January 2014

These pictures are definitely not posted in chronological order...

Olivia took some of her birthday money and split the cost of a 2nd rainbow loom with Carter.  They were so excited because it opened up a lot more projects that they are able to make now with two looms.

Bought some blood oranges this week at the grocery store and Ryan loves them.  Easy to see why they are called Blood Oranges.

I rarely get to see this guy asleep as he puts himself to sleep and I hate to even check on him because he can wake up so easily.  So when I finally to catch him passed out, I had to snag a picture.

Ryan's favorite song is, "If you're happy and you know it..."  He loves to do the "Shout Hooray" part!

Carter got some shave gel for Christmas.

He practices with his faux razor in the shower.

We've had our fair share of snow this year.  The kids got snow bricks for Christmas and they work great!  Much better than the usual ice cream bucket that I used to give to them for packing snow.

Carter also got some space ice cream (freeze dried).  He and Olivia gave it a try.  It didn't get all eaten so some went to the trash...we'd all rather eat the real deal.

Olivia sold her old Ipod on Ebay before her birthday so she could use the money from it to put towards a new one.

Ryan found one of Haylee's apples that she left laying around.  He dug right in, did a great job with it and LOVED it.

Haylee loves to be chased around the house.  Mostly the path through our kitchen and dining area.

Around and around she'll run after you.

She wears you out!

But when you "catch" her by surprise and give her a tickle, she gets so excited.

And then she'll take off running again!

Haylee will sometimes clear my countertops for me.  I don't really appreciate it though because it's usually stuff I prefer on my countertops...not the floor.  Ryan is quick to check out anything that falls to the floor...including chicken pieces from a rotisserie chicken I was cutting into.  

This kid LOVES Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.

My sweet girl turned 10 this month!  She wanted some purple skinny jeans from Justice...she got just that :)

Since her birthday party was four days after her special day, and we didn't want to have loads of cake that week, we did cookies on her actual birthday.  She chose snickerdoodles.

Gary & Vanessa got tons of the family and some strangers to mail Olivia a birthday card.  She got more than in this picture!  We couldn't figure out what was going on for the longest time!  We finally figured out that it was our loving and thoughtful neighbors!

Haylee and Allison.  Allison is one (of three) of our new in-home ABA therapists.  She is a college student that is nearly done with her early childhood education degree and then plans to start this fall working on her Masters to become a BCBA.  We are blessed to have her working in our home.

Haylee and Ryan started taking baths together!  It's been so long since I've had little ones bath together, I'd forgotten how crazy it is, but nice to only have to do one bath though too.

Haylee loves checking out the crickets in Rocky's (the lizard) tank.

I loves these little toes!  Ryan has them like this a lot as he is always trying to peek onto something higher so he gets right up on those tippy toes.

Connor and Olivia.  These two are best buds.

Olivia's birthday party invites.  Olivia chose to have a crafty party.

Olivia picked all the crafts for her party.  The first was a cupcake liner Valentine wreath.

I added a few games as a surprise to Olivia.  In this game they had a string hangout out of their mouth with a pom-pom tied to the end of it.  The first person to swing it up and have it stick on their vaseline covered nose, won.

Next game was Birthday Mummy.

Olivia loves Hot Tamales and so one game was biting the ends off of them and getting them to stick up on a paper plate.  The person with the most after one minute won.

Our 2nd craft was gum drop roses and putting them on cupcakes that they got to take home.  This crafty was hard and messy and I didn't get pictures of it.  Our last craft were these 3-D snowflakes.

Cake time.

This is probably one of the fanciest cakes I've ever been able to make and have it come out looking somewhat decent.

Aaron built a swing to put in our basement for Haylee.  She loves it!

This past Saturday we got all bundled up to go sledding.  This was Haylee's first time getting bundled up and she wasn't a fan of it.  We got to our sledding destination and the wind was quite bad and since Haylee hates the wind, it was so cold with that wind, and noticed it knocking a few kids over, we decided to turn around and come home.

Ryan picked up the kids rainbow loom hook and got to work!  Amazing how fast little ones catch on to things.  (He didn't really do rainbow loom, but I mean, that he's caught onto what the kids do with that hook.)