Toone Family

It's officially Christmas time! Actually, it's been Christmas at our house since...well, last Christmas, pretty much. Yup, we're Christmas freaks. The decorations have been up for several weeks now, and I'm not ashamed to admit that at any given point during the year -- be it Valentine's Day, Memorial Day or Labor Day -- Christmas carols can be heard ringing throughout the Toone home. More than once I've been interruped during a phone conversation to have the other party say, "Is that...? Is someone playing...Silent Night?" You bet they are! Well, let's review some of the highlights of the month. Amanda is increasingly interested in sounding things out and piecing together her own words and phrases using the letter magnets on our fridge. Here is one of her recent compositions: For those of you who are illiterate, this plainly reads "Boy kiss girl" (Amanda-style, of course). Amanda had colored the picture in the background and informed me ...

October just seems to be chock full of birthdays, Halloween celebrations and pumpkins, pumpkins, pumpkins! So here's a look at our October...now that it's gone... Lily's second birthday party at our house. Those of you who know me know that I am a selfish mother whose children's birthday cakes don't bear the likeness of cartoon characters, superheroes or anything besides a rather traditional-looking dessert. There are two reasons for this: 1) a fair amount of time goes into making a cake, and 2) I have to eat the cake. These factors alone mean that the cake dang well better taste good. I like ice cream cake best, so Lily's cake this year was a three-tier vanilla and chocolate ice cream cake frosted with chocolate ganache. Ah, the joys of having a two-year-old again. To be fair, Amanda really didn't do this sort of stuff. Lily was born to this earth with some sort of homing device for ink-filled writing utensils (pens, markers -- pretty much anything that wil...