Christmas snowstorm

We spent Christmas this year with Tony's family up in Oneonta, NY. Ellie has been talking about "snow at Grandmas house" all year. It's pretty much a given that there will be a white Christmas up there, but I still had my fingers crossed for her. We were in luck! When we arrived there were about two inches on the ground, which, if you are a four year old from TX, seems like all the snow you could ever need! Ellie and Matthew and thier cousin Ava enjoyed sledding on the big hill, with the help of a few string Daddy's to steer the toboggan and pull them back up the hill. I went down once, and it was fast enough that I found myself remembering that people can break bones and get some pretty nasty sledding injuries. We switched to a slightly smaller hill after the first (too fast) run. We even convinced our littlest cousin Ian to take one run down the hill. He cried at the top and the bottom, but seemed to love the trip down!





Then came the big snow that wiped out NYC this year! While we didn't get 29 inches like some places in NJ, we did get about 8. Again, the kids were thrilled. Out we went in the 7 degree weather. Matthew lasted about sixty seconds. He's just a little too short to be able to navigate that much snow without falling down a lot. Ellie and her Alaskan cousin Ava, who is plenty used to big snow, stayed out for quite a while.


Sledding and playing in the snow thankfully translated into tired kids and big naps!

Birthday Party

A good old fashioned birthday party at home...what was I thinking?!!?!? These days we've got the bounce houses, Chucky Cheeses, character parties, put-put. Someone else to do the party for you. You show up (and pay) and it's all taken care of. As Ellie's birthday is so close to Christmas, and one her best friend's, Tanner, also has his birthday in a few days, we decided to do a low-key, at home, good old fasioned (joint) birthday party. Before I go any further, the kids had a great time, the house survived, the mom's got to chat, pizza and cake were great! It was a success! But, I am EXHAUSTED.

Here was my vision...Pin the tail on the Donkey, Musical Chairs, Christmas Music playing while we made gingerbread houses, pizza and cake, goody bags...and it's a wrap. All of those things happened, it was just a lot crazier than I thought it would be. Seven screaming four year old. Several screaming two years olds. Two crying babies. ICING. CANDY. FOOD. TOYS. RUNNING. The dog pooped on the floor. Matthew peed on the floor. Again, they had fun. And let me tell you...the birthday party fairy was looking over us. It was 77 degrees today!!!! We did a lot outside. But, wow. WOW. Now, I understand the birthday party industry.

A few highlights...

This one is my favorite. Who can interpret this abstract art? To me it says, "bunch of four year olds who cheat, and one two year old (Matthew) who doesn't know how to cheat yet". Yes, they had a blindfold on!




The pizza and the cake...note the outfit...it was her party...who was I to argue? Thanks Aunt Jill and Uncle Nabil!

Friends, and the gingerbread house. And I promised her she could eat it after dinner...oh boy.

And the little brother...every good birthday party needs one!

Santa's early arrival

So last night, I heard through the Elf grapevine that Santa had some things for Ellie and Matthew that were going to be too big to bring back on the plane from Grandmas house, so he wanted to drop them off a few days early. We got all ready for his arrival...cookies and milk for Santa. Cucumbers for the reindeer. And both kids drew him a bunch of pictures and made name tags for Santa to put on their gifts so we knew what was for who in the morning. Then this morning, we awoke to this....


What could they be????!?!?!?



New bikes!!!!!!!!!!!! And a few other things too....





Our next step is outside to ride bikes!! Now, just to make sure we were in the real Christmas spirit, Santa brought the bikes on the coldest day of our Texas winter yet. 33 degrees. He couldn't have waited till Wednesday when it's going to be 70???

The Land Before Time

These days Matthew is as boy as boys can get. Three major injuries and he's only two, broke a chair today, and the dinosaur obsession....

Ellie has a baby doll that she has carried around forever. Her name is "Baby". Very inventive. Matthew has a dinosaur that he carries around. His name is "Dinosaur". Again. Inventive. Matthew, at two, can identify and say the names of the Pterodactyl, Tyranasuarus Rex, Brontosaurus, and Triceratops. "Dinosaur" is a Brontosaurus, however, whenever we say that name, for this particular one, he always corrects us, "No. Dinosaur". His name is "Dinosaur".

Ellie has loved having a doll house, bottles for her babies, clothes to dress them in, and high chairs to feed them in. I have been on a quest to find some sort of dinosaur paraphernalia to add to Matthew's dinosaurs. I was really wanting something that would be the equivalent of a doll house, for dinosaurs...whatever that would be. A mountain? Cave men to eat? I couldn't find anything I liked so Tony and I set out to make our own. I have to say it turned out great!!!! Tony did the sawing, and I did the collecting, painting and gluing. Here is the finished product....

And here is Matthew's face as he came down the stairs and saw it for the first time...


And the best part....playing.....

Our Wild Safari

This weekend we all went to a birthday party at a Put-put place....but you wouldn't know it from the pictures we came home with. Looks more like a wild safari! We started out with four put-put clubs and balls, which we quickly changed to just two. What were we thinking...there would be no grown up put-put...the kids needed major help. Matthew LOVED "whacking" the ball. And Ellie gave it a few tries too. After about two holes though, the clubs were completely abandoned and the wild safari began! This great put-put place had HUGE animal statues for the kids to sit on, and each "Daddy" animal had a "baby" with it. Not quite sure why both our kids thought all the animals were Daddies...no Mommies to be seen. Maybe the Mommies were at the spa. Ha! Anyway, while there was little put-putting at the put-put place, the kids had a ball!!!!!!

