Holiday Wrap-Up

Pre-Christmas festivities - during their tea party, Grumpy pretends to eat a piece of plastic cake while Iris and Nora ignore him. Grumpy gets no respect!
Nora and Koffee watch the squirrel as he steals the bird-food for his Holiday feast.
Blue and Iris bully each other over control of the ottoman.
Christmas morning - what did Santa bring Nora??
Oh - looks like Santa brought Daddy a whole lot of white stuff. This won't be the last time he has to shovel us out over the break.

Here's the lovely casa covered in a foot of snow. We got 4 additional inches on top of this and 3.5 are expected tomorrow (1/6). Bah Humbug!
Not everyone hates the snow.......
Cabin fever sets in and the block-stacking marathon commences!
Counting the stars in one of their favorite books.

One of our favorite tricks 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10, YAY!!! Cheering always follows counting in our house.It's all downhill from here, Iris. Daddy introduces her to M&Ms.

Happy New Year from the Starrs!

Grandma Starr comes for Christmas!

Grandma Janie made a visit to the cold North the weekend before Christmas and we were so glad to see her! Iris and Nora love visiting with Grandma! We're VERY interested in opening presents. Grandma feeds us lunch.

Peekaboo!!!!

Grandma gave us the cutest red-headed twin baby dolls. You can't find a more perfect Christmas present than that!

Iris and Nora love the dolls and play with them every day!

Thank you Grandma! We love you and Jessie. Merry Christmas! Ho Ho Ho.

Bouncin's what Tiggers do best!!!

Home grown fun.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Christmas is rapidly approaching and the girls are on their BEST behavior anticipating Santa's arrival. For example, here is Nora and the beautiful Starr tannenbaum we have repeatedly told her not to touch. Ahhh the Holiday Spirit - alive and well.
Mark and the girls relaxing in the afternoon watching our favorite - "Horton Hears a Who" - for the six hundreth time. "I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant is faithful - one hundred percent!" Dr. Seuss, the cream of the crop!

Alright, so here's my favorite part, well, aside from being with family and friends and celebrating the true meaning of Christmas and being thankful for health and happiness. After all that malarky, I mean, here's my favorite part. Baking. Ahhh baking. And boiling - in this case, butter and sugar until it forms TOFFEE. Yummmmmmmy.

I tried a variation of my Mom's sugar cookies this year using royal icing instead of her Meringue Buttercream. I must admit, Koffee's got it down. Her cookies taste much better. And that's the most important part!

More family (and baking) pictures to come. The Starr Holidays rest for no man, woman, or beast! Hope to see you all very soon! Ho Ho Ho!

Turkey Day Wrap-up

What a merry Turkey day we had! All the family came to Topeka to celebrate the day! Here are the boys preparing to deep fry the turkeys.....looks like trouble to me! Here are all the kids (except Iris) enjoying a wholesome meal of various Frito Lay goodies. L to R: Nora, James, Megan (our exotic Arizona cousin), and Bodie.
Here is the star of Thanksgiving - Poochie the dog. She is new to the family and lives in Belton, MO with my Aunt Nancy and Uncle Tom. Nora and Iris thought she was the bee's knees.

Here are the parents fixing the pre-Thanksgiving vittles. Mmmm! James and Bodie were a little stand-offish with Aunt Kiki, so I dressed in stripes and looked up Cars videos on Youtube to entice them. Worked like a charm!!!

Playing outside was so awesome. What a great weather week to run around with the kiddos. That gal in the hat is Molly Moore - of Judge Judy fame. Incognito with the hat pulled over her face - so no one recognizes her.

Iris and Bodie playing in the shrubbery....lighting was beautiful!

Nana herding the cats.

It was such a great week. Seeing Molly, Colin, and the boys is always fantastic! I wouldn't want to do it again before tomorrow!

Thanks, Cuz!

A HUGE Starr "thank you" to our cousin Quinlan. He was so generous and gave the girls his fantastic kitchen set. They LOVE it and play with it every day. They know how to use the utensils to "mixa-mixa-mixa" in the saucers and pans. It's so much fun. Here are some fun pictures to show their cooking chops. Taking after their chef Daddy!
Iris especially likes to make toast in the toaster.

Thanks again Quinlan!!!

Deck the Halls - and the Hair!

My friend Marci gave me these adorable holiday hair bows for the girls so I promised her a picture. Little did I know how difficult that would be! The bows lasted mere seconds in their hair! But I can see them playing a larger role in Christmases to come!

Ode to Frances

I made scalloped potatoes from scratch this weekend. Once when I was little, Frances had me over and we made scalloped potatoes by layering cheese, flour, and cream over sliced potatoes. I must admit, mine were better because
a) I used salt, and
b) because I made a roux first and added the milk and cheese creating a cream sauce first, so my sauce wasn't lumpy.
Hmmm, although I don't remember Frances' potatoes running over in the oven causing the kitchen to smoke up. Regardless - here's to you Frances!

Weekend Update

The weather was so crummy on Sunday, we stayed inside and played with the dog.
Iris likes the way her voice echoes in this bucket. It reminds me of the scene in Parenthood when Justin smashes into a wall repeatedly with a bucket on his head and the mother remarks "he likes to BUTT things with his head." That's our Iris!

Here, Iris climbed into the basket and Mommy threw a pillow on top of her and started rocking her back and forth. You can see how much she hates it.

Ah the dual bath. It's a great idea in theory. But Nora has some issues with bathtime on occassion. She clearly had some sort of water-related accident in a past-life. She cries hysterically if we add bubbles to her bath and about 3 minutes after this shot was snapped, cried hysterically when I tried to wash Iris' hair. Ah well. Never let this kid see Jaws!

A few weekends ago, Mark and I got a babysitter and had a nice date night. We went out to dinner and headed down to the Plaza for their Waterfire show. Some performance artist builds floating bonfires on the creek and there are performers and food vendors, etc. I was really excited....Mark thought it was a pretty big case of the empties. Regardless, we were out of the house together! Here's the pic....