From Christmas to Vday

If I have any followers of this blog you'll know that I've terrible about updating it lately. I don't really have an excuse. I could say that I was busy but everyone is busy. I'm now making it a priority to update my blog more often. I'm in a diet competition right now with a group of people and one of the parts of the competition is to work on developing a good habit each day. So I'm blogging daily as my good habit. I also have a recipe blog and a weightloss blog (it's private)that I keep up with so you might not always see a post here but I'm posting somewhere. So I'm playing a little catch up tonight. One thing I noticed about my blog is that I didn't post anything in January and now that January is over I can't remember what happened that month. We just moved into our new house in November. Moving was such a hassle I'm just now starting to come out of that moving funk. On January 1st we had family and friends up for a housewarming party. And much of the rest of January was spent snowed in. Here are a few pictures of my time over the last few weeks.

One of my favorite pictures from Christmas morning I still can't believe I got both girls smiling and looking at the camera

Cute little apron set Kate got from her cousin Skylar

Lydia getting into trouble. She is constantly opening up drawers and cupboards. I just LOVE this stage (I'm kidding) She cruises around the entire kitchen really fast, I've got to get it on video cause it's crazy.

What my sweetheart gave to me on Valentine's Day. I LOVE red long-stemmed roses

Kate eating spaghetti

I'm sure I'm violating all the rules of motherhood here. Aren't mom's suppose to teach their kids to not eat like this. My poor children don't stand a chance with me as a mom I guess. Seriously, I got such a kick out of watching Kate eat her spaghetti that I grabbed the camera and recorded her. The cute thing was that Kate started to perform for the camera and so even when it was off she begged me to keep filming her. What a ham.

Here's the video where I am incriminating myself, I won't tell you the part where Kate was in the same pair of jammies from Thursday night until Sunday morning (we take Snow days seriously at our house) or how almost nightly we eat off of fine paper dinnerware so I can avoid dishes. I can't be such a horrible mom cause the green stuff on her plate is baby spinach (with ranch) and she ate all of it!

OH SNOW!

This week was the week of Snow for us. We had massive snow storms this week, the first one started Friday afternoon and didn't end until around 8pm on Saturday, and left us with about 25" of snow. Then Tuesday night another snow storm came through, this one with strong winds which made for blizzard like conditions and it piled on another 12" of snow. I should mention before these two back to back storms we had snow almost every weekend so there's really been snow on the ground since the beginning of winter.

It was great to be snowed in with my family, we had a lot of fun and did lots of little things together. Kate insisted that we have a picnic so we laid a blanket out in the family room and ate sandwiches. We also made Valentines day cookie's for the kids at her daycare and we had play dates with Cole our friend in the neighborhood. Lydia did her part in keeping up with the big sister. She is such a great little baby. I'm amazed with how much love these two have for each other. Kate always shares with her and is never mean to Lydia. And Lydia just loves her big sister. I can tell these two are going to be great friends for life. I almost feel like these two girls make my job as their mom too easy.

The day after the second snow storm, check out the drifts that are almost as tall as the fence, I think those fences are around 6'

This is a snow mountain created by shoveling the driveway, Kate has had so much fun this winter

The snow plows covered our mailbox so Brock had to dig it out

Kate and Lydia next to the snow moutain, I think it'll be July before this melts away

I love this picture, Lydia has her typical "what are you doing mom" look while Kate is being a big helper and making sure Lydia is staying put and now falling down the stairs. I love the look she is giving Lydia.

Keeping up with the Big Sister

It's totally true when they say the 2nd one grows up quicker. I can't believe how fast Lydia is growing up, I can hardly keep up with her and posting all that she is doing on my blog. She is almost 7months but when she turned exactly 6 months, to the day, she started crawling (Kate started crawling at 8 months). And by crawling I don't mean creeping which is what babies do pre-crawling that has been going on since before 4 months. So at 6 months I have this little crawler and just this week she has become really good at pulling herself up on furniture, her crib, really anything she can crawl to and stand up on. And just last night I saw her do a little 'cruising' before she crashed on the floor. I don't know if she'll be an early walker but I won't be surprised if she is. I need to get her 6months stats up here but I know she weighed in at 17lbs. I'll update this when I can with her stats. Here's a video (from Dec 2nd) of her crawling.

My Ballerina

Kate started ballet this week. I was hesitant for her to try this sport because she's never expressed an interest in ballet, and she is still pretty young for an "organized" class. But she surprised me, she did great. She followed the instructions of her ballet teacher, doing all the exercises. She was clearly the youngest ballerina in her class, but not the worst! One little girl was off in her own planet the entire time.

Dancing

She's doing her stretches with the rest of the class (she is all the way to the left, the girl all the way to the right was the little stinker in the class)

During the class
At the end of class she let me take a picture

This weekend we met up with some 'virtual friends' for dinner, I'm on a message board of October 2006 mom's and we all have really gotten to know each other really well over the years. This mom is from Georgia and is vising this week in our area because they are relocating here in a few months. It's fun to meet up with these mom's, I consider them all such good friends even though I haven't met most of them.

My cutie pie, is growing up so fast she is such a ray of sunshine

Halloweenie

For Halloween we ended up at our friends the Coleman's house for a Halloween party. We took the girls trick or treating around the neighborhood. Kate was just as cute as ever marching up to the door by herself while we stood on the sidewalk. She was so cute, thanking everyone for her treat, and if she saw a lollipop in the mix, she always asked nicely for it. She loves lollipops! Here are some pictures from our Halloween this year.

I love my bumble bee and flower

Brock worked very hard on this pumpkin

TUTU cute

It's fun to have girls, you can dress them up and do girlie things with them like these pictures. My friend gave me this idea.

Both girls were exactly 5 months when I took these.
Lydia

Kate