SNOW...again

Today it was COLD and SNOWY! So of course we bundled up and went out to play in the snow.

New Babies

This past week, D was doing some work in Houston. The girls and I lept at the chance to tag along on the visit. Three of my best friends had all had babies since our last visit and I was dying to meet them in person...and the girls are always excited to see babies. And of course my sister and her family live there too so we got to visit with the cousins. One of the best things about the trip was being able to play outside cause it was in the upper 60's/ 70's each day (no offense babies, but it is cold here and we have not been outside for months). So here is a little montage of our visit:

With Meara after a meal at CHUY'S!!! The girls look like giants!

With our "twin friends" Carter and Olivia and their new brother Rhett.

Family fun....and yes Will, we all think that Brooke's hair looks funny like that.

My teacher buddies - and our 4 girls...75% of which will be future math nerds!

Always a good idea to let 2 year olds hold babies!

Some Cute Pictures

Naked Babies - or Toddlers - in front of the snow. We no longer use the word babies for them cause they have learned that "babies cry and toddlers use words." Which Audrey is all too happy in interject when Brooke is crying!

There has seriously not been much going on at our house lately, so I thought that I would post a few pictures of the girls. I have been trying, without much success, to take a picture of each of the girls that really looks like them and captures what they are like now. I have gotten some cute ones - see below - but none that are exactly what I want...the quest continues.

Schedule

Another post primarily for my own benefit...
Daily: the girls wake up around 8, nap around 2 to 4, and back to bed around 8:30.

Our weekly activities go something like this:

• Sunday afternoon: swim lessons. We just had our first lesson this week. The girls were stars - hopefully this will continue. It was so bizarre to get all dressed in swimwear when it was in the 20's outside. Fortunately Target already had some suits out as Brooke had definitely outgrown hers.
• Monday: art class. We are taking another art class through the county parks and rec service. I was not totally sold on the last one we took, so we are trying another one. Yesterday was our first class and it went well...of course there are only 4 kids in the class (which makes A&B half the class!).
  
• Tuesday: gymnastics. We have taken classes at the Little Gym for almost a year. I decided that we would try something different this session, so we are taking classes at a real gymnastics place. Which is sort of weird after being in a place totally geared for little bitty kiddos. We have been twice and the girls seem to like it. I have not totally decided if it is better/worse/or the same as Little Gym.
• Wednesday: we usually do a playdate with one of my mommy groups.
  
• Thursday: 1st and 3rd we do MOPS.
• Friday: usually a playdate with my other mommy group

All those activities and here they are thrilled to be playing in a box of packing peanuts!

A few updates

I feel like there are tons of things that the girls are doing lately that I haven't blogged about...and since this is the only record that I am keeping I am going to try to remember stuff and jot it down here. Therefore, this will be fairly random:

• The girls' favorite game right now is hide-n-seek. They love to go "ss-hide" and tell me to go "count". Then they switch. But when they count you had better start hiding ASAP. They only count to ten and they zip through 7,8,9,10...then they yell "not, come" (their abbreviation for ready or not, here I come). They are very cute about copying me - they will look somewhere and say "no." They also will hide in the very same spot that I was just in.
  

• Audrey has her 2 bottom 2-year molars in. Brooke's first bottom one is about to pop through.

• They are extremely polite. They love to say "thank you mommy" (or daddy) and "scuse me mommy" The excuse me one is particularly funny cause it is usually Brooke who is obsessed with step-stools. She is constantly right behind me wanting to see ("I see mommy") and wants to put her step-stool down exactly where I am standing - thus the need for "scuse me."

• Audrey has been our little super star lately. She is always so pleasant and accomodating. One of the cutest things she does is how she loves on her stuffed animals and her baby dolls. She just gets the best smile ever (I am working on capturing this). She rarely gets in trouble. In fact, yesterday she was punishing herself. Brooke was whining and being fussy. I told her that she needed to stop or she needed to go. She chose to leave and ran to her room for a little bit to calm herself down. When she came back to play, I told her how good she was for leaving and calming down. So Audrey then starts being pretend fussy just like Brooke and then declares that she is going to "go" So off she goes to her room, where I hear her over the monitor doing pretend crying and then she ran back to the playroom. She repeated this several times....too funny!
  

Brooke and D doing the Seminole Chop as we ate lunch and watched the Noles win the game for good ole Bobby.

• Brooke has been less of a star lately. She gets fussier and clingier. And unfortunately when nap time or bed time comes around she likes to declare (loudly) "no nap. PLAY" and she declares this repeatedly. Though she does still settle down and sleeps well. Brooke also gets much more concerned about me. For example, D was swinging me by my feet like he does the girls and I was not really on board with it. So I was saying something about wanting down and Brooke got all upset and demanded that I get down and she was super worried about me (adorable!). She is also funny in that she loves to press her face right up next to yours.
  

• They still love to watch Elmo movies and Winnie the Pooh.

• Their vocabulary is still expanding a lot - though it is frequently hard to understand. I totally could not get that they were asking me to "dim" the lights. (D had taught them that the day before while I was not around so I had no context). They generally will put 3-4 words together, but nothing that I would call a great sentence. Currently they cuss quite a bit. They say the F word all the time - for fork, for work, sometimes for walk, other randoms (clearly not meaning too as they have not heard that word) and it is just too funny. I took a video of them yelling it the other day cause D and I were just so cracked up about it - though we know we should not be encouraging it. They also add an h to sit and it is also super funny.
  

• They love to play in their kitchen. A new favorite is to put a piece of fruit in their blender and make a smoothie. They like to feed their little people and baby dolls - and of course mommy and daddy. They LOVE their little teapot and we get lots of cups of tea.

Christmas morning

Here are a few pics of Christmas morning:

The most popular things from their stockings: maracas and a spinner...both were used pretty much the entire car ride home (which is over 10 hours!!)


The girls enjoying a few of their presents...as a bizarre aside, the girls love their little kitties and insist that the kitties go with us to the potty to flush the poop. They hold one in each hand and tilt them over the rim to watch. Clearly they are my children.


And here are the required PJ shots of the family...I think it is unfair that D looks so much better than me in the morning!