The family is doing well; we spent a week in Florida with Shelley's family, which may have been the coldest week on record. The girls were great on the plane and it was nice to see everyone at one time in one place. Harper has taken after me, it seems; when she was done with family time, she simply would crawl to the door. Finley kept trying to steal this pink sand shovel from her cousin Amy, while Harper kept trying to steal her bottle of milk - Amy had to keep her head on a swivel to avoid losing stuff left and right to the Weinstein girls. Baby cousin Teddy, who will be one in two days, was also there, but was able to avoid the tormenting that Amy stuff was subjected to; perhaps boy toys already have cooties?
On with the show - all of these pictures were taken since the last post and are in order. Remember, if you'd like to see it bigger, just click on it and if you'd like to save it, right click on the picture and then click "Save Picture As."
Other than their coloring, we think Harper looks pretty similar to Finley at the same age. However, the one area she hasn't caught her sister is hair. The attempted top pony just doesn't look the same, but Harper is smiling none the less.
When Shelley takes the dogs for their walk, the girls go, too, of course. Which requires a lot of bundling up, as you can see above. Getting into the snowsuit is not Harper's favorite thing, although she loves the walks.
Still smiling, though!
Now, Harper smiling is sort of a theme and like all Weinsteins, and Hoscheks, of course she is going to be smiling while she's eating. That said, she remains an incredibly happy baby; one, that for now, at least, is a Daddy's girl. Shelley has had to concede that Harper's first word is "Dada." Of course, Finley was once a Daddy's girl, too, but now is all Mama, all the time.
As I've mentioned before, Finley hasn't tried to outright kill Harper yet, which is a good sign. While it still causes physical pain to Finley if she sees Harper playing with any of her toys, they can play nicely together. Of course, Finley makes it clear that while she is on Santa's Nice list, Harper most certainly is on Santa's Naughty list - and will then run down Harp's litany of crimes.
Finley helped Shelley put up the Christmas tree; I believe this is when she was caught trying to steal a candy cane from the tree.
This is my favorite series of pictures - Finley at dance class. While she also takes gymnastics once a week, I love the girls in their outfits. I have not been able to see Finley at class, yet, as they go on Wednesday mornings, but it is one of my resolutions. Finley is a pretty good student - as far as three year-olds go, she pays attention pretty well. I would even call this rapt, if grading on the curve.
As you can see, Finley is doing one of the activities. Of course, she was probably supposed to be over by the teacher, along with the other girls. So, she is still really, really stubborn.
With the picture taken at an angle, it makes Finley appear to be the tallest girl in the class - I can assure you, it is an illusion. She is the only one working on her pointe in the toddler class, it seems.
Their little graduation ceremony.
Again, she does a nice job of listening to the teacher when they are about to do something new. While I haven't seen it is ballet, she does it well in gymnastics.
She also tends to work her way to the front of the line.
Again, full attention. As I said, not the tallest, but not the smallest either.
On our flight down to Florida. Harper didn't cry at all, Southwest kept the plane well pressurized, so their ears were fine. Harper wouldn't sleep, though, so we had to entertain her for all three hours of the flight. Finley just stared out the window at the lights when we were taking off and landing.
At the "resort" in Florida; Harper hanging out with Baby Cousin Teddy (Finley used to include "Baby" and "Cousin" when she referred to both of them).
While we were down in Florida, we were able to meet up with Papa Joel and Grandma Liz; they were down about an hour south of us. As you can see, my father didn't let the record lows stop him from getting his sun. Of course, you are also see windburn, in addition to the suntan. You can see it here, but Harper was caught steal french fries from Papa Joel's plate. We didn't notice it at first, but after a few minutes we wondered how she always had a new fry.
The girls riding the Christmas train at the mall after lunch - it was Harper's first train ride since Lambs Farm back in Libertyville.
Most of the pictures from the Florida trip are on my Blackberry, so we don't have a lot here - I'm sure the event will also get some coverage at the other two "Hoschek" blogs. As I mentioned, the girls kept Amy on her toes all trip. Here she is passed out from exhaustion, but she's got her bucket, and shovel, along with her bottle of milk, clearly in her sights.
We had a teacher at Finley's preschool stay at the house with the dogs while we were out of town. While they loved being at home - I can't imagine what poor Dixie would be like after a week at the kennel, Monty obviously missed her pack (I don't know why "while" is highlighted and I can't turn it off - editor). Since we had to leave the condo in Florida at 6:00 am, Finley was pretty tired. She didn't fall asleep as we drove back from the Buffalo airport until the last 10 or 15 minutes, so we just carried her to the couch when we got home. Monty just assumed her normal sleep position like we'd never left.
And finally, Harper has begun to climb (we have a couple of really good pictures for later this week about this) and here she got up into the chair. What is impressive is that she was able to do it will still clutching her maraca, which she was shaking in this picture.
To close out, a video of Harper. Shelley was trying to take an action photo of Harper pushing the little walker that Uncle Brian and Aunt Kelly sent Finley a couple of years ago. As you'll see, it doesn't go according to plan, but it is a cute video that shows some of Harper's personality.
So, as I said above, this is the second of what I hope will be three or four more posts over the holidays. We had a great Christmas with the girls, so I hope your holidays were equally spectacular.
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