No crawling for this girl!

Jane thinks she is such a big girl. She has never crawled down our stairs. No that would be too babyish. She insists on walking down the stairs and given we have a lot of stairs with a tile floor at the bottom it scares me every time she comes down the stairs.

Lucas finally graduated from nursery and here he is on his first day of primary!!

Really, another snow day?!!?!??!

Yes, that is the grass that you see but YES we did have a SNOW DAY today!! Only B-town would cancel for this kind of snow!! Honestly I might go a little crazy. I mean don't get me wrong. I love a good snow day but we've had a few too many of them lately. Last week the kids had 2 days off for snow. Then we had monday off for a holiday and Tuesday for a teacher development day. The kids went back to school yesterday. They were off for this ridiculous amount of snow and no joke they will probably not be in school tomorrow. That's just how it works here!! I might not mind so much if we had a slightly larger home but we really are on top of each other and I think it is time for the kids to go back to school!! Imagine how long school would be canceled if we had a real snow storm!

Look who turned 4!!

Lucas turned 4 and had his first birthday party! He wanted a Buzz Light Year party so with Andy's help we put together a fun party. Lucas was one happy boy! It's hard to believe he is already 4!!

Lucas, Maggie, Jenna, Harrison, Makenna, and Ben

We played lots of games. The loved making paper planes and having contests to see who could fly it the farthest.The limbo was also a big hit and they are actually good at it because they are all so little!

Cell Phones

So, over the past several days I have noticed Lucy asking me questions. A lot of questions. Questions like "Mom, when did you get your ears pierced?
"Mom, how old were you when you started driving?"
"Mom how old were you when you started wearing make-up?"
"What about lip gloss? Could you wear that sooner than make up?"

All of her questions are obviously in hopes of trying to figure out when she will be able to do certain things or to find out when she can start bugging us about allowing her to do those things.
Yesterday her question was, "Mom, when did you get your first cell phone?"

I think she was excited for my answer....until she heard it.
"4 years ago"

She was in disbelief!
"Well we didn't have cell phones when I was young. They didn't even exist"
She thought that was odd but it gave her a bit of relief to think perhaps she didn't have to wait until she was almost 30 to get a cell phone!!

Who stole the candy from the candy box?

While at my parents house I caught Jane on several occasions stuffing her face with chocolate. She discovered the table that treats were on and would so slyly make her way to the table and grab treats as fast as she could. One afternoon while I was playing a game with kids and realized Jane was pretty quiet this is how I found her! Now really, what could make a little girl happier?!??! She wasn't so happy when I took the candy away and ended all her fun!

Happy New Year

After being in California we flew to Utah where we spent the New Year with some of my family. It was great seeing everyone! We played lots of games, ate, shopped, went sledding, and exercised. It was nice and relaxing. Sad to see it come to an end.

We had fun bringing in the new year with a party for the kids (that happened well before midnight!)



Perhaps Lucy should have been my mom's daughter. Lucy loves to clean and organize and became my mom's sidekick while at my parent's house. She LOVED following grandma around cleaning and decorating for our New Year's party. Where was I? Well, I came down with that wonderful flu that had been going around in California so I slept most of the day but came out to be with everyone at night. This is how I found my mom and Lucy!
And it wouldn't be the new year without a giant breakfast the next morning. It's tradition that my mom and dad do a nice breakfast for anyone who is in the house each new year. So yummy!!
There is always some GREAT sledding at Grandma and Grandpa's house. They live on a mountain so they of course have a great sledding hill. The guys went out ahead of the kids and built up the course and a big starting ramp. I must say I was pretty impressed. I think it may have been the best made course so far!

Grandpa, Ethan, and Andrew

Andy and Lucy

This was taken from inside. Ethan got going a bit too fast and didn't get out of his sled soon enough and ended up over the side of the hill and in the trees. It took quite a bit of effort to get out.This is a picture of Lucy, Grandma and Grandpa after a run down the hill.

More cousin fun

Look at these cute baby cousins!! Sophie was so sweet and smiley all the time. Jane and Cole were caught fighting on many occasions. I'd like to blame it on Cole but really Jane had some issues!! Almost anytime Cole would walk into the room or get near Jane she would start screeching. We referred to Cole and Jane as Frienemies throughout the week!


After Disneyland, the weather cleared up and we had fun enjoying the California sun!


The kids were just going down to look at the beach, play in the sand, and maybe put their feet in the water. Well, they didn't stop at their feet. All the kids had fun at the water and Ethan and Blake went full on swimming!! For those of us from the midwest, it is pretty amazing to be swimming in the ocean in the middle of December!!

