Best wishes to all!

Matt and I say thank you Rocks for hosting all of us for Thanksgiving and ...

we hope Aisha and Kiara ahave a smooth flight home and fun St Nicholas Party!

Thanksgiving Week!

Aisha & Kiara are gone and Thanksgiving is over ;-(

Aisha & Kiara caught their flight back to Holland tonight at 6pm; while I was at work. It seemed like it all went so fast. Aisha was amazing and really got around more that i expected and i'm pretty sure more than SHE expected! We even hit the shopping mall; which had provided for free a motorised scooter for her to truck all over the place. It was great loading her up with all the purchases! I may have to try and get one for me the next time i go...really pile on the bundles.... We almost bought Zara the horse! hahaha
I have no idea how Aisha did it all and kept up with the frantic pace of FUN after fun culminating at Thanksgiving Day at the Rocks!!!! Megan was a wonderful host to Kiara and Kiara warmed up quickly with a few verses of her PING and PONG song! Megan and Kiara were wrestling and showing off their own brand of Judo/Tae Kwon do to each other; we laughed so hard. I think Tommy, Matt's 16 year old brother, was the first in line cheering them on! He evidently was HIGHLY amused!
Then we all-- Renee included-whether she wanted to or not!- sang (in English) "Singing in the Rain" with Kiara & her zippy Dutch accent!
We had our first ever deep fried turkey; nice one Matt! The house survived the traditional deep fry Turkey fire; so that was a positive! The food was all superb; butternut squash and homemade apple pies!
Dinner was spectacular and sitting at the table hours later, even after dinner and dessert was served, was the most fun. Baby Zara, Tommy jr and Jack had all since fallen asleep and it was such a nice and relaxed scene!
Here is a smattering of shots from the past 9 days!
and now on to Christmas- as made apparent by FM 97.1 which is a radio station that starts to play ONLY holiday music all the way til the 25th! Gotta love that kind of shameless marketing!

AISHA AND KIARA all the way from Holland!

Zara is 3 and a half months old and she still has wonderful visitors coming to meet her. She is feels so fortunate that Aisha and Kiara made such a great tripThey landed almost 20 minutes early and when Zara and I picked them up from Dulles they had lots of energy! How impressive after such a looong translatlantic flight. Kiara sat next to the car seat and held Zara's hand the whole way home. Kiara is the sweetest Honorary sister!!!

Aisha's blog is http://birdsperch.blogspot.com/ and you can read about their trip!~ Aisha is a cancer survivor and is recovering from a back surgery too, so it was amazing that she made the flight with luggage too!!! I met Aisha in 5th grade in Tunisia 1978! I would say she is probably one of my oldest friends that i'm still get to have in my life!

They brought Zara the cutest Panther outfit...although people keep thinking she's a leopard; either way.. she's very "Versace" in it!

The TISKA'S COME TO TOWN!

Jen Tiska (my college roomie) and her amazing family made the huge trek to DC http://tiskatimes.blogspot.com Jen and her husband Rich are great at bringing their 3 kiddies down to DC often .. they always go to see all the Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo! Richard loves the museum where the animals have no skin.. all the fossilized skeletons!

Here we are at the Zoo; even though Zara had no clue where she was; she loved smiling at Sammy, Richard and Rowan!