Snow! We have a whole lot of it right now, kind of usual this time of year. And while I'm not the biggest fan of driving in it, my kids sure like to play in the stuff. Well, Lucy is still pretty impartial. Isak loves it though. Lucy just likes to be pulled around in the sled and as long as she is completely covered and not getting wet , she's okay with the snow. Isak, however, will go outside and play by himself in the snow, not caring that his fingers are blue or that he is shaking with cold. Over Thanksgiving, 2 of my brothers were in town so the kids LOVED all the extra attention and I loved having someone take them outside! Lucy was fond of my dad pulling her around on the saucer. Isak loved squirting the snow with green water and making snowballs and a large snowman "rock warrior".

We went sledding across the street at the park where we found a little hill. It was freezing!

I bundled Lucy up one day right after lunch and then she started yelling "night night!" (her request to sleep). Since it took so much work to get her ready for the snow, I made her go out anyway for a few minutes. She insisted on taking her blanket or her "deedee!" and laid down in the sled. She lasted maybe 5 minutes till she was in her crib.

"The Angel has left the building". This is what Kevin declared the other day as Lucy deliberately took the christmas balls, threw them, then smacked Isak on the side of the head. Her looks are so deceiving. She started hitting this week, Hitting when she's mad, hitting when she doesn't get what she wants. Its a problem. At least its not biting, but still. She will look at me, I will tell her no, then she looks at me sideways with her eyes, and does it anyway.
Then she shrieks, yells, kicks, and screams, usually, "no! no! no! no!". She's only 21 months, time out is kind of hard because she doesn't understand. So I tell her "no" firmly and displace her away from whatever it is. This kind of works....mostly not. She gets when Isak is in timeout, because she will walk over and start scolding him in her babble and pointing her finger, enraging him. Oh how she loves to irritate him.

Anyway, I've heard of people wanting all their kids to be 2 years apart and blah blah blah so they are well adjusted. Well, dear next child of mind, it might be a while so if you are feeling ill adjusted later in life due to the birth order and spacing of your siblings, you can blame your dear sister. She's driving me batty. The kids and I made sugar cookies on Tuesday while Kevin was studying late. My mom got us all these super cute aprons at a christmas bazar. Lucy and I have matching ones!

I never thought Isak would be the easier kid, but these days, he's much easier to manage. It helps he can communicate well and can tell us what he wants. He's so excited about the snow out side tonight, we went out and played in it for a while. Its amazing how kids never get cold, I was freezing and he was just having a great time.

Conversation with Isak following nursery today at church.
Me: "Isak, how was nursery today?"
Isak: "I was just a little bit naughty."
Me: "Oh really? What happened?"
Isak: "I took a piece of puzzle and threw it across to the table".
Me: "Did you get a time out?"
Isak "uh huh".
I love my son, but I am so glad that I am not his teacher. Kevin's mom has him next year in sunbeams, along with 3 other rambunctious little boys. I can only imagine.

Lucy started throwing tantrums this week, she technically isn't two till Febuary. I think she is starting early. Isak was destructive and active, she is mischevious and very naughty. Somehow she always finds my gum and eats it, with or without the wrapper. I painted her nails on Saturday for the first time, and she LOVED It and kept wiggling her toes and pointing to them. Isak also requested his nails to be painted, we are all matching in red at the moment, minus Kevin.

I'm painting my cabinets this week, sick of the matching floor/cabinet thing and since we will tear them out eventually anyway, it doesn't matter what color I do. Any ideas? I was thinking some shade of green....

Dress Up!

So I got a few half price halloween costumes since Isak has taken to dressing up lately. And after wearing the lemur suit for 3 days while visiting my sister, I thought it might be hygenic as well for him to have some options. Below is Isak dressed up as "bumblebee" from Transformers. He really likes this mask, which suprised me, since he can hardly see through the thing. My mom found Lucy this very sweet cinderella dress and she likes to watch herself twirl around in the mirror with it on. She really loves herself.

My mom also found Lucy this really cool butterfly wings which are huge and have strings that let her flap them herself. They will probably fit her until she is 10, heck, I could probably wear them too. Isak is also demonstrating his darth vader cape and mask.

And lucy combined the vader mask and butterfly wings to make a unique costume. See those boots? She insists on wearing them all the time. She wore them to church on sunday with her dress. If we put somthing else on her feet, she brings them to me and goes, "boot! boot!".Already showing prefernce at 21 months. Probably not a great sign.

And best of all, the wings let her fly! Isn't this an awesome picture??

Anyway, they have a few more but they are for christmas gifts. On another note, tonight is our ward craft night that has caused major stress the past week. Since I am only in charge of one craft, it shouldn't be that big of a deal. But there are tons of little parts to remember and the dang thing goes till 1130 pm. I might fall asleep, unless the toxic smell of paint keeps me awake. And I got a new calling as the primary secretary which is also going to keep me busy. On the plus side, we don't have to travel anywhere for thanksgiving or christmas this year and I am determined to make it the least stressful year ever. I already pretty much have my kids christmas all done! Now to plaster my house with obnoxious christmas decorations...and hope Lucy doesn't keep eating and tearing the clingy snowflakes in the window.