Christmas

After the reunion, our family and Jim/Kristina and kids and Mike/Amy and kids went back with to have Christmas at mom's house. It was a FULL house. There was never lack in noise or throw up or diarrhea (that might be thanks to us!!). However, it was fun to be with everyone and mom was nice to put of with all the chaos. It was also fun to see mom's newly remodeled kitchen and be the first to test it out! It was also highly entertaining to be around Amy - or should I say Amy June - when she came down with the flu. Let's just say there was a lot of dramatic whining and requests coming out of her mouth! Mike has learned to ignore the ridiculous requests and I found myself at one point making her an apple juice slushy! Yes, it was a Merry Christmas!!

It wouldn't be Christmas without some robes and towels to act out the nativity.

Which one is the real Amy? Ha!

I copied this from my sister-in-laws blog. In case you don't know her, her name is Amy June and she is super fun to be around!!

How I lost my name

10 years ago my brother married a charming girl named Amy. I liked her then and I like her now but I DON"T like the fact that we have the same name because it gets very confusing when we are together with my family. My family took to calling me Amy Classic which I didn't like very much. Since I am the original Amy I feel that i should be just Amy and they can call her something else. But alas the problem has continued this whole time. So this Christmas my whole family was together (except for Robert and Emily who just had a baby) for a Disneyland vacation. We had a great time but that's a different post. Anyway, one night several people started arm wrestling. Amy went on and on about how weak she was and how she never beats anyone in arm wrestling. Now I am pretty lame myself considering my 12 year old nephew can beat me but since she was going on and on and on about it I thought...........here's my chance to settle this problem forever. I challenged her to an arm wrestle and said that whoever won got all the rights and privileges of forever more being called Amy. The loser would have to come up with a new name. I thought I was so clever......until I lost that is. So yes, I lost my birthright and no one will let me forget it. If you are a member of my family I now will only respond to the name of AmyJune.

And obviously my lesson learned is that I AM THE WEAKEST PERSON IN THE WORLD.

p.s. Amy-is this the real reason you made me an apple juice slushy? Did you feel bad about stealing my name?

Family Reunion at Disneyland

We had so much fun for our family reunion this year. Andy's mom took everyone to Disneyland for 4 nights and we spent 3 days at the park. We were a little worried as the days of the reunion approached and we could tell it would be raining the entire time we were there. However, the rain didn't seem to stop any of us and we all went and had fun. In fact, the rain turned out to be a blessing as the lines weren't very long. We stayed at Disneyland until Christmas Even and then some of us went back to mom's house for Christmas. We enjoyed going back and forth from Disneyland to California Adventure. I got to experience the Tower of Terror for the first time and loved it in a weird way and managed to go on it one last time before leaving the parks. It was so much fun! Thanks to Andy's mom for everything!!

Here are some of the younger cousins on day 1 ready to go out into the rain!
Julia and Lucy in Mini's house. Julia is quite a character and so just looking at this picture makes me smile!!
Between the umbrella and poncho Lucas managed to stay pretty dry!
Lucas and Grandma at the Rain Forrest Cafe.

Here is Jane on her first Dumbo ride ever. Her face looked like this most of the day. She wasn't sure what to think of everything!!

This is one of my favorite memories from our entire trip. I won't go into all the details of how I managed to find myself in California Adventure for a few hours with just Ethan and a bunch of tickets that weren't being used for the afternoon. It wasn't really planned but ended up working out that way and Ethan and I had tons of fun. We went on Tower of Terror and then were able to go on California Screaming 2 times in a row without waiting in a line thanks to fast passes and extra tickets. We only had about 2 hours to do everything and it was tons of fun. Ethan loves a good roller coaster - as do I! On our way out of the park we bought a churro to share. He had never had one. We sat on the bench to share it. He was so so happy the entire time we were together. He said "this is kind of like a date huh? We should take a picture" Luckily I had my camera. I feel like I spend way too much time getting after Ethan but when I am one on one with him (which doesn't happen ofter) we have a great time together. I am so happy he and I got to spend those two hours together!
And it wouldn't be a reunion without some skits and games. Here is Mike holding a wrapped Lucy. Yes, Lucy is under all the wrapping paper. It was part of a game to see which team could wrap their person and deliver it first. Blake and Lucy were the lucky ones to be wrapped!!

This isn't a good picture - it's blurry but I had to include it because some of the cousins were showing different talents - gymnastics being one of them. Jane saw what they were doing and it was as thought she thought "what's the big deal. I can do that too." So, up she got and started showing off trying to steal the show!! I thought it was funny!!
Jane and Grandma. I love this picture. Jane kept running to grandma. Getting on her lap. Sitting for about a minute and then leaving. She repeated this many many times.
We also had a cousin gift exchange and a white elephant gift exchange with the adults. Here are Katie and Lucy.

I think Chad was excited to get a pair of underwear that would finally fit him!!
This was Lucas' first time at Disneyland. I think the monorail was his favorite ride along with Dumbo!! I didn't realize how scary the rides were until I went with Lucas! He's quite the nervous Nel! But he did manage to muster up enough courage to pose for a picture with Goofy!!