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.

Christmas in Houston

I'm seriously behind on my blogging, so I'm trying to play catch-up.  We went to TX for Christmas and first went to Houston to spend time with Ben's family.  We had a great time visiting with them.  Highlights of our time there include... playing with Maycee (the girls are still talking about how much fun they had with Maycee), Chloe LOVED spending the night every night with Maycee, Mindy cooked us some delicious meals while we were there, Gracie playing lots of games with Grandma, we went to see Christmas lights (which were spectacular), playing Pictionary Man, going out to eat at a Tex-mex place, introducing Julia to Grandma, PaPaw, Aunt Mindy, & Maycee, and just hanging out with our family.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Decorating for Christmas

Chloe was so excited to decorate for Christmas. We started setting up the Christmas tree, and the girls were very helpful...at first.

Here are Chloe and Gracie helping to put the branches on the tree...

Before long, Gracie gave up and started reading... and Chloe decided that she'd rather be "the boss". She grabbed the instructions and helped me to know which color branches went on next.

Izzy enjoyed playing in the branches, getting tangled up and chewing on her ball.

But once we got the tree up and the lights on, the girls were excited to get started putting the ornaments on.

Julia was taking a nap during all of this, so she was SO excited to come downstairs and see this new, exciting thing set up downstairs.

She walked around and around the tree, just looking at all the ornaments, pointing at them, and pulling some off (although she's been better than I thought she'd be...at least so far... about not taking all the ornaments off).

Here's the finished product...Chloe took these pictures because she was so proud of how beautiful it looked!

...And our official Christmas picture for this year... Aren't they cute?...even Izzy got in on the action!

Halloween Wrap-up

I've been meaning to post a few more Halloween pictures, so I thought I'd better do it before we're too far gone from Halloween (apparently it's already Christmas-time...all the stores are playing Christmas music and have aisles of Christmas stuff. Walmart even has a tree set up in the entrance...)

But here are a few more pictures. The first are from the Halloween Parade in Jim Thorpe. It's a pretty small parade, but it goes right by our house and they throw out candy, so how could we miss it??

Here's Izzy in her halloween costume. She was a ladybug and got lots of compliments on her costume.

We got dressed up 4 different times for Halloween this year, so I didn't take pictures of every one (since 3 of them were all the same). But here are the pictures from our Halloween party at church (dress-up opportunity #3). They were supposed to dress up as characters from the Bible.

Julia is a frog (again...she's either from the ark, or one of the plagues...we couldn't decide if she was a happy frog or an angry frog). She had lots of fun wandering the church (which on Sundays she doesn't get to do). Chloe was dressed as Miriam (with Baby Moses in the basket), and Gracie was Mrs. Noah. She brought a frog and lemur with her to represent some of the ark animals.

Gracie enjoyed bobbing for apples. I don't think Chloe ever did, although she told me that they'd practiced bobbing for apples in their room that morning (with a bin and some balls) so they knew exactly what to do.

Part of the activities was to give clues so people could guess who you were dressed up as. The girls both did really well and spoke into the microphone and everything. Chloe said "I'm Moses' sister and I took care of him when he was in his basket in the river" and Gracie said "I helped get animals onto the ark" I was pleasantly surprised that they both were willing to get up there and talk. A year and a half ago, Chloe would have gotten shy and run to find me, but she's getting much more willing to get up in front of people.

We had a fun and busy Halloween, and ended up with LOTS of candy. Chloe thinks that we have enough candy that it will last us until NEXT halloween.

Their personalities shine through

We painted pumpkins today. The girls had a great time, and I enjoyed watching their personalities come out in their painting styles.

The first shots are Gracie's pumpkins & her paint plate. Notice that all the colors are mixed together and it turns out to be all one color. She likes to dip her paintbrush in every color, every time she gets more paint.

Now, for Exhibit B. Here are Chloe's pumpkins, paint plates, & paintbrushes (notice the plural on all of that). She likes to have her paint colors all separate, with separate paint brushes for each color. (Which is why we need 2 different paint sources. She definitely can't share paint with Gracie. They each have their own watercolors too, since Gracie's all end up being grayish black by the time she's done painting one picture...)

Izzy came through while we were doing post-painting hand-washing and walked over the table to smell everything. She stepped in paint with 2 different paws and ran around the kitchen before I caught her (thankfully I noticed and put up the gate so she didn't get onto the carpet). So, I had extra paws to wash, plus a few paint spots on the floor. Note to self, don't leave paint out on the table if the dog is around...