Staying Busy on Winter Days

So what do we do on cold winter days? (or what seems to be worth taking a photo I guess)

 Getting to ride in the race car cart at Lowes! big stuff I tell you

 Cleaning supplies all lined up: mommy's and kiddos'

 Family Date Nights at Russ' with Abigail ordering for all of us.

 Brewing some beer at home...

 Playing lot's of games

 and setting up the train tracks

and making forts (living room AND dining room as you can see)

Note: we have to make some of the forts tall enough for Eli to walk through them since he doesn't know that he is supposed to crawl into a fort. :-) and Abbi just fills up any fort with all her junk, er, I mean stuffed animals, babies, and toys...

Painting Abigail's Room to be Coed

The kids spent the night with their grandparents so we could get some much needed painting done. The stairway and hallway needed to be done and it would be impossible to shut that off from the kids' access so it was good to have them away while we worked on it. We decided we might as well paint Abbi's room too since eventually Elijah would be moving in with her when the baby took over the nursery where he is right now. 

 We spotted this crib on Craigslist and decided it would be great to keep Elijah in a crib when he switched rooms. It's the same kind of crib (Graco Lauren) we already have only in this Cherry color instead of White.

 Here is the color we decided on: Revere Pewter, aka gray. I'll have to post an After photo because this just looks so boring (Derek thought I was a little crazy because it felt like a cement box).

Snow, Snow, and More Snow!

 What a winter we have had so far! I had to get out and take some pictures because there is just so much snow! It is beautiful though!

 It's been so cold (and we've had the flu bug here too much) that we haven't been playing outside in it. Elijah just can't walk so well in it and it's almost too deep for Abigail sometimes!

 Our deck had so much snow Derek shoveled a hole in it to show how deep is was on Abbi.

 ... it's so deep (by our driveway) that it's way over the top of the snow blower even!

The Flu, Again

I'm recording this story because we laugh about it now, but it didn't feel so funny at the time.

 Here we are again with the flu. We thought it was passed us since we spent Christmas and New Years with it. Everything gets covered with blankets and there are lots of snuggles.

 We thought everyone was feeling good and getting over it so we decided to go up to the cabin for the weekend. We were only a few houses away from the cabin when Abigail unleased her sickness inside the car. Once Derek had shoveled a parking spot for us and a path to the cabin he came back with towels for us to start containing the mess. He tried to get the heat turned up so we could leave the sick-mobile and get cleaned up and put the kids to bed. However, with the sub-zero temperatures the furnace wasn't working and since that hadn't been keeping the cabin warm a pipe had frozen.

 So Plan B: check in to Cronk's Motel in Newaygo for the night. Tuck the kids in and start scrubbing out the carseat in the bathroom, then call the repairmen the next morning. Hey, we were trying to make a memory, right? Well, we did.

First Haircuts

Elijah was in need of a haircut so we decided to get Abigail's hair trimmed too since neither of them have ever had a haircut. Here are the before photos:

 The girls at Great Clips were nice. Elijah sat very still on my lap and Abigail ate up all the attention from her stylist.

 The after photos, complete with complimentary suckers!

I think Elijah's haircut made him look like such a little boy. It felt like he lost so much "weight" in his face!