It's the little things.

Snow in our neck of the woods is such a treat. We got oodles of it last week, in fact we set a record! The boys had most of their snow clothes thankfully, we left Liam's boots at the cabin...wait til you see what we gave him to wear instead:) We made a cowboy snowman....or should I say I made a cowboy snowman!! The boys were too busy playing in it, but they were ready to put the face on of course. Kallie got to go out for a minute(Klaire was sleeping) and she was mesmerized.

Landon's Valentine's glasses have been worn by everyone around here and Kallie has sucked off most of the glitter!! It is really is funny how the cheap little trinkets often get played with more then the expensive toys.

Please don't make me daddy....they aren't my style!!(Kallie)

(Klaire)

Landon and Liam aren't really the wrestling type, but they love to jump on daddy and play tickle monster, so Kallie and Klaire have picked up on it and they will pounce on anyone who lays on the floor!!! It is priceless to see all four of them playing together.

Lee-man the Hee-man and Kallie Wallie

L-dog and Klaire Bear

Oh the fun one can have with a box. This box entertained them for a week. We played circus, jack-n-the-box, race car, you name it we did it with the box.

Frosty inspired the kids to all want to wear a cowboy hat. I think I got some real cute pictures of all four of them. The girls are walking now. Kallie walks everywhere unless she is mad and Klaire has really taken off this last week. She still crawls quite a bit, but she is walking across the room now and she would prefer to walk she just falls a lot! They are especially adorable right now and it's a good thing because they are wayyyyyyyyyyyy high maintenance when they are awake. They are like two little tornado's, if one doesn't make the disaster the other one will. And they cry for me a lot which is flattering, but it really wears on me. I didn't realize how easy I had when Landon and Liam went through this phase, I could just put them on my hip and cook and get stuff done. But with two crying and climbing up you.....you have just go sit down and play with them and just wait until they are asleep to do anything. I can get a little done here and there when they are awake, but not much. Try loading a dish washer with two little munchkins climbing in it.....ahhhhh it's nuts.

Growing Up Part II

The girls had a wonderful time at their party. They loved all the attention and sugar!!! A special thanks to everyone who helped me with the party.....I truly couldn't have done it with out you!

Kallie and Klaire are changing every day! Their hair is growing very quickly lately. We can do pig tails now....hooray!!!! They are jabbering all the time and are still taking steps here and there, but mostly crawling. They interact with each other in new ways...like shaking their heads 'yes' and 'no' at each other! Klaire likes to dance to music and Kallie has found that she likes to wrestle with Landon (gently of course and they pounce on pillows together:). They are having a little seperation anxiety lately, especially with me, which is adding something new to the mix, but other than that they rarely cry. Everything they do is pretty adorable and we are having so much fun with them!

I need to update Liam's quotes b/c he has been saying some really cute things, so you guys will have to hold me accountable to adding his quotes....then I will actually sit down and do it!! Landon is happy to be back in the swing of things at school. He missed his best friend, Margo:) They are getting married ya know......that's what they told their teacher and Landon came home and told us. And since then, they have decided to talk about kids and Margo wants eight and Landon wants a billion, but they both agree that the first will be adopted from China like Margo and the second will be adopted from Arkansas!!!! (Landon was born in Arkansas) They are a crack up.

Happy Holidays!

From our family to yours! I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas! We are still in Colorado enjoying time with family and snow and mountains and new presents and great food and the list goes on and on:)

We have many great pictures that I want to share, but this will have to suffice until I get home and go through them all. This was the picture we were going to put on our Christmas cards, but those didn't happen this year! And I have four really good reasons why........Landon, Liam, Kallie, and Klaire. Maybe next year!

The girls will offficially be one in less than 24 hours......sniff sniff. We are going to make some cupcakes today for a mini-celebration and then they will have a Thing 1 and Thing 2 birthday party after we get home. (We are traveling tomorrow...their real b-day) I can't wait to see what they think of chocolate cake and frosting!

