cold weather does not seem to have deterred the neighbor kids from seeking each other out to play, though this is not the case for the parents - oh well, the kids are getting older now, right?
 

Hannah is busy, busy, busy as ever, keeping up her reputation as wild child. We started a third attempt at potty training last weekend - though we got off to an awful start, I am pleased to announce that the kid has now caught on and is doing absolutely awesome! We are looking forward to sending her back to school next week with these new skills - she cannot wait to show her teachers her big girl underwear. :) I have cautioned her that in today's world she should probably be careful with how she approaches this, but I assure you it's all innocent.

 

 

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and a happy new year!

Elf on a Shelf

We jumped on the Elf on the Shelf bandwagon for the first time this year.  To be honest, I had no idea what to do with the thing after I purchased it, but I had a ton of people tell me that it was right up my alley, and I caved.  Thankfully the children's book it came with was enormously helpful in clueing me in to what exactly needed to be done. 

The basic premise is that the elf arrives from the North Pole (where else?) on the same date every year - we chose December 1, though the day after Thanksgiving is rumored to be another popular choice.  The elf will disappear each night to report on the child's (or childrens') behavior, reappearing in a new spot the next morning.  I may have taken liberty here with the author's intent, but in our case, we told the girls that if their behavior was less than desirable, the elf would stay in the same place.  On Christmas Eve, the elf returns to the North Pole with Santa until the following year.

We (of course) had a girl elf.  She appeared first in our playroom - see below.  The girls absolutely LOVED her.  They named her Sparkle Teddy Bear, which was a group effort (Megan contributed "Sparkle" and Hannah came up with "Teddy Bear").  They were SO excited to get up each morning and see exactly what she was up to.

Here is a peek at the various places we found her:

She had a tendency to be kind of naughty, this elf.

We took the girls to Chicago in December for a pre-holiday weekend getaway.  Megan's big wish from Santa was for an American Girl doll.  Since we were going to be so close to the store, Sparkle Teddy Bear thought it would be a good to idea to arrange for an early delivery of these gifts from Santa.  Here she is with the gifts - straight from the North Pole - and all packed and ready to go to her friend Zeze's house while we were away for the weekend.

Hanging out with Zeze - Claire's elf

She stowed away in the girls' bags when they spent the night in Fremont -
they caught her the next morning enjoying the hot tub

We got to host Zeze for an overnighter when Claire's family went to Chicago. 
Zeze is a rather handsome boy elf, so Sparkle Teddy Bear wanted to look her best.

Zeze's here!

Alas, the time came when we had to say our goodbyes. They were so bummed to see her go, but thankfully they had a small mountain of Christmas presents to ease the blow. We are looking forward to having her back next year!!

She left the girls a special goodbye note - being sure to include Hannah's current
 favorite expression, "see you 'round like a doughnut!"


Happy Holidays from the Purdys!

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Megan & Hannah Pics - September/October 2012

Please follow this link to a recent batch of Purdy Family pics.  Warning:  there are a billion of them.  

http://purdyfamilyest2005.shutterfly.com/pictures/90

We had a busy, busy, busy couple of months.  Lots and lots of fun stuff, but it kept us going and resulted in a T.O.N. of pictures.  At five years old, Megan's social life is more active than mine was during my college years.  We had birthday parties, swim lessons, playdates, trips to the orchard, school field trips, etc, etc, etc.

Megan continues to do great in kindergarten.  She seems to be getting some of her energy back and is in a better mood in the evening and waking up easier in the mornings.  She is very social and says she is friends with everyone in her class - she is actually kind of concerned about this, as she is still looking for her "best" friend, but that person seems to be constantly evolving.  She had such a great group of friends from preschool, and we've been lucky to have opportunities to keep her in touch with those girls even though they all ended up at different kindergartens.  We had them over for a playdate at our house in September, she took swim lessons with her friend Lydia, and we have mommy-daughter double dates every so often with her friend Brianna.  She went on her first field trip in October (to the pumpkin patch), and had the cutest little Halloween party and parade at school, too.  I was lucky enough to attend both of these events. 

Hannah has settled right into to her new daycare.  There are a lot less children there and she pretty much runs the place, so she is happy as can be with her situation.  Though we've passed the 2-1/2 years old mark, the kid still refuses to be potty trained.  We try to make a weekend of it when we have spare time, but we have been majorly lacking that the last few months.  November will be much calmer, so maybe - just maybe - we will make some progress.  Fingers crossed.  She remains the funniest person on Earth.

We had a very eventful Halloween, with at least one party every day between 10/27 and 10/31.  Megan elected to be a Disney princess (SHOCKER!  I know) - specifically, the Little Mermaid (a/k/a Ariel).  Since I still have control over Hannah's costume selection (one of the few aspects of her life that I do control) she went as Sebastian, Ariel's little crab friend.  This was particularly perfect given her mood swings and tendency to exert brute force.  They had a great time trick-or-treating...over and over and over again.