Happy Halloween!!!!!!

In this house, Ellie is in charge of this adorable little duo. So, following her obsession with the Disney Princesses, she picked Ariel the Little Mermaid for her own costume, and then told Matthew and I that he was going to be Flounder. She has even been calling him Flounder during play times. What a good little sport he is...one time I called his name, Matthew, and he told me, "No. Name Flounder." He was happy to oblige, and be Flounder for Halloween.

The Flounder costume proved to be a little difficult to find. Well, let me take that back. There were plenty of them on ebay, but no joke they were all selling for over $100!!! So, with my limited sewing skills I knew that I could do something for a lot less. I found a stuffed flounder for $14, cut it in half, and sewed one half to the front of a short and the other half to the back. To top it off, we made him a blue fin on his head with the help of some blue hair spray. Perfect, simple and cheap!



I had no trouble finding an Ariel costume. They are everywhere. And the creme de la creme was the long red wig. She was SO impressed with herself, but did look slightly concerned as she asked me, "mommy, is my real hair still in there somewhere?".


And no Halloween is complete without carving our pumpkin and roasting the pumpkin seeds.

Happy Halloween from Texas!!

Pumpkin Patch 2010

One of our favorite play group events last year was a trip to a pumpkin patch where we were greeted by a real live scarecrow, who read us a story, showed us the insides of a pumpkin, and gave everyone their very own pumpkin to take home. So, that was high on our to-do list for this fall.

Today's weather was perfect! Sunny and cool (75??). The kids were dressed in their fall best, and off we set with cameras in hand. If you are two or four, the best parts were really running around amid all those pumpkins, picking flowers and jumping in the hay. There was a story too, but I'm not sure if they even remember it :)







I just followed them around and took as many pictures as I could until Matthew got tired of hearing me call his name, and telling him to look at the camera. He started telling me, "All done, Mommy". That's two-year-old for "get that camera out of my face!" But, don't worry, I got plenty, and I am even in one! We are home now, tired and happy. Both kids are watching a show with their new pumpkins in their laps, not quite ready to let them go. Happy Fall!

Matthew's Birthday - Part 1 - Cici's Pizza

I took Matthew and Ellie to Cici's Pizza today for lunch for Matthew's birthday. It is an all you can eat pizza buffet place, where our kids still eat for free, and I always have coupons...so our whole family can eat a meal for about $5 total. The kids LOVE it here and always point it out when they see one. Even Matthew knows what the sign looks like. And this is what an all you can eat pizza meal looks like with a two year old and a three year old...


Throughout the meal Matthew kept saying, "See ducks!" and pointing at the little room where they have arcade games and gumball machines. I didn't quite know what he was talking about. It's kind of like playing 20 questions with him sometimes. You can't always tell what he's saying. Our conversation went something like this....

Matthew - "See Ducks!"
Me - "See Ducks?"
Matthew - "No! See Ducks!"
Me - "Ducks??"
Matthew - "No!!! Ducks!!!"
Me - "I don't think there are ducks in there."
Matthew - "See Ducks! Duck! Junk!"
Me- "Ohhhh....junk. See junk?"
Matthew - "Yup"

Apparently, on another visit there, I told them both that we weren't going in the arcade room because everything in there was junk. Well, he remembered that it was junk, but that sure didn't deter him from wanting to go in there again. Be careful what you say....they remember.

Artist in Residence

As you may have read in my last post we had my mother, Nana, visiting last month. Ellie has recently developed a love for art, and was so excited to hear that Nana is a real life artist! We were accumulating a LOT of loose pages of Ellie's "art", so we gave her a folder and told her it was her "portfolio". That portfolio travels around the house with her now and helps collect all of the days "art" which you can guess by my use of quotation marks is a word I am using loosely. Most of her pages include at least one smiley face with a tongue sticking out. So, anyway, back to Nana...I knew right away that her one job while she was here, other than doing "art" with Ellie, was going to be painting murals on the kids walls. Were we ever excited!!



Ellie got a collage of butterflies above her bed, with one little one over by the window who must have been trying to escape from the pack :) She has slept backwards in her bed ever since Nana was here, because wants to fall asleep looking at her butterflies.



Matthew got an alligator in a swamp, along with a little dragonfly by his window. He insists on saying "night-night alligator" and blowing him a kiss before every nap and bedtime.




And I got a row of little duckies along the bottom of the kids bathroom wall...We love it! Thanks Nana!

August

As I was looking through my camera I had an abundance of unusually cute pictures. I can't think of any blog posting that can explain them all so I'm just going to give you a run down of our very hot August here in Texas. There was the ballet lesson of course, and you'll never believe it, but two weeks later I spent the day promising her that she would finally have a lesson that day when the phone rings and the teacher is sick. No ballet that day either. You have GOT to be kidding me.

Our main event this month was a visit from Nana. She braved the hottest month in Texas, with temps never falling below 100 while she was where. I did hear her say, "this isn't so bad" a few times. There's just something different about our heat than up on the east coast. That said, I can't wait for jeans and the fireplace...I'm done with this heat. One of the most exciting parts of her visit was the creation of the murals on the kids walls. I'll show you the pictures in a few days as they deserve their own post. While she was here we rode the hot train....

Wore our hot sunglasses....


Saw the hot dinosaur at the science museum....


Harvested our hot (and somewhat pitiful) carrots, which Ellie ate all of at one sitting....

Wore our hot farmer Brown clothes....

And I don't even know what to say about this one other than, "How adorable is he!?"

Oh, August...eight days to go...I don't why I keep telling myself that September will be cooler...It will, RIGHT????