Growing up

We are constantly being made aware of how quickly our kids are growing up, however Landon about made our jaws hit the floor when he explained pixels to us the other day. Landon to us, "Hey, mom you know that flower that is your screen saver on the computer?" Me, "Uh, yes." Landon, "Well that picture is actually just a bunch of pixels put together. And pixels are these little squares of color. Isn't that cool?"

And his reading has been shocking us as well. He can read paragraphs now. He will read out of chapter books and he doesn't sound words out anymore, he just says them. It is crazy, I will have to post a video of him reading a paragraph out of one of his books!



And our litte Liam has been saying things like, "Yes, that is interesting to me." and "Stop distracting me!" And he can write his name all by himself! His preschool teacher asked me what we did to get him to communicate so clearly...I said well we read to him but the rest is just the way God made him! And hearing big brother has helped out too!

We are so proud of our little boys! I plan to post about the girls soon!!

Oh November.

Where did it go? I'm not ready for Christmas?!? Shopping....I don't have time for that! Will someone do my Christmas shopping and plan the girls' birthday party pretty please?

Seriously can you believe the girls are going to celebrate their first birthday in 29 days? I'm so excited to reach this milestone because we kept saying it will get easier after they are one...no more formula..no more bottles....they can eat pretty much anything...they can face forward in the car...etc. But something tells me it isn't going to get too much easier! At least not until they are about three. Liam is easy and I keep thinking ok, when the girls can go potty all on their own and get their shoes on and get in the car by themselves and they can go up and down the stairs with out me worrying and I don't have to carry a diaper bag and no one needs a snack when we are just going out to run errands...then it will truly be easier!!


But, I am VERY MUCH looking forward to no more bottles and formula! I HATE our bottles. Thought I loved them at first, but that didn't last long. They leak all the time when they are standing up and when we are feeding! So you set a bottle down that has a little left in it and ten minutes later there is a ring of formula puddled up on your end table. Or the girls get drips of milk on their chest while they are drinking.....arhhgg. So for all you new moms out there. BORN FREE bottles are not all they are cracked up to be. Ours started leaking after only a couple months of use and there are FIVE pieces to clean per bottle. We have stuck it out b/c we didn't want to pay for a new set, so I think after the girls are fully transitioned to sippies I am going to take those bottles out back and line them up and borrow a shot gun:)


Ok moving on! I'm off my soapbox. Here are some highlights from this month!

(Kallie is the closest to the camera) The girls interactions have been just priceless the last month. They LOVE each other. They laugh at each other, make squishy faces at each other, follow each other, it is delightful. They take toys from each other and knock each other over occationally still, but they are over it in about 2 seconds.We got to watch Avery Kate one day and Kallie was enthralled to say the least. (Klaire was sleeping:)Kevin's parents came down for a long weekend and helped us with the kids and many projects around the house. Kevin and Dennis made these great planter boxes for the deck and Marnie and I made curtians and pillow covers for my room....(or should I say the master bedroom...nahhh it's pretty much mine:) I will post pictured when everything is complete! Oh and you are probably wondering why Kallie is just standing in this picture?!?!? Well, little miss thang 1 is standing all the time now and has taken some steps!!! Not long now! Klaire is standing some too, but is more interested in talking! Klaire says, "Momma, Dadda, and Nanna very clearly and tries to say night night, banana, bye bye, minnie, and a few others. She also turns pages in books when you ask her to and points and shakes her head. She does some signs as well. Kallie says, "Momma and Dadda" and she will sign for more and wave bye.We took advantage of Landon being home from school and we all loaded up to meet daddy for lunch and see his new office. His company switched to a new location and Kevin got an office with windows this time and a fantastic view of downtown!!!This was a very important and private meeting going on here. The real decision makers were very concerned about how much they could twirl in their chairs. Daddy and his sweethearts.(Klaire in front) I caught them sitting like this. Klaire smiles with her mouth open and Kallie grins from ear to ear. Their laughs are also different. Kallie squeals and Klaire cackles.