Halloween

We spent Halloween with my sister as well. We carved some pumpkins.

They had a trunk or treat on Friday night in their ward and Lucy recycled Isak's old costume and was a green monster or a large piece of grass. Whichever. She loves her frog boots and insists on wearing them all the time.

Isak was ninja cat for the trunk or treat, mainly because his lemur costume needed to be washed after the trip to the zoo. He was okay with this until he realized Maddie was a lemur and he had a meltdown, screaming for "my ringtailed lemur suit!!". Luckily, maddie convinced him he was a red fox lemur and that sort of helped.

But when we went trick or treating, he had the lemur costume back and was a happy camper.
My sister sewed these 3 costumes for her kids last year and they wore them this year too, only Isak borrowed one and Caleb opted for the dinosaur suit.
Isak missed his nap on halloween and fell asleep at 5pm. He woke up in time to do some trick or treating but he was pretty groggy. He said, I have enough candy now. And we were done.

While Isak was asleep, Lucy was definitely not tired and enjoying her sugary sucker which put her over the moon. She loved trick or treating and figured it out pretty quick. She would grab one candy and say "bye bye". I just had to lug her everywhere because her little feet aren't too quick. I was tired by the end of the night!
All the kids, minus Martin, in their costumes. Martin was a ninja ,I think, and he got invited to a little halloween party so he didn't trick or treat with us. Anyway, aren't they cute?

Trip to Madison

We traveled to Madison to visit my sister and her family the last week of October. I usually just see her once a year because she lives so far away. This was the first time Kevin was able to come with me on the plane and it was a HUGE help. The car ride to the airport was eventful, as Lucy got carsick and vomited all over her carseat and clothes. We had to park our car there and didn't have time to clean anything so we changed her clothes and left her pukey carseat locked in the car.

Isak loved watching all the airplanes take off and the moving walkways and escalators. I am deathly afraid of both so I let Kevin take him on all those fun adventures. Our plane ride there went pretty well, we were well equipped with treats, iphone games, and dvds. At one point the flight attendant even gave us free tv and claimed it was because another customer who was eligible for the free upgrade declined it. I think it was because Lucy was screaming and she was trying to get her to be quiet. Either way, it worked in our favor. Frontier Airlines is awesome, we got warm cookies on each flight, we were big fans. Our plane had to circle about 3 times while trying to land in Madison because of high winds, making an extremely turbulent flight. I did not handle this well and judging by the number of puke bags I saw leaving the plane, no one else did either. We went to the zoo the first day which was great because it was so cold, no one else was there! The zoo they have there is a free zoo and has tons of great animals and exhibits. They had a great playground with huge climbing structures. Isak decided to don a matching lemur costume with Maddie and they wore them to the zoo. Don't their tails look awesome?

It was fun having all the kids together and letting them spend time with their cousins. Especially now Isak is old enough to remember things. It was great having Maddie and Martin there who are 7 and 9, they are old enough to entertain the younger ones and can help out quite a bit. Perhaps this is why people have more children.

The elementary school is just across the street from where they live and has a fun forest area to explore as well. Below is Caleb posing. Him and Isak raced a lot, Caleb is super fast and always won. It helps he is a year older as well.

Maddie got a new bike for her birthday and loves riding it around everywhere. She is quite the character.

Reed is just a few months younger than Lucy and would always give me a smile. He really loves my sister and would cry anytime she was out of sight. He started to warm up to use after a few days and would no longer cry if I talked at him or looked at him wrong. :).

Maddie just turned 7 and I made her some cute hair flowers and a headband. She sported this and some of her Barbie make up to church on Sunday. She looked pretty awesome.

I loved that Kevin came along because I could do things with Valerie and didn't feel bad about leaving my kids. We went shopping one day and hit up a thrift store where we had all sorts of great finds...ie, red leather pants for $0.10, wooden picture frame $1, fluffy pink pillow for lucy...$0.10, piano bench for $7...I wish Othello had one of those!

My cute sister and some of her kids. We did a race on Saturday, it wasn't a big one, not too much of a big deal, except, we RAN to the starting line. Which also wouldn't be a big deal, except that it was 13.5 miles away. In another town. Madison has more bike trails and running trails and skiing trails than anyplace I have ever seen. Anyway, my sister thought it would be a terrific idea to run to the starting line, sign up for the race, then run the race. It was the UFO days in a nearby town, they even had a doll head float. So, I ended up running almost 17 miles when all was said and done. I was pretty sore on Sunday, I hadn't run that far since September.

We went to the arboretium one day and explored and saw some wild turkeys. The kids had alot of fun running all over and climbing on the leaf piles.

We also went to the children's museum in Madison while we were there which was amazing. They had a water room, a huge climbing structure, arts and craft room, tons of neat hiding places and things to play with. Above is the shadow room where this camera will take a picture of your shadow on the wall everytime you push a button. It was pretty cool.

The roof had a chicken coop, a garden, and several herbs the kids could taste test. There were binoculars the kids could look out over the city.

I also introduced my sister to the beauty of spray painted furniture and we found and painted this piano bench.

We had so much fun! Now if only I could convince her to move to Othello.....