Maddie Anna and the entire elementary school performed at a recent concert and this one was by far one of our favorites. We’ve put it on our Apple TV and every time I walk into the room, either Amelia or Maddie has put it on and they are singing along with The Unicorn Song all over again! It was extra special that Maddie was able to sing with Mrs. Tucker whom she had for Art last year.

I especially love the video that Julie Wild made to go alone with the song. She photoshopped each child into a picture that coincided with the words of the song. Watch for Maddie and the green alligator!

You may watch the video below or view it by clicking here.

Maddie's Letter to Santa

Last year Maddie wrote a letter to Santa for both herself and Amelia. The result was she got a very cool video message from him while we were vacationing in Thailand AND she got the one thing she asked for. She was inspired…

Yesterday she stayed him from school as she was feeling a bit under the weather and she took advantage of the time to be inspired again. She wrote a letter to Santa and as soon as her sister got home from school, she helped her sister write a letter.

Amelia's Letter to Santa

We’ll post everything to Santa this week. I’m pretty sure it will get there in time, but it remains to be seen if Maddie and Amelia will get the one gift the want from Santa. Okay… so Maddie wants two gifts...

The girl is growing up. When Andy leaves, Maddie has this way of…. getting instantly older. She cooks, she cleans, she helps Amelia with baths. Today we went to the dentist for a cleaning/sealant and not one complaint came out of her mouth. Amelia on the other hand… that’s a different blog post. Crazy kid.

We got home from the dentist and we decided to reward ourselves by making cookies and decorating them. Three dozen cookies later, the kitchen was only mildly destroyed. We ended up using this sugar cookie recipe because Maddie thought that it was cool that there was lemon in it: http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/dessert/recipe-best-cutout-sugar-cookies-038629 and then we used two different types of icing...

There is a running joke in our family. Mom can’t cook. Freaks mom out. So…. when dad leaves, mom agonizes over dinner. However, Maddie is stepping up to the task. We found some recipes online and she took charge. I started the marinade for the pork chops in the morning, but she took it from there.

Maddie made orange joyce and soy sauce marinated port chops. She even reduced the sauce so that we could pour it over the brown rice. See the recipe here: http://www.food.com/recipe/pork-chops-with-soy-orange-sauce-292964?scaleto=4&mode=null&st=true

And then she blanched some asparagus and even put the asparagus in an ice bath! She didn’t have almonds so she decided to use pine nuts in the lemon butter sauce for the asparagus. Delicious: http://www.asparagusrecipes.net/asparagus-almandine.html ...