So sweet

One tiny little girl and her sled on one huge sledding course.

Ella's so darn cute. She told me last night that her pre-K teacher had her say 3 things she loves about her Mom. I would guess it's probably as part of our Mommy and Muffins Day that will be on Friday at her school. Wanna know what she listed?

1.) I love it when she plays toys with me.

2.) I love it when she tucks me in at night.

3.) I love it when she looks really pretty when she goes out with Daddy and we have a sitter.

Sleigh Ride Together With You

Dynamic Trio. How they fit 3 people on one sled I'll never know.

View from the top.

Ready?

F-F-F-F-F-F-Freezing. Period.

We went sled riding today. We're lucky enough to have a really good set of sledding hills 3 miles down the road. The course was just the right mix of snow and ice thanks to the little thaw we had on Friday.

Wanna hear me scream like a little girl?

Click the video to see what a bully Aron is...

Wanna see all three of them fall on their butts?

Jinjy Fest '09

Now do you know why I studied so little the year Daryle and I lived across the hall from one another? (That'll teach you to make a funny face for my camera!!)

Dad's got a hand full of candy...GET HIM!

I love to decorate.

Here's a shot of Daryle trying to ACT like he was the one that was building the house. Jen's hands were pushing his away so he could get none of the credit. In all reality, D was on Gummy Bear patrol.

Check out the look of happiness on Luke's face.

Seriously, I get to eat this when I'm done?

This was my masterpiece. I lovingly call it my Ghetto House. It needs some serious roof repair and the wall is collapsing.

Last Sunday, Auntie T and her boyfriend, Steve came over along with our college buddy, Daryle and his wife, Jen. We had our annual Gingerbread House Fest (or as Auntie T calls it Jinjy Fest). It was Steve, Daryle, and Jen's first trip to the land of Gingerbread House making. Steve claimed he was just there for observation but before I could blink, he was grabbing a scoop of frosting and off he went. He definitely made the best houses. He was kind enough to make a nice, sturdy one for both of my kids.

Daryle and Jen were kind enough to bring their beautiful daughter, Breonna. She's so cute but, unfortunately, I forgot to get her picture (bad hostess!).

Hey Tori--You need another butter mint?

Buttermint.

Buttermint.

Buttermint.

Yup, another Buttermint.

The best part about making gingerbread houses are the fixins like red hots, candy hearts, nerds, butter mints. Check out Tori in the background of these pictures partaking of the butter mints.

(She's so totally going to kill me for this and will likely never eat another butter mint ever again)

Miiiiiiiii!

The kids like to challenge those who come to our house to a little Wii. My friends, Daryle and Jen, were their latest target. They were able to beat Daryle but not Jen. Personally, I think Jen was a ringer. Here's their scorecard.

This one's for you, Aron

Aron grows a beard every year from Christmas until spring (which I just love--insert sarcasm here). I stumbled upon this little character and thought of him.

Nurturing Their Craftiness

Yeah, they're wearing their floaties on their arms. What of it?

Anyone who knows me knows that I enjoy a good craft. Now, don't get me wrong, I can't draw to save my life (something I inherited from my mother) but I can usually get some sort of crafty groove going when the occasion calls for it. I even got together recently with my friend, Jeanne, to make some scarves.

Ella got this great craft table for Christmas this year. It's loaded up with a bunch of great crayons, markers, glue sticks, colored pencils, glitter pens, etc. When people come over, she usually manages to get them to craft with her on her awesome table. Beware that you may be forced into making a craft/coloring a picture/drawing.

Beer Goggles

Sorry its kind of fuzzy but here's a pic of my two furry friends (aka my "non-biological children") sharing a tasty snack from the same bowl at the same time. It's not quite the undying love I was hoping for but its a start!

So Aron and I were talking the other day about when we were little and the things that our parents did. I told him that I can remember my Dad sometimes drinking beer when I was small and that I remember him letting me slurp some of the foam off his beer. Aron said that his Dad let him do the same thing. I found it funny that despite our parents being relatively straight-laced and conservative they would both let us do something like that. I wouldn't let Ella or Luke do that (just for those of you wanting to turn me in to Children's Services). I asked a couple of my other friends if their parents ever let them slurp the foam and got a varied reaction. One person said "Oh my goodness, NO! Not a chance they would've let me do that." Another person said that her relatives would leave glasses of beer out and let their small children drink from the glass (not just getting the foam) if they wanted.

I'm going to put a voting poll up. Now, I've done these before and I know I have more readers than the 10 people that voted cause I can't go to any gathering of friends or family function without someone commenting about what they read on the blog. Sooo...let's get out there and vote, people!

Summer in the Wintertime!!

Back against the wall is our friend, Matt, and his daughters, Kaylene and Maizy along with Ella by the blue ball.

Our friend, Tracy, and his son, Cooper. They look a lot alike and even share the same scowl--its kind of funny.


Ella swimming all by herself.

Luke on top of Mt. Daddy.

Luke with some goggles on.

Ella, Daddy, and Luke.

Luke picking up some random chick with his sweet goggles on.

We recently went to a birthday party at a local indoor pool. The kids had a blast swimming around and acting like it was no longer winter. I totally forgot to get a picture of the birthday boy (Mason) but managed to get one of his baby brother and Dad so I put that in. Faithful readers may remember Mason from posts like this.

It was an awesome idea to have a pool party! It was the perfect get away from the outside yuckiness. Great idea, Missy!

