Freezing

What a January it has been so far!  Apparently this is the 2nd snowiest January on record here, with more still to come.  Tomorrow brings another polar vortex, with more sub zero temps, and more school closings.  And while we're on the topic of freezing, when I kiss 3 sets of chubby cheeks each night and they giggle and their eyes light up like I'm their whole world (cause I pretty much am) I wish I could freeze them at this age.  I was going through old pictures today (had some spare time cause church was cancelled, again!) and I realized how much you think you will remember things but you don't unless you have a picture of that face they used to make or a story written down, so here goes:

Sadie has been my early riser lately while the older two sleep in.  Though I really enjoyed my good run of sleeping in, it is kind of fun to have some time with just her.  She loves to roll the ball with me. 

 She is my little "helper".  She has been crawling for a little while but is just starting to really see all the freedom she has to explore and it has been fun to watch, except when one of us forgets to close the bathroom door... she is our quietest mischief maker to date.  She will happily roam and do her own thing for awhile, and she also likes to follow her brother and sister around and try to play with them.

 Two of her trademarks: sticking her jaw out and her eye rolling in- we are keeping a watch on the latter.

 and she LOVES to play peekaboo.  Where's Sadie?

 There she is!

She won't keep a headband on so she gets mistaken for a boy sometimes, but so did her older sister, and I think there's no mistaking she's a girl now!

 Except she still acts like one sometimes, I guess that's what you get for having an older brother.  They have been obsessed with Spiderman books right now, and Marissa thinks she is Peter Parker.  She walks around all day saying things like, "I'm Peter Parker!  I'm going to the Science Expo!"  She has also taken after him in scripting out exactly what she wants to you say.  And she still likes to collect everything in her various containers and disperse them in different places so you can't find them.  Last night I asked her where her letters were and she said, "Well, maybe I was hiding them somewhere" and showed me how she had shoved them all under my dresser.  Then she told me "say you're silly Peter Parker!"  

And she has had only 1 small accident in the last week and a half!  They were right, potty training a girl is a lot different than a boy, though that also means more time in public restrooms than I care for.

 Shane is as dramatic as ever, and makes me laugh on a constant basis.  A few examples:

A couple weeks ago when he was (barely) sick and I asked him how he was feeling: "I feel the worsest of all the children!!!  I will be sick for 10 days!  I will not get better for 11 days!"

The other day at lunch he asked me, "Mom, is my life changing forever?"  I asked him why and he said, "Because I have been starting to like so many new foods!"  We have been working on eating more fruits and vegetables and he is doing a lot better.

Oh I love these kids!!! And I guess it's a good thing, because I have feeling we're going to be getting a lot more bonding time in this week too!

Potty-Trained

Well all that time snowed in did us good because I think I can safely say now that Marissa is potty trained!  Overall I think it was easier than with Shane, she really already had a good grasp of the pee part to start with.  The other part was a little bit harder, and we had some battles:

"I will fall asleep before you will make me go on this potty"

 Man she looks so cute in her defiance though doesn't she?

But something clicked this week and I have felt confident enough to have her wear underwear out of the house the last 3 days, with no accidents!  Though I have gotten a taste of my new life with Marissa not in diapers- yesterday at Kroger we had to make 3 trips to the potty, and they were all merited.  Oh well, I guess I 'll just think about all the money I'm saving without her in diapers!

Snowmageddon 2014

There was a lot of hype about this storm, and it did not disappoint!  It started snowing late early Sunday morning and our Bishop decided to only hold sacrament meeting and we could decide whether or not we felt comfortable going.  We looked at the snow quickly piling up outside and our sick girlies and thought about the country roads to church that wouldn't get plowed and stayed home.  Josh and Shane bundled up and went outside to play in it while they could, and our cute neighbor Ellynn and her dad joined them. 

Josh built a snowman and Rich pulled the kids across the yard in their toboggan

Shane LOVED it,

especially when it would tip over:)

We wanted him to get his kicks in because we knew what was coming the next day:  Yes, that -13 degrees was the HIGH for Monday.  The now famous "polar vortex" dipped into our Hoosier state and brought some cold cold air and wind with it. 

