Sleeping Princess

Two nights ago, this is how Dave and I found Alaina when we went in to check on her before bed. She had found one of her old baby hats and put it on.



Now for the fun part. She was sleeping in the middle of her floor and had all of her toys completely surrounding her.


Look at the beautiful flower arrangement my parents sent me yesterday. Thanks Dad and Mom!!!

"Fun Friday"

Because I don't babysit tomorrow, today was officially "Fun Friday". Every Friday we try to do something fun. We usually have a messy craft, a fun lunch, and then popcorn and a movie. Today we started out the day finger painting. Then we moved on to chicken nuggets for lunch. We finished off with The Twelve Dancing Princesses and popcorn. The day went pretty smoothly (other than my falling on the ice like a klutz...)

On another note, Leo has been climbing more. I didn't know that was possible, but apparently it is. Two days ago he pushed our ottoman over to the table to get at Alaina's juice.


Then yesterday he pushed his toy bucket over to get into his highchair.
Alaina and I made "fun chocolate milk" last night. We were at the bottom of the chocolate container so we just had to pour in milk, shake, and drink. No additional glass needed.

Today the kids had a bath right before nap so they went to bed with wet heads. This is how Leo woke up....
But before nap, as part of Fun Friday tradition, we finger painted. I had 3 paper towel rolls, so the kids each got to paint a "telescope".




We just got a ton of snow today. So much that Aunt Pam was unable to drive through it to come and visit. (We wish you were here!! We were looking forward to seeing you!!) The silver lining of the blizzard is that Dave and Alaina can go out and play. It is wonderful, heavy packing snow--so I guess only wonderful if you aren't shoveling--so they should have fun out playing. Every other snow fall has been light, fluffy, non-packing snow. I expect to see snowballs flying and snowmen being built! I even have a carrot and some charcoal if they are ambitious. As usual, I'll take on the important task of having plenty of hot chocolate, blankets, and movies waiting when they come in.

Looonnnnggggg Week!

Sorry that I didn't post this week. It has been quite a long week. The kids have been sick this week. We brought them into the doctor on Thursday and found out that they each have 2 ear infections. They are finally starting to feel better, but I'm still struggling a bit with Leo because I am having a really hard time getting him to take his antibiotics. Then Dave left on Friday early afternoon for drill and got home tonight.

So, these pictures start from early last week. Alaina put stickers on her nails:

She looks so grown up in this picture!
Leo has been flipping over the end tables to play in them.
Last week Saturday (Valentines Day), Alaina and I planted an herb garden. She did a great job planting!

She didn't make as big of a mess as I thought she would. She did a great job of filling all of the spots evenly.

Then for dinner Alaina and I cooked for the guys. We made heart shaped pizza.

Sampling...
Waiting impatiently for the pizza to cook...

The finished product. They were really good!

For Alaina's first birthday, she got a V-Tech video game system. She wasn't able to use it then, but we broke it out last week for the first time since. It was a huge hit!

Check out that concentration!

Then we all got sick. Alaina was so sick she fell asleep on the couch. That has happened a few times. Also, her naps that are usually one and a half hours are now about three or three and a half hours. It is getting better slowly.


Tonight I showed Alaina her "flowers". She was really excited about them starting to grow. I told her tonight that when they get big we will use them to cook with. She laughed at me and told me that was silly. To prove my point, we picked a chive and a parsley plant to eat. She didn't like the chive but loved the parsley. She asked several more times tonight if she could eat her "flowers".


I just finished up another carton of eggs so we now have 3 more packets of seeds to plant. Then when they all get bigger and it gets warmer, I have long planters that we will put them all in. It is fun to watch her excitement in growing something.

Hot Glue Rocks!!

Over the last 14 hours or so I have used hot glue to fix Alaina's crown, Alaina's dress up shoes, and my slippers. I have also used it to make 2 new bows for Alaina's hair. First off, here are a couple of left over pictures from yesterday. Alaina was feeding her baby.


This one is for you Grammy Bonnie!!! I know how much you like these kinds of pictuers. (and now when I ask Alaina to smile, this is what she does most of the time...)

This morning Alaina and Leo got Valentines day presents from Grandpa Keith and Grandma Jane. Thank you!! Here is a picture of Alaina opening her present.

