So on Thursday I went to the mall and met a friend and we wandered around for a little while. We were eating lunch together and discussing things and for some reason the weather came up. She was telling me that this big snow storm was coming our way. I knew it was suppose to snow but I hadn’t heard how much so she was informing me it would be 1-2 feet. So this instantly changed my plans for the day. After we left the mall, the kids and I went to Sam’s Club to get food before the storm. I was going to go the next morning when I would be one kid down. Last big storm in December I didn’t plan as well and we had to go get milk and bread in the middle of the storm so I wasn’t going to do that again.
It’s a good thing I went Thursday. The store was the busiest I’ve ever seen it and I had to crawl to the second stand for the skim milk. I think people must have thought I looked ridiculous trying to keep the door open with one foot bending my body in a crazy position to reach in as far as I could, because no one else would grab any. They would look at it and then grab a different percentage. I just laughed. Also the storm started a couple hours earlier than they had expected so everything was for sure cancelled. Piper didn’t have her playgroup on Friday and I didn’t have to leave the house. I was ready! By the time Friday afternoon hit, basically everything was shut down. They sent people home from work about noon to get people off the roads. Saturday EVERYTHING was closed. Ben said people looked upset to see Starbucks closed. By then we had a couple of feet. It didn’t stop snowing until Saturday about 5pm. The total was about 30 inches plus or minus – by far a record! Piper is loving the snow, we made a little snowman and she shoveled a bit on our patio and also helped Ben clean off and around the car. Sunday church was cancelled and so we decided to go over to the Healy’s. We walked over to see how the roads were. It is just short of a mile and it was a good little walk. It also got us out of the house for a little while. The sun was out all day causing slush all over the roads a foot deep. It was pretty crazy out there. Apparently, we are getting another storm starting tomorrow afternoon that could dump another foot on us! Ugh! Needless to say, we will not be leaving a for few days. I guess the stores are still short on many items and will continue to be! Hmmm, maybe we need to think about a food storage plan of some sort.

He didn't really like the snow falling on his face.

Our car bottom right - can see the wipers barely sticking out of snow.

Watching it snow.

Her little snowman. The snow wasn't good snowman making snow.

Our car after Ben cleaned it off and the front. The plow only plows one strip down - pretty much where those car tracks are. So there is a lot of snow to shovel.

January and February are such blah months. As with that nothing is really going on with us. Okay there is lots of attitude and tantrums from a three year old; and an almost five month old getting teeth – so sleepless nights! Are you still missing them?! Here are just some random pictures taken – Piper got ready to go outside all by herself. She comes up with the craziest outfits sometimes. I usually don’t put up a fight because I am just happy I am a) getting her out the door and b) without the Dorothy dress on (which has now changed names to Snow White dress). Notice the ice cream colors? She picked that out and yeah they are neon colors – pretty sure it’s a carcinogen! Piper can be so loving at times like one day she was giving Oliver a great big hug and was saying, “I love you. I don’t know why I love you, but I just love you!” It made me smile. Oliver is now really starting to observe what’s going on around him and LOVES to watch Piper. Whenever she comes around and talks to him he just giggles and giggles. Oliver was enjoying some carrots last night for dinner. He seems to really like his veggies or maybe he just really likes to eat (not sure where he got that from )! One of these days I will get some videos on here of the kids and soon I will get some pictures of Oliver’s teeth.

Oliver had his doctor appointment last week and has grown a bunch. He is 15.5 lbs (64%) and 26 inches long (86%). He is as big as Piper was at 6 months. Needless to say, that his 6 month clothes are starting to get small on him. He sure is fun. He is really starting to make lots of noise which Piper hates. It’s too loud for her she says and is always trying to put his pacifier in his mouth to quiet him. He is starting to sit by himself for a few minutes but eventually topples over. He isn’t rolling over yet but his laugh is just so darn cute. He loves to watch Piper dance all around the house and when he looks at her he just has the biggest grin ever! Oh and last week he got his first tooth!

First off we want to thank Aunt Kathy for the dress (www.littleadventures.com – she designs all sorts of dresses including this one). She loves it and has been comparing hers with Dorothy’s and it has passed! As soon as she opened up the package she had to put it right on. She was sad that she doesn’t have the red slippers which she thought was in the package as well, but I told her that Dorothy starts out with black shoes so she was okay with that. Then we had to put two ponytails in because that’s how Dorothy wears hers. When she watches the movie (which has been every day since Christmas except for a couple when she was in trouble) she acts it out right along with it. If you notice she has her basket and a little dog (Toto), thanks for Oliver for sharing. It’s pretty entertaining – in the last two pictures she is skipping and singing, “We’re off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz!” Needless to say, it will be a fight to put any other clothes on her now! Can we officially say, “OBSESSED?”

It’s funny how with the first kid most parents look forward to the next milestone and then with the second we don’t want them to grow up. Okay, maybe that’s just me but I can’t believe Oliver will be four months on the 8th! I decided to try the good ol’ Rice Cereal because he loves to watch us eat AND to see if that would help out his sleeping habits at night. The kid just won’t make up his mind – he sleeps well (4-5 hour stretches) for a couple of nights and then decides he needs to wake up every two! I have been giving him the cereal for the past few days and it hasn’t made any difference. Oh well. It has been pretty entertaining how much he enjoys it though. He makes the snarfing noise lots of times and dives for the spoon with his face. He is still trying to figure out how to keep it all in his mouth but he is doing a lot better than I thought he would.

