Mimi and Papa's Snowy, Frigid Visit

In addition to the 6-8 inches of snow we got Christmas night, we were also treated to another couple of inches followed by an arctic blast (the high was 4°F one day) a couple days later.  We had plans while Mimi and Papa were visiting (the Denver Aquarium, the Butterfly Pavilion, or maybe the Denver Museum), but with the snow and the cold, the roads were just a little too dangerous for unnecessary driving.  The girls started to get a little wild after a few days of being cooped up inside (see the videos).

Kara has started to really get into games.  She has learned Uno and must have played it 100 times with Mimi and Papa along with Operation, Trouble, and Let's Go Fishin'.  She's also showing an interest in more complicated card games.  Maybe she'll be able to get into the annual Christmas family card games next year!

In other news, Emily has found her scream.  She will often scream at us if Kara does something she doesn't like or if we won't give her something she wants.  Oh, it's gonna be fun with TWO screaming girls...

Link to pictures

Christmas 2014

We got the Christmas season kicked off the day after Thanksgiving by putting up the tree and the decorations.  Emily had a good time looking at the decorations and enjoyed putting the star on top of the tree.  Kara particularly enjoyed putting decorations on the tree.  She even made quite a few decorations to add to the tree (see the pictures)!

A couple of weeks before Christmas, the city puts on a Dessert with Santa event for all the little kids.  Both girls enjoyed snacking on cookies and sipping on hot chocolate.  Eventually, we made our way up to talk with Santa himself.  Kara asked Santa for an electric toothbrush with Ariel on it that played music.  She was very specific. :-)  Emily didn't know quite what to think of Santa, but she knew she didn't want to sit on his lap and wouldn't let go of Dad when he tried to put her down.  Maybe next year.

On December 23rd, Mimi and Papa flew in from Alabama.  They spent Christmas Eve making gingerbread cookies and generally preparing for the Christmas festivities.

Christmas day started early this year.  Daddy suspects Kara was listening by her door for any little noise because she popped out as soon as Dad stepped out of bed.  She did go back to her room but kept popping out.  Eventually, Dad went and sat with Kara in her room (we didn't want her to wake up Emily since it was going to be such a busy day) until about 7.  Once we let her out, she quickly ran downstairs to check out what Santa brought her.  She was excited that she got an electric toothbrush, but she was a little disappointed it didn't play any music.  We made Kara wait on the rest of the presents, though.

Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Amy, and Cousin Jennifer showed up around 8:15 and brought another carload of gifts.  Kara was really into opening presents this year.  She had a great time sorting the presents into piles and would have torn them all open if we hadn't made her wait.  Emily, on the other hand, understood what was going on, but she wasn't too interested.  Mom and Dad started to feel bad after a while since she just wanted to play with her new presents, and we were just handing her presents to open. In the end, Emily just decided she was done and walked away, which was okay. Emily's favorite new gift was a Curious George stuffed animal, which she carried around with her the rest of the day.

In the afternoon, the snow started to fall, so we did have a white Christmas in Colorado. The snow came down pretty quick, so Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Amy, and Cousin Jennifer had to leave right after dinner (without eating any dessert).  Of course, they did take plenty of dessert with them.

A very merry Christmas was had by all.  Until next year!

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Kara is 5!

It's hard to believe, but Kara is 5 years old. Wow, where does the time go? For Kara's 5th birthday, she decided she wanted to have a big party for all her friends at our house. We had 17 kids (17 kids, all 5 years old and under!) at our house for the party.  Amazingly, nothing got broken and no one got hurt!

We had activities like storytime, Play-Doh, pin the tail on the donkey, and pass-the-bag (kind of like musical chairs except you pass a bag and if you get caught with it when the music goes off, you have to put something on).  However, the kids are old enough now to know that parties include cake.  We had at least three kids asking how much longer until cake.  The party was a huge hit, and all the kids had a great time!

