Happy Birthday Mom

A snow storm leading up to and a rain storm the day of, this year global warming may have given mom her favorite present. Happy Birthday!

Baby, It's Cold Outside

We've been experiencing some record-setting cold here in Champaign lately.  As in, olive-oil-freezes-inside-the-pantry cold.



With sub-zero highs and windchills in the -40 range, we've been keeping the girls inside the past few days.  Coming right on the end of Christmas break, everyone is going a little stir-crazy, so we've been trying to fill our days with fun activities.  On Sunday, Adam was excited to witness the second-largest playoff comeback in the history of the NFL to see the Colts beat the Chiefs.  He's told the girls several times that they've witnessed history (and they're about as excited as you would expect little girls to be about that).

Sunday afternoon we broke out one of the girls' new games, Doc McStuffins Operation.  Abby spent about 15 minutes before we started practicing how to get each of the pieces out.  After the Hungry Hungry Hippos slander, I was glad to have someone else win, but I did hear several times that she must be my daughter to try so hard to win.

We only ended up with about 6 inches of snow on Sunday (they had forecast 8-12). But no snow day is complete without bringing some of the snow inside, so our house is now full of these:

This morning we pulled out another craft project.  When the girls went to Camp Wilson this summer, they didn't have time to make their princess foam sticker pictures, so Grandma sent the kit home with us.  I'd been saving it for a special day, and today fit the bill!  The girls had so much fun making "cards."

I always love a good baking project, so we made pretzels for afternoon snack and dessert today.  The girls had so much fun coming up with different shapes to make their pretzels into.  We had hearts, cinnamon rolls, doughnuts, the letters N,O,R, and A, a braid, and a classic pretzel or two.  Since my girls are honey mustard fiends, we had a couple dipped in honey mustard at snack time, and saved the rest for dessert (after rolling them in cinnamon sugar, of course!)

This evening, Abby finished her first Lego set!  For Christmas, Adam picked out a Rapunzel tower Lego set, and the two of them have been working on it together.  They finished today - Abby was so excited!

I read about a couple cold weather experiments to try with your kids, so we tried a couple of those today, too.  Like just about everyone else in the midwest, we took some boiling water outside to watch it freeze before it hit the ground.  We also blew up a balloon and put it outside to watch it deflate, then re-inflate when we brought it back in.  Maybe tomorrow we'll freeze bubbles!

Christmas Day 2013

At this point Christmas Day 2013 is in the books and it was a good one. Kristin and I spend a lot of timing emphasizing gratefulness and sharing with the girls this time of year, and as much work as it can be I'm never more appreciative of it than on Christmas when are girls are thankful without being prompted and share their new toys without fighting. It always makes me proud. (Abby actually asked Santa for world-peace this year, though even I thought that was a bit much).

At any rate, Christmas Eve we enjoyed hot-chocolate and marshmallows and then watched The Polar Express.

Since we were up late the girls slept in a little bit (maybe 7:00am) although at some point we realized that they were awake and just didn't know on Christmas morning they could come get us when they woke up. Santa left us many good things in our stockings, and he ate the cookies we left for him so he must have really been here - as Abby informed us.

After a traditional breakfast of home made cinnamon rolls we opened presents. There were many good gifts, princess cloaks were the highlight for the girls. Abby gave me 'Hungry-Hungry Hippos' which we all enjoyed playing this afternoon - Mom is ruthless, she won half the games.

For lunch we had a Christmas appetizer feast. We had Jalapeno Poppers, Stuffed Mushrooms, Mozzarella Sticks, Pizza Bagels, Stuffed Dates, Veggies & Hummus, Cheese Ball & Crackers, Deviled Eggs, and Chicken Nuggets. For dessert there was a choice of Kristin's home-made Christmas cookies: Buckeyes, Rice Crispies, Peanut Butter Blossoms, Mint Sandwich Cookies or Shortbread. Kristin actually claims she was being restrained, I don't know about that but the girls and I certainly enjoyed it.

After naps we all played some board games and the girls worked on some painting. We had another feast for dinner, and worked on Lego's before bed, all told a grand day.

Merry Christmas!

Winter Update

In other family news it's been a pretty full start to the winter. I'm sure I'll leave many important things out but, in no particular order, we've been:

Decorating for the season

Seasonal baking, and attempts at seasonal baking, (yes Dad may have had something to do with the gingerbread design choices)

Putting on Christmas concerts

Braving power outages, playing in the snow, and thoroughly enjoying the Mom-Spa.