This is the jail. The have come to like it pretty well in there. And I let them out to explore every day, it's just nice to have them contained when I am cooking or doing something with the boys.

Sorry this picture is blurry, Kevin didn't know I had the camera on manual control. Those are elves hanging from the fan. Their names are Hollis and Hampden and they come to life at night and get into all kinds of mischeif. The boys wrote letters to Santa asking for some elves to come and help us get ready for Christmas and these two came and rang our doorbell the day after Thanksgiving. They will stay with us until after Christmas and then they will go back to the North Pole until next year. Kevin and I sure are having fun 'helping' the elves and we are getting a kick of the boy's enjoyment. Landon has asked a few thousand questions and it took a little convincing, but now he is jumping out of bed to see what Hollis has done. You can find out more at http://www.elf-magic.com/. (Side-note: Kevin and I are thinking about telling Landon about Santa next year way before Christmas season, so that he doesn't hear it from someone else. Anyone been in this boat before? It will be interesting to see if any of his kindergarten buddies tell him anything this year, so far so good. He is just the type kid that isn't going to believe for long and we aren't going to force the Santa thing after he questions it. Any advise on this one?!?!)

You can't turn your back for a second with these two. If one doesn't find it, the other one will.

My surprise visit to see miss Lindy Carr and her precious family! I told Kevin back in August (before my birthday) that the thing I wanted most for my birthday was a weekend to spend with Lindy. So he promised me that he would let me fly up there and he would keep the kids. Yes all four of them! So I flew up on her birthday and she was in shock! We talk all the time, but we hadn't seen each other since April of '07. Anyway, it was awesome. So glad I went and I'm so thankful to Kevin for being SUPERDAD and successfully keeping all four and Liam was even sick. At one point that weekend, he called to tell me he was in Wallie World with all four of them and they were all as happy as could be...he says, "This isn't so hard, I don't know why you don't want to take all four of them grocery shopping:)" Very funny hunny.

Well, if anyone has any birthday party ideas....send them my way. And feel free to do some Christmas shopping for me, otherwise all of you that normally recieve gifts from me are getting coal......or maybe giftcards:)

Halloween!

Well, as you can see we had Batman, Luigi, Thing 1, and Thing 2 at our house last week! I had the idea for Thing 1&2 a long time ago and I couldn't find any store bought costumes, so I had to make them, but it didn't involve sewing so I was good! I just bought solid red jammies (which hard to find by the way) and pinned on the felt circles I made. I bought washable blue hair gel from Sally's and I made the bows. The hair gel washed right out thankfully....I was a little nervous because I just dove in and covered their heads with out testing it first!!!

Landon was VERY determined to be a superhero this year, even though Mario would have been adorable!! We certainly wanted him to be what he wanted and trust me he LOVED being Batman. It was all I could do to get him not to sleep in that costume every night. Last night, some lady told him, "Thanks for keeping us all safe Batman." That was a highlight of his evening. He is so into the holidays now and if it were up to him our house would be decked out in holiday decor year round.

Liam would have been happy to be just about anything this year, I think this is probably the last year that he won't have a strong opinion. He was very familiar with Luigi because he plays Mario Kart with Kevin and the old school Mario Brothers with my dad. We couldn't get the mustache on him unfortunately. That would have been awesome!! He told everyone he was "super fast!"

The girls loved all the attention they got. I however, was not quite prepared for it! We had people stopping us for pictures right and left, it was crazy. I guess I'm not meant to be a celebrity:)

Klaire

Kallie

We are having a hard time keeping everyone healthy in our house. We are on round three of illness running through the family in the last 10 weeks. I know we are just 'paying our dues' for having four kids and two in school, but this getting really stressful and expensive! We've all had the swine flu, we've had sinus infections, an ear infection, a lower uti, and now croup. Fun. Fun. Maybe we will get the worst behind us before Christmas?