Leo was a little bit opertunistic and took Alaina's milk while she was opening presents.

She didn't notice. So when all was said and done he had an awesome new car filled with candy and 2 cups of milk.

Alaina broke her crown but by using hot glue and an old headband, it is now fixed and a favorite toy again.

The shoe was coming apart, but, once again, hot glue fixed it!!

Here she is playing with her shoes and crown.

Then this morning, since the hot glue gun was still out from last night, I made the ribbon from the kids' presents into bows. So, thank you Grandpa and Grandma for the ribbon too!

I hope you all have a great weekend!

I just played with the Christmas picture (that I took today) and here is what I got:

Oh my goodness, photo editing is so much easier with a bigger screen!!

The kids did arts and crafts this morning.
They did this after they made Valentines day wall hangings.

Long Awaited Christmas Pictures

This morning when Alaina picked out her clothes for the day (which she does every day), she picked out her Christmas dress. I then realized that I never took pictures of the kids in their Christmas outfits. So, I got Leo's out, got them both dressed, and took their picture early this morning. I actually got a picture of them smiling the first picture I took! Here are the kids Christmas outfits. Thank you Grandpa and Grammy!!

Kylee has the same dress as Alaina. If you click on this link, it will take you to Laura and Josh's blog where they have a picture of her in it:

http://jlengstrom.blogspot.com/2008/12/kylees-christmas-pictures.html

I was sitting at the comptuer and Leo came over and sat on the table next to me. Luckily, my camera was right next to me!


Oh! In case you were wondering, the chicken turned out fantastic. I added a little bit of brown mustard and soy sauce to the gravy and it made some of the best chicken gravy I have ever tasted. You should try it! I also put an onion soaked in lemon juice (because I didn't have a lemon to put in with the onion...) inside of the chicken along with parsley, sage, thyme, paprika, and garlic. I believe we are having pizza burgers tonight for an easy meal after last night.

Slime!!

So most of you from my generation remember Nickelodeon Slime. Grandpa Keith and Grandma Jane sent some home with us from South Carolina. Alaina was making "cookies" with it.

She was concentrating so hard. When I asked her to smile she said, "No Mom. I'm busy!"

It warmed up to 47 degrees yesterday. Because it warmed up so much, the slide that I had outside finally un-froze from the ground so I brought it in. The kids have really enjoyed having something to climb on when the weather lately has left us all a bit stir crazy.

Leo found one more thing to climb on to get an outside view.
This is what I spent my birthday and Christmas money on!! I bought a new 24" computer monitor that also works as a TV. When we move in a couple of months the computer desk and desktop computer will go in our bedroom and we will have the laptop downstairs. That doesn't work now because Dave takes the laptop to school. We had a tv/dvd player in our room before, but that is now by the kids toys so that the kids could watch cartoons on Sunday while Dave and I were watching football. It is also awesome to have such a big screen for photo editing.
We are finally halfway to the weekend!! This week seems to be dragging by. To make it seem like the weekend, I'm making a big dinner for tonight. I'm trying a new recipe for roasting a chicken tonight. It uses a bunch of herbs and you put half of a lemon and half of an onion inside of it while it bakes. We'll see how it works!! I haven't roasted a whole chicken since I worked at the group home. It can't be too hard, right?

Grandpa and Grammy's Visit

This weekend Grammy and Grandpa came to visit. We all had such a blast having them here! They came up right after the kids went to bed on Friday night. On Saturday morning we all went sledding and then went to walk around the mall. Here are some pictures from sledding:




On Saturday night Grandpa and Grammy watched the kids so that Dave and I could have a date night. We went out shopping. It was a lot of fun to have uninterrupted time with him. That is hard to find with 2 little kids. Grandpa, Grammy, Dave and I played card games while the kids sleep. Yesterday, Alaina played doctor. Here she was giving Grandpa medicine:

Yesterday while playing cards Alaina woke up early from her nap. We brought her downstairs and she then fell asleep in my lap. I had no problem playing cards with my baby cuddling in my lap.
Then Dave had a turn holding her.

She is getting big so fast. Who knows how many more times she will fall asleep in our arms.

Hope you all had as great of a weekend as we did!