Link to pictures

 

Visit to Shorter - Fall 2014

Early this month, we packed up the girls and went to visit the family down in Alabama. This was Emily's first flight since she was just a tiny baby, so we were a little nervous about her. For the most part, she did very well. She even passed out for about an hour, which made the time go by much faster. Kara, of course, handled the flight like a champ... as long as she had a screen (Mommy's iPad or her LeapPad) to look at.

While we were down there, Justin, Heather, Sean, and Robin McD came down to visit us at Mimi and Papa's house.  We hadn't seen them in almost two years, and we'd never met Robin!  To paraphrase Heather, "Robin and Emily are best friends, they just may not know it yet!"  Emily and Robin got along pretty well.  For the most part they just played next to each other, though Emily was not too happy when Robin took a ride on her Mickey airplane (her favorite toy at Mimi and Papa's house).  The girls even held hands walking around outside, which was pretty sweet.  Kara and Sean got along really well, mostly because Kara led Sean around the whole time they were there and Sean seemed okay with that.  Sean was such a good sport doing crafts and even reading to Kara.  We also had a little birthday party for Kara.  Overall, it was great to see our friends.  Hope to see you guys again soon!

On the last full day of our visit, we headed into Montgomery to check out the Montgomery Zoo.  It's a really great zoo for kids.  It's not too big, so we could check out almost the whole zoo.  Plus, it has a pretty awesome playground and petting zoo.  We even got to feed giraffes!  The girls both had a really great time.

The trip home was just plain no fun at all.  An arctic front moved into Denver while we were down in Alabama, which caused delayed flights leaving Denver.  We checked our flight status before heading to the airport.  At that time it said our flight was still on schedule; however, about 15 minutes after getting dropped off at the Atlanta airport, we got notification that our flight had been delayed.  In the end, the flight was 2.5 hours late taking off, so we spent almost 4.5 hours at the Atlanta airport.  The flight went pretty smooth except Emily was pretty irritable.  We realized about halfway through the flight that she felt quite warm.  We hoped that if she could just get a good night's sleep, maybe she'd feel better.  We landed in Denver about 8:30 (almost 2.5 hours late) to single digit temperatures.  While Dad was waiting on the jetway in the freezing weather, Emily was throwing up in the terminal.  Fortunately, after that, Emily started acting much better.  Then, Dad forgot one of our bags on the shuttle while we were trying to get everyone and everything to the car.  He had to chase down the shuttle through the icy parking lot in 0 degree weather.  Whew, that was brisk!  Fortunately, the drive home went off without any hitches, and our travel day concluded safely.

All in all, it was a good trip, and it was great to see everyone!

Link to pictures

Halloween 2014

We got Halloween off on the right foot this year when we headed to Rock Creek Farm to pick our pumpkins in the middle of October.  There were a ton of great pumpkins to pick from!  Kara had a great time running through the pumpkin patches trying to find the perfect pumpkin.  Emily, however, wasn't impressed with the pumpkins and just kind of wandered around in a grumpy mood.  On the way out, Rock Creek Farms had set up some fun for the kids.  They had bouncy pumpkins, slides, a hay maze, and animals to look at.  Both girls loved bouncing in the bouncy pumpkins.  Not bad for some free entertainment.

The following weekend we headed to the Butterfly Pavilion for their annual Bug-A-Boo festivities. The girls, as always, had a great time there. They got to check out all the different bugs and decorate pumpkins.  Since we have an annual pass, it was also free.

One of the neighbors sets up an elaborate graveyard every year for Halloween.  We went there to check it out several days before Halloween (during the day, so it wasn't quite as creepy), and got a good video of Emily pretending to be scared (see below).

Halloween night was a lot of fun.  Kara dressed as Maleficent (the evil fairy from Sleeping Beauty), and Emily was a monkey.  We went back to check out the graveyard at night, which was a little spooky, but not too bad.  After that we met up with some neighbors to go Trick-or-Treating.  Daddy and Emily hit a couple of houses before heading home.  Mommy stayed with Kara to get some candy booty.  Kara cleaned up this year, almost filling her plastic pumpkin!  Until next year!

Link to pictures