I think with the wind chill factor it was something like -45 degrees??  Needless to say, we stayed inside. (Though I did have to step out for about 30 seconds just to see what those temperatures felt like!)  The great thing about a snow storm is that unless you go outside, it really doesn't hurt you.  And Josh had taken the week off to study for Step 3 so we didn't have to go anywhere.  I guess I should say it didn't hurt me, because he was the one who had to clear the driveway eventually, though I did most of the child wrangling;)  Here is what our backyard looked like the next day

 With all the wind there were a lot of drifts, here's a better idea at how it drifted against our back door.

 Everything was shut down for  a couple days, and school was cancelled for the whole week, so we had to get creative with ways to entertain ourselves

 And if you're stuck inside you might as well potty train right? 

 The poor girlie was spiking fevers for 5 days so our first outing was to the doctor.  She fell asleep mid puzzle, so I gave her a pillow and then took her picture cause she looked so cute!

It was quite a week, combining a few of the most not-fun parts of parenting, but you know somehow when I look back at the pictures I manage to look back at the memories with fondness! Maybe that's because it was 50 degrees warmer today!   

Christmas Day

Disclaimer: 1) This post has a lot of pictures and 2) My children are spoiled.  If you saw how excited they get about everything, you would spoil them too;)

Santa came to our house!  And build forts to put the kids presents in!

 The long anticipated sperm whale.  Oh Shane, you always have the most interesting requests:)

 Marissa got her princess puzzle.

 And Sadie didn't ask for anything but she still got a lot!

 See?  Look how excited they get:)

 Marissa was so cute every time she would open a present she would say, "Is this for shopping? Let me take it to my area" and put it in her cart.

 When she would open clothes she would hold it up and say "That's so cute!"

 Grandma Elkins got him lots of books with animals that he loved.

Sadie trying to sneak up on her sister's puzzle

Josh had the day off so we opened presents at home in the morning, ate our traditional cinnamon rolls, then headed up to Josh's parent's house after.

It was fun being with them at their new house for Christmas and they spoiled the kids some more:)

 Josh's sister Rachel was there too which was a bonus.  The kids love her.

 Matthew played so well with the kids they were really cute to watch.  Here they are playing Ninja turtles.  And Matthew got a bounce house in his basement for Christmas which they had a lot of fun with but I didn't manage to get any pictures of.

 . Shelley made a delicious enchilada dinner on Christmas among other goodies.   Josh's preceptor gave him the day after off so it was nice to just relax and hang out with his family

Christmas Eve

Josh had to work Christmas Eve and the Children's Museum of Indianapolis was having free admission for the day so I decided to take the kids for a little adventure.  It is about an hour and a half away, but I wanted to check it out because it is apparently the biggest children's museum in the world!  It was definitely crowded but we were still able to do a lot.  We will have to come back though, we didn't get to everything because there are five floors!  The rotating exhibit was a winter wonderland where the kids ice fished, 

 took care of the reindeer,

 "ice skated",

and played in a snow castle.

 One floor had dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures which you can imagine was a big hit

 my little paleontologists

I am glad I decided not to bring a stroller because it would have been a pain hauling it around but I carried Sadie for the first half until we got to a calmer area and man my back paid for it- none of my kids have ever been lightweights.  She of course loved me hauling her around everywhere but loved when she got to get down and play too.  These are the days when it's awesome to have a baby that doesn't need consistent naps.

 The girls played dress up like various animals while Shane got trapped in this "venus fly trap" as he dubbed it.

 This little area was Sadie's heaven.

 We drove back and stopped at the store to get some diapers and as I was getting back to the car Josh was calling to say he was coming home (a couple hours early) because there's wasn't a lot going on and his senior was nice and told him to go be with his family.  I was so so happy!  We watched Home Alone, ate dinner, made cookies for Santa, watched their personalized Santa videos, and acted out the Christmas story with their Little People nativity.  

 Then we exchanged our ornaments

 I got Josh a doctor one and he got me an Indiana one, very representative of our year.

 And the kids each opened a present, Marissa of course had to do hers before she could go to bed:)

 And the Hulk slept with Shane in his bed:)

Then we waited anxiously for Santa to come...