Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong

OMG! They're 1 years old

How the hell did that happen? Where did the year go? But on the 23rd, M&H turned 1. We decided to have a birthday party and baby naming since we hadn't done that yet. And since they're birthday is over winter break, and they're not picky about the calendar, we had the party on their actual birthday.

We invited all of our closest friends and they have all been involved in our lives and the girls as well. That was important. And of course, all the family was invited. Unfortunately, Grandpa A couldn't make it since he's in the hospital with pancreatitis (along with a few other ailments). But I'm happy to report today, that he took a huge turn towards the positive today and he's doing a lot better. Still, he was missed. Rabbi Dan did the honors of the baby naming and he did a fabulous job. He's such a nice man and I'm so glad he was the one who officiated. G and I each made little speeches of our wishes and dreams for our girls. C wrote something too. We named M Meora Barak. Meora means "light, brightness" and a symbolic name for girls born during Hanukkah, which they were. And Barak means "lightning" or "glitter, splendor, glare, flash, gleam, shine". M is certainly all of those, especially lightning in a bottle. We had originally picked Mahala which means "tenderness" (which is pretty much not how I'd describe M - LOL) but Rabbi couldn't find it in any of his books, even though it was listed as Hebrew in the book we found it in. So we switched and that's fine. Meora is more appropriate for her anyway. And H we named Hannah Rivka. Both biblical names, Hannah means "grace, gracious, merciful" and Rivka is was the wife of Isaac, and mother of Jacob and Esau. Of course, we're happy with their English names but their Hebrew names fit them both perfectly too.

So it turned out to be a nice day and party. We had a TON of leftover food from Brent's Deli. All yummy but a lot. The girls ate their first birthday cake. M wasn't too interested because she wanted out of the high chair. H got into it. Stuck her fingers in it and took bites. Not quite as impressive as C's 1st birthday cake foray but still picture worthy. They enjoyed little cupcakes later that night as well.

Birthday girl M

H turns 1


Boy that cake looks yummy


M enjoyed her cupcake much better than the big cake. Her loss, the cake was delicious

The girls and their fairy Godmothers Deb and Marla

Now, we're just on winter break. Enjoying the quiet and not having to set any alarms. We're seeing the cousins tomorrow which we're very excited about. And other than that, we don't have much on our agenda which is kind of nice instead of the usual head cut off insanity that is normally our life.

One thing C & I are looking forward to is going to Washington DC in March. My BF C comes to the US from Australia every year for her annual convention in Dallas. I guess she read the lastest Dan Brown book and it's based in DC and decided that that's where she wanted to go this year to explore someplace new. So after some investigation, I booked C & I flights to go on Saturday 3/21, we'll meet C the next day and wander around and play in DC until Wednesday. C will only miss 1 1/2 days of school thanks to parent-teacher conferences that week so it seemed like the perfect thing. C is SO excited to see all the monuments and museums. I bought us a few books on DC so she's been reading about all the places we want to go. I hope we can get it all in in 4 days. I love DC. It's such an amazing city.

Okay, off to bed. I'm tired but I need to update a few other things in the blogdom including the latest school conferences, Hanukkah, family photos, what the girlies are doing. I don't sleep much and the motivation to write creatively has been pretty low. I still need to catch up on the girls scrapbook. I'm a few months behind on their doings but at least I have notes. I need to really make an effort for certain things like exercise, the blog, returning emails. I know those are common resolutions but I really need to figure something out.

posted by Juls @ 2:10 AM