Random pictures from January & February

These are some pictures that don't really fit into their own separate blog post...

 

We had a box from something and the girls had a great time playing in the box...
 

Julia got this bowl for Christmas, and she had a lot of trouble getting food out of it.  It was funny to watch her figure out how to get cereal out of it.
 

Chloe took this picture of Julia playing with her cash register.

And Gracie took this picture of Chloe making faces

A few cute pictures of Julia... here she is sleeping in the dog bed.
 
 

The girls playing on the couch.  Gracie is in the "I don't know how to smile for pictures" phase.  She makes the craziest faces...
 

Our Valentines

 
 
 

Sledding in January

We had some good times sledding in January.  

These first pictures are from one day when we walked down to Chloe's school.  There are a couple good hills there that are fun to sled on.

 

Then these next pictures were another day that we went over to a friend's house to sled.  It was a "warmer" day, so we got to stay out a little longer.
 

  

  

Julia was not happy.  She didn't like being all bundled up and she definitely didn't like sledding.  I went a couple times with her on my lap and she was not happy about it.  (She's such a daredevil about other things...climbing on the back of the couch, standing on the table, etc, that I thought she'd really enjoy it, but I was definitely wrong).  She's sitting in the sled with Amanda (who was born about a month after Julia)

 
Here are the girls ready to sled.  Chloe with Gracie, and then Chloe with her friend Lydia.

The Pennsylvania Farm Show (January 16th)

On January 16th, we went to the Pennsylvania Farm Show (in Harrisburg, which is about an hour and a half from our house).  We had a great time seeing the animals, buying honey and maple syrup from local vendors, and sampling some locally produced food.

 

This huge horse was getting his hooves painted before he was shown.  We got to watch a horse get a manicure!!

 

There were all sorts of chickens...Some with very crazy, fluffy hair on their heads (like this one)

  

 

They had a whole display of tractors big & small.  The girls had fun climbing on and pretending to drive.  Most of the time, the first thing they did when they hopped up was to buckle their seatbelts.
 

There were a couple of HUGE tractors with gigantic wheels.  We came across this one first and took the girls picture and then walked a little further and there was an even bigger tractor with wheels that were taller than Ben.  The girls thought that was amazing.

That evening, we went to a rodeo.  We got there early and got really good seats.  We were just a few rows back and down at the end near the bull pens.  So, we got to watch the rodeo as well as a lot of behind the scenes wrangling.  It was fun to see, and the girls thought it was cool at first, but before long were bored (apparently the different events are all similar enough to not be intriguing for that long...)  

 
 

The thing I think we'll remember the most though is the walk to the car afterwards.  We were not parked very far away, but the wind chill was -10 or something, so we were all freezing by the time we got to the car.  We were very happy to get into the car and out of the wind!

First Snow of 2009 (January 11th)

We had a lot of snow & cold in January.  This was our first snowfall of 2009, and we got out to play in it (even though it was cold and windy)

 

Izzy LOVES the snow.  She loves to run through it and shoves her nose down into it.  She has a great time (we had about a month where we had snow on the ground, and then it finally got warm enough to melt it all off.  Then a couple days ago, we got snow again, and Izzy was so excited to see the snow again that she just raced around and around in circles in the snow...)

But back to this day in the snow.  The girls "helped" shovel the sidewalk, and then were ready to build a snowman.
 

They started stacking some snow (it was too powdery to pack and roll it).  But before long, they decided that it was too cold and wanted to go inside.  So, we brought out some decorations so they could finish the snowman (even though she was just tiny)
 

They made a snow princess (baby carrots for her crown and nose, butterscotch chips for her eyes & mouth and pretzel sticks for her arms).  Isn't she precious?  
 

Over the next few days, her pieces were scavenged by Izzy.  Every time she went outside, she'd grab another piece or two off of the snowgirl.