It's Great to be Eight.

Lexi turned 8 and celebrated in style with a sleepover party for five of her little friends. Together they decorated tshirts,made hair ties and beaded bracelets. Add a dance party and few late night movies and we had a giggly bunch of little girls. Happy Birthday Baby!

 

 

 

 

Kids know

 

Last week, Anna made this picture at school. While she is quite defensive about her snowman and insists that he isn't crying, I believe that she had a glimpse into the future: even the snowman is sick of snow and reduced to tears.

Fun in the snow

 

Melting

So the snow may be holding steady but Anna is melting. After a rough morning--fighting with anyone that she talked to-- she declared that she was moving to live with a new family. I asked where she was going. She quickly fired back that she was going to Seattle and I need to take her to the airport. When I turned for the camera, this is her response. Each picture was accompanied by a dear little four-year-old screaming, "GET AWAY FROM ME!" Over and over again.

2010 Snow Storm

I feel like I already posted this but we have had two huge snow storms in less than six weeks. Here is the February 5-6 snow storm that dumped over 2 FEET of snow across most of the state of MD (and VA and PA...but I'm not worried about them.)
You know it is a big storm when you have the view that Mitchell had out his bedroom window. The snow was even with the window ledge.

At the height of it all, we measured right around 25" in our front yard but there was a bit of blowing and so it might have been a little more or less. Anna didn't want to spend much time outside since she couldn't really do much unless the area had already been cleared. (It did come well above her waist as you can see from the front sidewalk.)

Here is our house in the winter wonderland. Our neighbor picked up his late Christmas gift on Friday morning. The snow storm tried to swallow that little thing up but in the end the snowblower won and made our lives much easier.


We've got some fun neighbors. Three of the four families on our street worked together to clear the street and our driveways. Valencias brought the snowblower and provided warm chocolate chip cookies when we finishes. The people behind us decided to have a little fun with the snow and we found this cowboy sticking out of the snow when they had finished digging out.


Here is our work party slaving away. Thanks for the help everyone!

Our Christmas Surprise

So our Odyssey dealt us a little surprise in December. While spending time with family in PA between Christmas and New Years...it died. Merry Christmas. Luckily with some help from my uncle we got a good deal on a new set of wheels:

Behold...our 2010 Dodge Grand Caravan. (okay so this isn't exactly a picture of OUR vehicle but it looks the same.)

Happy New Year!

Although we spend the evening at home to ring in 2010, there was lots of fun to be had. We spent hours playing games and eating fondue. The kids also made some nifty glasses to wear as they watched the ball drop. Anna collapsed around 10pm followed closely by Lexi. Kassie made it until 11:59 but we didn't realize she was sleeping until Mitchell went screamed "Happy New Year...I'm going to bed." Luckily we have DVR so we took it back a few minutes so that she could see the ball drop and follow him up the stairs.

Family Photos

So I managed to get a lot of Christmas cards out this year but just in case I missed you...I'm sorry. Here is our Christmas 2009 family photo.


Amazingly, the kids all cooperated and I got a pretty nice shot of them together.

Christmas 2009

Christmas isn't a day. It's the whole season. Maybe in the future I'll be better about posting in smaller segments but this year. It's one monstrous post with all the fun rolled into one. Starting with the ward Christmas party. Santa was wonderful! I think it was his first go at it on the ward level and he was clearly enjoying it as much as the kids were.


As usual, we decorated our family gingerbread house. This year I put a new spin on things. Instead of struggling with the dough trying to get it cut into shapes and transferred to the pan for baking, I rolled it out onto a huge baking sheet and cut out the pieces after they were baked but while still hot. SO MUCH EASIER! (I know most of you already knew that but it was a great realization for me.) I found a new, much tastier recipe too so the gingerbread actually got eaten in addition to all of the candy. Fun to make, fun to eat!



I made some yummy cookies and candy this year too. Fun and really yummy. We got to eat more of it than intended since I made treats for all of the teachers and bus drivers but decided that they might not be as delectable when the kids went back to school on January 4th. The large box is part of the gift I gave to Dr. Jim. (I do book keeping for his office.) In all, we got to eat (and share) Oatmeal Fancies, PB cookies, Oreo Truffles, M&M candies, PB balls, & cinnamon rolls.

Christmas finally rolled around. We spent a great Christmas Eve afternoon with Nana and Pappy and Uncle Jason, Aunt Bridgette, Spencer and Meghan. After eating a quick bite we opened presents and played with our new things. The cousins had to leave early but Nana and Pappy hung around until around 7:00pm which turned out great because Matt and Pappy spent some time playing games with the kids while Nana and I escaped to the upstairs and did some last minute wrapping. (I thought I had a better handle on it than I did. Glad she was here or I never would have been in bed by 10:00 that night!)
I'm never very good at remembering to take pictures on Christmas day. Too much going on to pull the camera out but here are some random shots of Christmas morning and the weekend after. It seemed that Christmas just kept coming for the kids when various relatives would show up with gifts.