January & February

Because sometimes, you just need to wear a bow tie to first grade!

I posted this before, but I love his smiley old-man face for the 100th day of school!

Bella getting her badges at the mid-year ceremony for AHG.

The Children's Museum never gets old for us, especially the new Pirates and Princesses exhibit. Bella was all pirate!

The hat. The face. She never ceases to crack me up.

She loved this as she is obsessed with "Pirates of the Caribbean."

Captain Ryan steers his ship.

With his pirate face. Aargh!

The kids love this photo app on my iPad and I frequently see these weird/funny/creepy photos show up in my photo feed.

MLK Day! Which is basically an excuse to be off school and go explore a new place! This is Recreation Unlimited - it's a showroom for basketball hoops, trampolines, play houses, sand boxes, gazebos, etc., but kids can play on everything. And they have comfy chairs and magazines all over the place for us moms. It was a great time for all three of us!

Trampoline AND basketball hoop! Does it get any better?

Yep! Train tables like this! There were a few smaller ones around the place as well.

Swings are always fun. I took a slow motion video of them swinging that was fun to watch.

And some days, you're just too tired for school...

Bella visited her old AHG troop, which gave me and Ryan some much-loved time together. Starbucks for warm chocolate and hot coffee!

Valentine's Day Dance. I LOVE this picture. Ryan didn't want to dance with me because he was too busy busting a move on his own. I'll put the video up on YouTube soon.

Valentine's Day Lego kits from Daddy!

Bella's new hat. It's totally her.

We play a lot of games at night. This one helps Daddy with his detective skills, and teaches the kids to be gracious winners and losers (we're still working on that one).

President's Day! We had gotten a whopping two inches of snow, but Bella had been so bummed about not being able to sled that we headed out.

This place had outdoor exercise equipment that we all had a blast playing on.

But it wears a kid out! I sat on the couch with this cutie in my lap until my arm fell asleep! And then I moved and held him some more. Love every minute of it.

And some days you just need footie jammies and your puppy.

Every afternoon the secretary "draws" mustaches on Ryan (she keeps the cap on but he doesn't know that). They always "blow off" in the wind when we get outside. One Friday he asked for a "sticky" mustache, so I let him have one.

And of course Bella wanted one too. In bright green. That almost didn't come off...

The local mall hosted their first annual outdoor "Winter Bash"...when the weather was in the 60's...in February. They went ahead with it, so we visited in short sleeves and soaked up the sunshine.

Hot chocolate with toasted marshmallow fluff and a graham cracker!

This is so Bella. A foot-long s'more. They made their own marshmallows, rolled them in chocolate and graham cracker crumbs, then blasted them with a blow torch. It was awesome.

Bella chose to play in the fake snow while Ryan was the crossing gate for the ride-on train.

I had to get one last picture of this cute little smile and I did it just in time. Two days later...

His front tooth was gone, and two days after that, he lost a bottom tooth. My little snaggle puss!

Stay tuned for more adventures!!

Keeping current? Not gonna happen!

 Every few months when I finish a post, I think to myself, "If I can just keep on top of it, I won't need to post 3,247 pictures and spend two hours writing captions. I'll come back to this in a month and just upload a few." And then TWO MONTHS later, I'm on the computer, silently cursing myself and spending-you guessed it-two hours uploading photos and writing captions. *sigh*
Anyway, on with the photos!

This? This is the 40-foot climbing tower. The pink blob near the top? Bella. The first girl at her American Heritage Girls camping trip to make it to the top and ring the bell. She inspired a bunch of others to do the same.

Awful picture of us at Halloween. We did a Star Wars theme, so Joshua is the emperor, I'm Princess Leia from The Empire Strikes back, Bella is a Jedi, and Ryan is Darth Vader.

The kids are ready to go! Except it was windy and miserable and it SLEETED (slet? haha). So they made it an hour (with us driving them around!) and headed back home to watch Netflix and gorge ourselves on chocolate.

Bella got her ears pierced. She was a trooper and has since (yep, six weeks later as I type this) kept them clean and infection-free!

 Mid-November brought the Lego KidFest to Indy and we all headed there after church. It was fun! A bit different from the other Lego event we went to, but they handed out free Lego kits and the kids had a blast, so it's all good.

This boy was a BIT excited while we waited for them to open the event.

So creative! And completely made of Legos!

That's a pile of two MILLION Legos, folks.

I have cute kids.

Lightning McQueen! Made of Legos! If they had had PB&J there, it would have been a Ryan trifecta.

Love Bella doing her Captain Jack Sparrow impression.

 So, Joshua and I are sitting next to the brick pile, and I can't find Bella. Anywhere. I start sweeping the room, looking for the pink shirt. I walk toward the pile to ask Ryan if he knows where she is. And that's when I see her. Well, part of her. She made some friends with a few other girls (surprise!) and they'd buried her.

