Birthdays and Stuffy Noses

We had a great time at Alayna's 6th birthday party last weekend. We're hoping we didn't pass on the Ciske flu to everyone we came in contact with. All of us have been trying to kick a nasty cold and it seems like we're finally all taking a turn for the better.

A few current hobbies of Mabes.... pulling Kleenex out of the box, drinking from mom's water bottle, playing with her Little People and kitchen, jumping on the bed (with supervision, of course), eating raisins, and shutting herself in the bathroom.

Olivia's Visit

Mabel's cousin, Olivia, is here for the weekend. Emilie and Alayna are off to a daddy/daughter dance tonight, so Meagan and Olivia are here visiting. The girls started by doing some serious cooking in Mabel's kitchen and have now moved over to Mabel's table to create some artwork.

Christmas and New Years Eve

Mabel is back home from her holiday travels in Wisconsin. We kicked off the holiday by spending a few days at Grandma Joyce & Grandpa Dick's house. Mabel opened her presents from G&G a day before Christmas Eve so that they could enjoy seeing her play with them. She received all kinds of cool stuff, but Elmo Live is definitely a hot ticket at the moment. He is already on his third set of batteries. Thank goodness for rechargeables.

On Christmas morning, we drove to Gammy & Dave's. Mabel enjoyed brunch with the Wigchers, Gammy, & Grandma Katie. Mabel received all kinds of awesome Little People toys. She has been spending a lot of time with the bus and Noah's ark. (We set aside the deluxe farm set to surprise her with in a few weeks.) Brunch was followed up by the big Pawlowski Christmas celebration which was fun as always.

Gammy was nice enough to host us for a few extra days since Nathan was going to the Packer game on Sunday. We were able to spend an extra day visiting with Grandma Katie and lots of lazy time at Gammy's hanging out in peej and snacking on the delicious Christmas leftovers.

After getting back to Chicago on Monday, Mabel and I packed it up again on Monday and spent the night at Brooke & John's place. Mabel was able to spend some quality time with Nora and Jack and I was able to catch up with my gal pals, Brooke & Erin.

We wrapped up the holiday season with a rockin' New Years Eve bash at our place. Sara, Paul, & Mia came over for dinner and Mabel had her first official sleep over. The Urizars stayed over and since it is so cold downstairs, we decided to put Mia in the Pack N Play right in Mabel's room so she could benefit from the space heater. Both girls slept great, but I think both mom's were ultra-senstive to any little noise from the monitor worrying that it would wake the other baby up.

Thanks to everyone for the generous gifts and well wishes over the holidays. We are so grateful for the time we were able to spend with family and friends. We wish all of our blog readers a healthy, safe, and prosperous 2009!