Goofy birthday faces

Due to my head cold, Isaac's birthday cake wasn't nearly as amazing as last year, but he liked it, so who cares? We had a party (with 15!!!! kids), held in the church gym (smartest thing I've done so far this year) and despite his grumpy and somewhat antisocial behavior, he later said he had a good time.

Isaac was born during the coldest week of the year in Chicago, and this year is no exception. I posted some pictures last week, but here are some new ones of our "Winter Garden":



And lastly, Mary goes to bed later than our other two kids, and usually spends that extra half-hour reading or doing math homework. Tonight she was engrossed in a book about spaceships and kept interrupting her quiet reading to tell me about satellites and space stations and how astronauts have to strap themselves to the toilet so they don't make a mess of the whole space shuttle. (The six-year-old mind...) She read that some people believe there are other "beings" out in space and she asked me if they meant "humans". I said "maybe so", but she responded that the only other people out in space are aliens, not humans, and maybe they live on Jupiter.

Don't you love her nightgown? I made it for her for Christmas, and it took three weeks to convince her it was a nightgown, not a princess dress she could wear to school or church. She says "I love it because it goes all the way down to my feet."

A couple more pictures

Linda (on the right) with her buddy Millie McPheters, and Isaac goofing during Mary's very serious puzzle-making.

Signs of a Chicago Winter

This is the back porch of our apartment building, and just after I took these pictures, a neighbor came out and broke all the icicles off. Apparently it's supposed to warm up in the next few days and he didn't want to risk his kids getting speared.

WE'RE FINALLY BACK!

After an almost 7 month hiatus (excuse: broken camera, and you only come here for the pictures), the Chicago Stratfords are finally back on the web with new and exciting pictures! I had intended (like my amazing older sister) to take pictures with my new camera (thanks, Mom and Dad) of the kids using/wearing/holding all their Christmas gifts, then print them and send them with the thank-you cards they wrote. But January's more than half over, the thank-you cards are done, but the pictures are only half done. So I'm just going to post some here and then everyone can see them anyway. And I haven't yet taken any of Mary and her Christmas loot (she was at school when I captured Isaac and Linda), so I'll post those as I can.

Here's the newest member of our family (at least until the beginning of June): Chaco the Chewbacca cat who thinks he's a dog. Thanks to Chaco we no longer see any signs of mice in our apartment, but for heaven's sake, does he have to climb on my head in the middle of the night? He also sounds just like a baby crying, which can be incredibly annoying. But he lets the kids do almost anything to him, and I swear he wishes he was human. One evening Ed and I were sitting at the table talking, I looked to my left, and there was Chaco, perched on the stool with his front paws on the table, looking back and forth at Ed and I as if he were following every fascinating word.




If you've seen the Chicago weather report, you know how much snow we've had around here. Linda loves to go outside and play in it, but this was one of the rare days I could get Isaac to go out. It helped that his backyard neighbor and best buddy Mwenda was already outside building trails. Mwenda's in full-day preschool so they only get to play on Saturdays. They are at the same school and right across the hall from each other, but never see each other.