Lacey is back to 100% after her surgery in early September.  She returned to MSU in early October where she was given a clean bill of health and the ok to resume normal activity levels.  She is doing awesome and back to her food thieving, obnoxious barking ways.  For whatever reason, we are so glad to have her with us.  

Megan & Hannah Pics - July/August 2012

Please follow the link below for recent pictures of the gals. As you may remember, my formerly good friends at Kodak shut down their website sharing feature in July, effectively ruining my life - and that is only slightly being dramatic. Shutterfly acquired the site, and their picture sharing is nowhere near as user-friendly as Kodak's, so I am still reeling a bit from this forced transition. Long story short, if you follow this link you will find a recent album titled July-August 2012 and if you click the right button it will magically transform into a slideshow of 72 pictures from our recent summer adventures.
 

http://purdyfamilyest2005.shutterfly.com/pictures
 

I believe we last left off at Disney World, so let me get you up to speed from that point forward:
 

In July, Hannah and I took a weekend road trip to visit our respective BFFs in Chicagoland. My BFF, one Rebecca Couri, has a little girl, Gabby, who is just a month older than Hannah. As such, they have been declared to be best friends since birth. The arrangement seems to be working out well - they had a great time playing together over the weekend, and they are perhaps the cutest couple of best friends this world has ever known...well, second only to their Momma's of course. ;) We also had the opportunity to [finally] meet Sam, Becky's baby boy who went and turned 8 months old before I had the chance to get down there. He is about as stinking cute as cute gets. We had a lovely visit and Hannah enjoyed being Mom's only child for the entire weekend immensely.
 

August brought Megan's last few weeks of daycare. (I have shortened my schedule at work to allow me to pick her up and drop her off at the bus stop every day, so she has no daycare requirement now). It was pretty hard to say goodbye to her preschool friends (these girls have been friends since before they were 2 years old!), but they were all off to different kindergartens in the fall, so even if she stayed at the same daycare before/after school, things just weren't going to be the same. She had a tough couple of weeks but came fully out of her funk to enjoy Family Camp at the end of the month. This has been one of her favorite annual events for three years running now. She had a great time, and spent the entire week (Sunday - Sunday) with Grandma and Grandpa Purdy in Pentwater. She did, begrudgingly, grace us with her presence one day during the week to go to her kindergarten orientation to meet her teacher, but she was straight back to camp afterwards. Hannah joined them as well from Wednesday - Sunday. She was also quite the camper, and we look forward to next year when she can get even more involved with the kid's activities and games - she's still a bit young for some of it, though she never fails to entertain herself with just a pile of dirt, so it's not like she was unable to enjoy herself. :) Kyle headed up for the weekend, while Mom stayed home with an ailing beagle (details below).
 

Megan is now officially a kindergartner! She thinks it's like the best thing that has ever happened to her. It has been so awesome to watch her adjust to this new stage of her life. She is excited every day about school, and she thinks she is B.I.G. S.T.U.F.F. because she goes to kindergarten. I can't think of an adequate word to describe it - it's like one level below arrogance, where she is quite confident without being offensive or obnoxious...well borderline obnoxious for sure, but still charming about it. It's hilarious. In just a week, she is reading with more confidence, has a new "best friend", and is very close to having the rest of her social circle nailed down. We love our new morning routine - she gets a bit more time to wake up in the morning, eating her breakfast while tuned into PBS. In the afternoon she gets an extra hour and a half at home to play with neighbor friends or play board games with Mom (she is currently obsessed with Mancala, Sorry and Life - all of which are quite fun for me too). The whole thing is working out great. I was kind of dreading this whole kindergarten thing all along, despite everyone's warnings that I need not worry about Megan. As is my lot in life after giving birth to her, I worried about Megan. And, as it turns out, I did not need to worry about Megan. Megan is nailing kindergarten. :)
 

Hannah is also doing quite well. She seemed to adapt to big sister's absence on the ride to and from daycare pretty quickly. She enjoys the one on one time with Mom & Dad, I think. Verbally I can't quite keep up with her developments - she can just kind of say everything now. We have videos of her from the winter where it was one or two words at a time, and now she talks in full paragraphs. It still takes me by surprise when I hear some of the stories come out of her mouth - it just seemed to come together so suddenly. She remains quite a monkey, climbing up into our treehouse, hanging from the rings or bars at the playground, and engaging in otherwise generally unsafe behaviors without caution. We tried (and failed) a potty training push in the middle of August, but she just doesn't seem quite ready. We probably could have pushed a little harder and gotten her there, but that seemed like it would just make things harder on us than her, so we elected to give it a break and try again next month. She is switching daycares next week (she will still be at an Appletree, and actually with the same teacher she has now, but they are building a location closer to our house so we are taking advantage of that), and will have a bit of a transition ahead of her, so we'll likely wait until she's all settled in before giving it another go. She is a mini-comic genius and a future class clown for sure - making us laugh all the time.
 