So we haven’t been very good about taking pictures. I thought there were more pictures but apparently not. There is A LOT of video of Christmas but it’s too big to post so you will just have to deal with what we have on the picture side. I am a little bummed that there aren’t more pictures but I can’t go back now!

I can’t believe that she is 3! Her birthday was on the 29th and since she is obsessed with The Wizard of Oz that’s the kind of cake she chose. My mom found the die-cuts of the characters at a scrapbook store and sent them to me. It was wonderful because then I just had to figure out the frosting part and that turned out easier than I thought it would. Piper didn’t want the Wicked Witch of the West on the cake so she didn’t make it on. I had Piper put on the people where she wanted them and put the sprinkle flowers on as well, she kept putting them all in one spot so I had to help some.
If you know the musical Wicked – Piper can sing Popular, I’m Not That Girl, and One Short Day and from The Wizard of Oz she can about sing Somewhere Over the Rainbow and Munchkinland Musical Sequence. It’s pretty entertaining for us. We had her start opening presents at lunchtime so that she would get them all open by the end of the night. Surprisingly, at the little party we had she opened the rest up rather quickly although, she did have to be reminded that there were a few more at the end. The poor girl gets loaded up in four days and has to wait another year for more.

We stuck around our place this year and it was pretty pleasant. It was nice not having to worry about flying with crazy weather and also packing gifts across the U.S. twice. We took a little trip into the district on the 23rd to see a train display at the Botanical Gardens and then went and saw the Christmas tree at the Capitol. On Christmas Eve, Ben worked in the morning while the kids and I hung out. In the afternoon, Ben and I took turns doing our last minute shopping along with the rest of the city! It was crazy busy because of the snowstorm that shut down stores the Saturday before Christmas! I made cookies and funeral potatoes for our Christmas dinner so I wouldn’t have to do that Christmas Day. Christmas Eve we got together with the Healy’s for dinner. We ended up getting our meal from Potbelly for free because “the church” was paying for it. To make a long story short, Ben and Brian crashed some church Christmas party at Potbelly and didn’t realize it until it was too late. The cashier was insistent that “the church will take care of it” even though Ben explained to her that he wasn’t with them and tried giving her his credit card. That night we cleaned up the house to get ready for Santa to come and read the Christmas story.
Santa definitely came! Ben and I were super excited too see Piper’s excitement about it all but she really didn’t get into it. She just looked at the presents when she came out and we had to about drag her out of her room. We had to keep asking her if she wanted to open a present up or look in her stocking. Finally when she started pulling things out of her stocking that she liked she was getting excited. Then we moved on to presents and we again had to keep asking her to open a present. She would open one up and would want to play with it and didn’t care about the rest of the unopened gifts. It really did take us all day to open them up because she was so excited about the gift she opened she was set for about 30 minutes. We saved the big one til about last because we knew once she opened up the kitchen she would be a goner! We were right, that was a big hit! She loves it and she also loves The Wizard of Oz movie that she got – we have had to watch it every day since! Oliver just took it easy and watched and ate and slept. He does enjoy his little toys that he got so that’s been fun. He is really starting to grab at things and chew on them. He is starting to really bounce around and wiggle – he is getting close to rolling over. He is pretty smiley and his laugh is just adorable. That afternoon, we went to our friends the Hopkins house and had Christmas dinner with a few other young families that stuck around for Christmas. The food was excellent and the get together was very enjoyable. It was a great nice relaxing Christmas!

and it’s about time! After knowing Ben for just under eight years and him being in school for it all, I am done. I am done being a wife to a student! That was exhausting for all involved. Wouldn’t be so bad if Ben wasn’t so serious about it and wanting to keep a 4.0 in undergrad and then getting good grades so that he could get a job and have the law firm essentially pay for law school (minus he owes them four years now)! We took a picture of him the first day of law school to compare with the last day. We didn’t get a picture of him the morning of the last final because he left too early but picture him in jeans and a sweatshirt. Things sure did get more lax with the going to school attire but with him working he actually had to dress nice for school since he would leave work to go to school. The night he had his final Piper, Oliver and I surprised him with a little party. We had some friends over for soup and cake. The cake represents his schooling; it’s a Candyland theme because Piper loves Candyland. Declo – chocolate colored pencils for elementary school, Burley – Kit Kat because they are the Bobcats, USU – Smarties because he was a smarty pants , GW Law – that was suppose to be a 100 Grand bar to approximate tuition of ~$120,000, but I couldn’t find one and the end is PAYDAY – bring on the paycheck!

On Friday night and all day Saturday it snowed. The weather forecast wasn’t kidding this time when they said there would be a lot of snow. Friday night, Ben decided that we should get snow boots for Piper so the two of them went to a few stores and finally was successful at a mall. They were gone for a few hours (stores sold out and roads were getting nasty). Saturday we ventured out in it to a birthday party. There was already over a foot of snow before lunch. The roads weren’t plowed and so our little civic had quite the test. The trick was not to ever have to really stop! I haven’t been able to get pictures of Piper and Oliver playing in it, but hopefully we will before it all melts. The first picture is our balcony halfway through the storm. That’s Ben cleaning out a parking spot after we got back from the party mid afternoon so that we could park our car again. We have the coveted spot in the parking lot! The total was about 20 inches when it finally stopped!