the Middlebrook Family

Hello November! It's appropriate to catch up on November today since it felt like Winter again. Oh those lovely two weeks of spring- they have given me enough hope to make it until May *I think*.

More than anything else over the last few months of silence, I feel particularly bad about not sharing any pictures of Eden's 3rd birthday party with family. Sorry grandparents!! In my defense I was newly pregnant (I get morning sickness early around 3 weeks), beginning to plan for simultaneous trips to Texas and Israel, Christmas shopping early for those trips, and married to a student approaching the end of a semester. Oh. And my DSLR camera broke. AGAIN. 5 minutes before the party. I didn't want to look at the quality of the iPhone pictures for a while. My camera was returned to me from the repair shop a mere two weeks ago- so brace yourself for months of lower quality photos!

Eden asked for a Nutcracker party. She became obsessed with the story after we gave her a beautiful picture book for Christmas in 2010. The guest list was a bit awkward as she has one girl friend and was very insistent that everyone coming would come prepared to dance and not act like soldiers or the mouse king. After much deliberation about how to include the boys I took the easy road out and invited all her adult girl friends instead. Admittedly I've since felt a bit guilty about leaving the poor boys out of such fun.

 
We decorated with a variety of dollar store snowflakes (and some beautiful large paper ones for the window sent from my mom!),  candy (from the land of sweets of course), and nutcrackers borrowed from a friend's collection.

 Eden got to pick out a nutcracker ornament for the Christmas tree and we used it as the cake topper.

 We served hot cocoa with toppings.

 And decorated a blank nutcracker for the birthday girl.

Eden's adult girl friends are a group of wonderful women who we meet with weekly for dinner and prayer as part of our Missional Order- a group of people from our church who all live in Highwood (boys come too :) ).  Eden really loves them all dearly and they surprised me with awesome dedication to making her birthday special. On their own they decided to make and wear tutus to surprise Eden. So we spent a night watching The Fall and crafting. It needs to be pointed out that there was no sneaking into the party and putting tutus on discreetly- these women proudly wore their tutus from their cars, down our street, and into our home. Eden was so excited!!

So we drank cocoa and painted.

And ate yummy cake.

And danced while watching an excerpt from a British ballet company's performance of The Nutcracker. 

 Here Eden is the next morning after her prized Nutcracker had dried:

On her birthday Thomas and I gave her a dollhouse. We had a lot of fun collaborating on a handmade kitchen for her first birthday, so we worked together again to put together a dollhouse kit.

Eden got to pick her favorite papers at Paper Source a month before without knowing that they would become the interior wallpaper. It was interesting figuring out how to use her picks!

Prepare yourselves for a few more bad pics of November, a lot from December, and a possible Israel trip post soon!