After the snow storm....

It's a little hard to tell in the pictures, but these pants from Benetton match her Sprockets jacket exactly!! We got out today and went grocery shopping. Evie looked quite stylish, while Jared and I looked like we wore our rattiest clothes! :)

Happy Valentine's Day

Here's Evie in her way cute valentines's day jeans from Gymboree. We're snowed in today (Scott, too) so she's not wearing the matching sweater. Some of you may recognize the shirt---Jared wore it 3 years ago for a picture, too!

A treat for my sweet boy!

Never mind that it was about 20 degrees outside..... Jared thoroughly enjoyed his cotton candy flavored ice cream with gummy bears @ Maggie Moo's. I think someone should have told us that gummy bears actually FREEZE in ice cream and become hard candy! :)

Playroom in the Basement

Jared and I made a pretty cool train last Thursday.

Surprisingly enough, it's still there!

Over New Year's weekend, Scott painted the playroom a couple shades of orange and hung Elfa shelving. Next step is to get some matching/coordinating totes and make it look pretty! Yay, I get to buy more totes and baskets and stuff! :)

Drive-In

Okay, I'm really excited. Scott called me from work yesterday morning and said he was taking the family out to eat. He wouldn't tell me where, but said it was a place we had eaten at before and one just opened in our current home town area (about 30 minutes from our house). We arrived at SONIC!!!!

I wish I'd had my camera with me so you would believe the traffic. You'd have thought it was the only place to eat in town. All the stalls were full and there was a 10+ car line at the drive through. We were third in line to wait for a stall, so it was a pretty short wait. Once our food arrived we ate "picnic" style in the back of the van---with the door shut since it was 20 degrees outside.

One of the 3 guys directing traffic (yes, it was that bad) said they had just opened on Tuesday and he'd never seen a Sonic grand opening in our kind of weather and hadn't seen a Sonic so busy in that weather either. Thankfully, six more Sonics will be opening in our area in the next 18 months! :)

Never too young to start!

No, it's not coffee! I'm not that nuts about Starbucks.

I bought Jared a kid's sized chocolate milk this morning.

Evie seemed fascinated with the cup, so I rinsed it out

and gave it to her with plain milk. She loved it!!

Day 1 of Vegas (1/29)

The plane ride was great. Jared was perfect and Evie fussed a little during the last hour of the 4 hour flight. The flight attendant told me that E did great. Landed, drove down the Strip and went to Hoover Dam (very cool). Evie was a basket case at the Dam, due to the 3 hour time change and being VERY TIRED! For dinner we went to the Rainforest Cafe at the MGM Grand. Both of the kiddos enjoyed the restaurant.


I took this picture of Evie on the plane, just after we landed in Vegas.

Our first order of business was getting something to eat for the kids!

Day 2 of Vegas (1/30)

Scott worked, so the kids and I headed to the Strip. We went to the New York New York and walked over to M&M's World. We also went down to the Paris. After a nap at our hotel, we took the kids to dinner at Jason's Deli (we miss that place in our new home state!) and went to the water/light show at the Belagio. After watching the water/light show, we walked across the street to the Paris and took the Eiffel Tower elevator ride and watched the show again from up there. If you've never done that, I highly recommend doing it the next time you're there.

Views from atop the Eiffel Tower. Spectacular!

Day 3 of Vegas (1/31)

I met my friend Shannon for breakfast at the Atlanta Bread Co. After eating we headed downtown to the Mandalay Bay shark reef. Very cool. All the kids seemed to enjoy it...so did I. We ate at a cafe close to Shannon's house and I headed back to the hotel for nap time (never happened). Shannon invited us over and the kids got to play for a few hours. They had a great time and so did we. Ryan reminds me so much of Jared at that age---all boy. It was so much fun to see them interact. I wish Shannon lived closer! :)

Day 4 of Vegas (2/1)

Sorry, no pictures.

I was rudely awakened at 12:31 a.m. by Evie who was vomiting in her crib. I rolled the crib into the hallway, gave her a bath and spent the next 5 hours holding her, cleaning her off (repeatedly throughout the night), trying to get a few minutes of rest here and there and waiting for it to be 5:30 so we could get ready to go! She finally quit vomiting at 6:30 (which was in the car) and slept for 2 hours on the plane.

On Friday, the day after we got home, Scott and I came down with the same virus. Yeah for us! :( Evie ended up going to the ER on Saturday night because she got all of it again, too. After drinking some pedialyte and keeping it down at the ER, she was sent home. As of today, Sunday, we are all fine. Thankfully, Jared didn't get sick at all.

On Saturday, Scott said he thought what happened in Vegas was supposed to stay in Vegas. We're wondering why that didn't happen for us! :)

Roasting Marshmallows

Winter Wonderland

Reading Festival

We went to a local reading festival. At the festival, J-Man got to meet Clifford the Big Red Dog, play hockey with a plastic stick and ball, and get a snake balloon. It was fun, but we didn't do anything that had to do with reading! :) J even decided he'd rather play hockey than go to story time.

Ci Ci's Pizza

Little Miss Independent insisted on feeding herself.

She did a great job and didn't make too big of a mess either.

E's First Haircut

It started out as just an appointment for big brother.... I asked if they could trim the back of E's neck and get rid of her "duck tail." They called it a 'bang trim' and obliged! She did surprisingly well and enjoyed chewing on her very own comb.

Trip to Visit Family

We took the kids to the Grove Park Inn to see the gingerbread house competition. The houses were amazing.





We tried to get a good pic of the three kiddos, but this was as good as it got!


J really wanted to jump and I couldn't resist the photo opportunity! I ended up pulling him down and pushing him up until he got the hang of it. It was a little scary to watch his face grow paler and paler. After 5-6 jumps he would ask to be stopped and we'd wait a few seconds and start up again. I was convinced we'd end up "making a mess" somewhere in the mall after all that jumping, but his stomach is stronger than I expected.

J got along quite well with his cousins Shelby and Harley.