They just never get old

The kids are into jokes lately. They're really funny the first 11,000 times you hear them...then they just get old. Here are their two favorites...

Why did the chicken cross the playground?
To get to the other slide.

Why did the gum cross the road?
Because it was stuck to the chicken.

(Insert Bah, Dah, Dum here)

You were being chased by what?

The last couple nights Ella has had some scary dreams. You wanna know what was so scary? She said she was being chased by 3 big bottles of hot sauce. That's right. Bottles of hot sauce were chasing my sweetie pie. Technically, the hot sauce bottles were chasing her, Myles, Jeffy, Robbie, Aron, Luke, and me. I told her that she should have turned around and told those mean old sauces that she was going to drink them if they didn't leave her alone. She said they were too spicy to drink. I told her to tell them that she was going to dump them down the drain and recycle their bottles. She said they were too spicy to touch. I told her to grab some oven mitts and then dump them down the drain and recycle. She said she would try this. It was really hard not to laugh.

Finally!

I finally got my oral surgery (aka shoving a titanium rod down into my jaw--that one's for you, T) done yesterday. All went well. They have to put you under in a "twilight" for the surgery. I remember being able to hear the doctor and nurses talking but don't remember what they said. What I do remember, though, is dreaming that I was at home and that I needed to get up to do things around the house. They had to push me back down into the chair at least 3 times because of this. Weird.

So, anyway. Stage 1 is done for that. After this, I have to heal for 3 months then they put screw a top piece to the rod. Then that has to heal. Once this is done, they can then attach a fake tooth to the rod.

Christmas Wii Tourney

L to R: Mandy, Robin (Myles in Robin's lap), and Ella.
L to R: Robin (with Myles tucked in front of her), Jarrod, Brooke, and Grant.

Over my Christmas vacation, I hosted my Mom's side of the family at our house. We had a small crowd of about 22. The highlights of the event was being able to send the kids to the park with Aron and my cousin, Denise, because it was so warm and holding a mini Wii tourney with the kids. Aunt Robbie and my cousin, Mandy, even got into the spirit of it.

Aquarium videos

The Newport Aquarium has tanks that go all around visitors. Here a couple videos of the sharks and fish swimming around us.

Our new BFF: GPS

"What do you mean we're just going to use our new Garmin Nuvi 880 to get to the aquarium? Where are our maps? Where is the address we're going? Have you lost your ever lovin' mind?"

"No, sweetie, I'm just drunk with love over my new Garmin Nuvi 880"

Let me touch you through the glass, big creepy fish thing.

"I don't want to touch it!"

"I'll touch it!!"

They had a shark petting area, too. See above for photo of shark petting area. The kids' arms were a little too short to get in the water enough to pet one.

See sign below for proper shark petting technique.

Click on the picture if you need it bigger.


What a great skyline of Cincinnati through the eyes of Newport, KY

Thanks to our new GPS (The Garmin Nuvi 880--thanks Mom and Dad) we decided to fly without a net on a little trip to the Newport Aquarium in Newport, KY. That's right, we went with no maps or directions or addresses of any kind other than our handy, dandy GPS. I've gotta say that the GPS is pretty great. We just punched in the city then area attractions and Voila! magic happened.

We didn't tell the kids where we were going until right before we got there. After we told them we were going to the Aquarium, Luke shouted "We're going to the 'pool-arium."

Here we are in line to get in with Luke explaining what we'll be doing.

Please don't stop the music.

Luke's such a spaz. I love him but what a spaz. His newest thing is to dance whenever he hears music. His fave song is So What by Pink (scary, huh?). Whenever we're in the car, he says "I want to hear The Rock" which means "Get this dumb kids music off the radio, Mom, and put on the rock-n-roll."

Here's a video of the little guy himself dancing around our table at a restaurant.

You gots some 'splainin' to do, Lucy

No, I didn't get their "friends" this great antique chalkboard for Christmas. Aron's Granny found it in her house and thought the kids might like it.

I'm all for kids with an active imagination. Because the kids are so close in age, they have a great time pretending together. They come up with all kinds of crazy things to do. The one day, they unzipped their sleeping bags and spread them out on the floor. Then they got into their bathing suits and pretended that their sleeping bags were actually pools. They swam and dived and splashed and just had a great time. They even made me give them bottles of lotion so they could pretend to be putting on sunscreen (safety first, right?).

Sometimes, their pretend play is a little out there even for me. Ella loves to tell people about her good buddy, Batty. She and Batty do all kinds of fun things together. They're together mostly at night before she goes to sleep. She says they don't talk much because mostly he likes to just hang out. Sometimes he visits his family which is far away and sometimes he just likes to be with her. She'll tell you all about her dear buddy, Batty, but will neglect to tell you that he's her imaginary friend. Don't call him an imaginary friend, though, because she gets ticked off about that. I think Batty is a spinoff to Billy Gorilly 's character, Betty Bat but I'm not sure. Luke doesn't like to feel left out so he has invented an imaginary friend, too. His is called "Blue Giant." I think it might be a take on the Monsters Inc movie character, Sully, but he denies it. Luke and Blue Giant's activities are generally similar to Ella and Batty's adventures. I try to play along a little bit but drew the line at Christmas when I was expected to buy them their own Christmas gifts.

What do you get for an imaginary bat and giant? Yeah, I don't know either.

So if my kids start talking about their buddies the next time you see them, just nod your head and smile along.

***Beware, E and L are highly offended by the label "imaginary."