Lacey has actually had quite the eventful summer as well. I had been running with her earlier in the summer when she seemed to hurt her back (this has happened before). We stopped running together and she seemed to recover from her injury. A couple of weeks ago, however, something happened that set her back again, only this time way worse. We spent three days (and a lot of money) trying a steroid/laser therapy treatment with our local vet, but unfortunately it didn't seem to help at all and she spent all of Labor Day weekend in an incredible amount of pain. He referred us to MSU, and luckily they were able to get her in the next day to be seen. I took her last Wednesday for her exam, and they ended up admitting her right away to get her started on an IV narcotic and steroid to help control her pain before doing an MRI and possibly surgery the next day. Sure enough, the MRI confirmed that she had herniated a disc in her neck and had significant degeneration in another. Her surgery was later that day, but did not go as well as the doctor had hoped. While he suspected he was able to extract the herniated disc material, Lacey bled a lot during the surgery and he wasn't able to keep the surgical field clear enough to see as well as he would have liked. She recovered well, but they kept her an extra three days to evaluate her behavior and make sure he wouldn't need to go back in and try surgery again. Several days, and even more money later, we brought her home - just yesterday, actually. She is doing AWESOME! She looks like a new dog, and is already doing things that I haven't really seen her do in months. We're not sure how long exactly this disc had been bothering her, but she looks amazing. Unfortunately for her, she still has a long recovery ahead of her, and needs to be on strict crate rest for the next three weeks, followed by another four weeks of gradual increases in her activity. This is not going over very well, as it is difficult to explain the need for a spine to heal after surgery to a beagle. It will be a long few weeks, but we are very thankful for the chance at many more years with our healthy bea-girl. :)

Back to School Shopping - ahh! Is this really happening?!?

Megan and I just finished up a weekend long shopping excursion.  The main purpose was to stock up her fall clothing selection with appropriate kindergarten duds, but we threw in school supplies and a trip to Ikea as well.  (Though not kindergarten related, Mom was sort of itching to make my annual Ikea pilgrimage, and this was the perfect excuse)

We kicked things off on Friday night with a girls' night out (compliments of Steak n' Shake) and school supply shopping at Target.

This was her first Steak n' Shake experience but she was definitely a fan, as shown here, fake smile and all



Though not off to school (my heart palpitates at the thought), the little one scored a shake as well

Armed with her custom kindergarten school supply picture list and ready to shop!

On Saturday morning, Megan and I headed to Canton to hit Ikea and then spend the night at a hotel for some swimming and one-on-one time together.

Ready for her first lesson on Swedish culture!

Though she immediately declared herself as "bored", the fact that there were toys throughout the store did not go unnoticed.

Her overall impressions of Ikea are summed up pretty well in this photo.  She was on her best behavior, but she didn't hold back her thoughts on the place.  A few of those include:  "This place is SO weird!", "can we ask them to turn that dumb music off?", and "do people pay money for this stuff?"  Mommy is sad to report she doesn't seem to have a single drop of Swedish blood in her veins.  :(  This may be the first time she has ever disappointed me in her five years of life...

Candy Land (our first game of many) at the hotel

We got in a swim at the hotel before the storm clouds rolled in and then went to dinner at her "favorite restaurant on earth" - Chili's.  Okay, that may be the second time she's disappointed me...The food is fine and all, but favorite restaurant on EARTH?  Come on!

On Sunday we headed to the outlet mall in Howell.  My intent:  a mommy-daughter compromise on fashion, where she picks out durable clothing that will make her feel like a princess but still hold up against any and all means of playground destruction.  What happened:  Dresses.  Lots and lots of dresses.  After spending the bulk of the weekend with this little girl I love, I knew going in to the shopping trip that I couldn't make good on my threat to make her wear jeans to kindergarten  (gasp! the abuse!) - it's just not who she is, and aside from blatantly wrong opinions of the Swedes and chain restaurants, I happen to find who she is to be perfect.  My girl loves dresses and shoes and accessories.  She is most comfortable in dresses and tights, and if high heels were available in her size, she would be all over those as well.  Our opinions on comfortable clothing (and Swedes and chain restaurants) could not be farther apart, but as her Mommy I have to respect her very strong preferences and individuality, even if it means the occasional hole in a pair of leggings.  We also upgraded her footwear from Target (cute and cheap but lasts us less than a month on the playground) to Stride Rite - the girl didn't just win this one, she knocked it out of the park!

She did such a great job of picking out her favorites in each store we went to.  I was so glad to have her with me - I normally default to the pink + dress = safe formula of success for her clothes-shopping, but she really has distinct preferences that I wouldn't have nailed all on my own - such as a preference for silver shiny embellishments compared to pink or purple shiny embellishments.  I'm telling you - the girl is particular!  We're definitely going to make this an annual thing.  :)

A few pics from the experience:

She filled in her [future] school info on the board at Old Navy (just to the right of her head)

She visits the Old Navy dog at each store location

Smiling at the thought of bankrupting her parents while enjoying a ride on the ice cream truck

And now she's ready for Kindergarten.  Mom & Dad?  Not so much!!