 You've seen Ryan's hair. You know there's no hope. That's why, the night he got it cut, I took a picture to remind myself that his hair CAN be tamed. If only until the gel dries and it reshapes itself into the crazy horns and swirls that are, and probably forever will be, Ryan's hair.

 I made the list! Ryan had to write what he was thankful for and here's the list, in case you can't read it: hoodie, May, Christmas, cars, Mom, trains. Love it!

 Our first snow at the house. The kids tried so hard to sled down the "hill" in the backyard.

Bella drew this on the window. I absolutely adore it. I love how she thinks Joshua is "aswesome."

Ryan's race track. He even has a pit lane. He ran many a race on this track with his NASCAR cars.

And somehow, I lost the few Thanksgiving pictures I thought I had. Christmas is in just over a week-you'll probably see those pictures in February. :o)

12 Activities of Christmas

 My last post made it seem like we hadn't done anything Christmas-y this year. When I started going through the pictures, I remembered all of these events:

1. Surprising the kids with seeing The Polar Express. At an IMAX. In 3-D. Bella was a little freaked at first, but once the first scene began with falling snowflakes, she giggled, "This is actually awesome!" as she tried to catch snowflakes.

Ryan's ready.

Can you tell Bella is excited?

2. The local Catholic church did a "Walk to Bethlehem." It helped that it was about 50 degrees that night! They took us in "families" led by a re-enactor in costume through the hill country and on our way to the manger. It was really fun and Bella wanted to do it again as soon as we were done.

This was a tent leading into the sanctuary where we waited. The woman is showing Bella some pomegranates.

These were the angels, singing in the darkness.

We were given scrolls that had to be stamped as part of our census.

We made it to town! Here are some goats.

Finally-the star!

The manger scene. Even though some of the kids were bored, and it was a babydoll in the manger, it still filled me with wonder that this was how Christ entered the world.

 3. A bunch of our small groups (called a flock) had a Christmas party with a Christmas hat theme. Joshua won 1st place because his hat was a fireplace that actually lit up!

 4. Downtown Carmel had some winter hooplah going on one Saturday so we went to check it out.

The kids got to decorate sugar cookies. Ryan ate his and Bella's.

There were live reindeer. The kids talked more about the deer peeing in the parking lot than the fact that they were actually touching real reindeer!

Of course Bella's going in for a closer look!

We waited in line for an hour for a horse-drawn carriage ride!

This is what it looked like. It was a whopping 20 minute ride, but the kids thought it was the coolest thing.

 

 5. Bella watching the Charlie Brown Christmas special.

 6. We bought an Elf on the Shelf. Bella named her Peppermint and the kids race around the house each morning to see what kind of things Peppermint is up to.

TP'ing the kids' bathroom.

Hanging from Ryan's underpants in his room.

Playing the XBox.

Enjoying Candyland with Cinderella and Fred.

Making a sugar angel.

Feeling a little under the weather.

Watching Star Wars. She's a big fan.

Trying to drive off with our bag of marshmallows.

 7. Downtown Carmel hosted a gingerbread house scavenger hunt. Businesses in town had a gingerbread house in their window and you had to answer questions about each one. It was a cold, windy day, but we ran up and down, finishing our hunt.

Bella waiting for her pot of tea to finish brewing.

Ryan enjoys his "warm chocolate"-they made it cool enough for him to drink right away.

Our final stop was the candy store in town. The kids played outside, then got $1 worth of candy apiece.

 8. Santa came to the toy store where I've been working. They were very casual about the whole thing!

Bella asked for pink ice skates. Even though she's never gone skating. That's all she asked for.

Ryan's putting in his request for a train. That's it. Nothing else.

Bella goofing around inside the flexiball.

 9. Our sad attempts at the gingerbread houses before we gave up.

 10. The Salvation Army guy outside of WalMart is really friendly. He let the kids ring the bell and you would've thought it was the coolest job on the planet.

This is Bella's "Cindy Lou Who" hair after watching the Grinch.

 11. Bella's kindergarten winter program. They song the dreidel song, a Kwanzaa song, Feliz Navidad, and even a French song (I think), but nothing about Jesus. *sigh*

Thanks, Maga, for the beautiful dress!

The program started at 6:30. We got there at 6:00. These were our seats. I think we should've camped out the night before!

Ryan wanted to take a picture, so here it is.

Bella's in this one, although you probably have to really zoom in to see her.

 12. Last day of school! Bella's last day of school before break had a two-hour delay because of the snow. That gave me time to make pancakes! And no, those aren't reindeer droppings next to it! Extra chocolate chips!

 SNOW! The kids could hardly wait for school to be over so they could go outside and play. We didn't stay out long because it was soooooo cold, but they didn't care-they loved every minute of it.

Bella's snow angel.

Ryan just being a hooligan.

Bella painting with the bottles of colored water I gave them.

Bella decorated the neighbor's rocks.