3 year pics

Lily Turns 3!

We had a great last few days celebrating Lily's bday. She loved getting the mail this week as everyday there was a package for her. Talk about an excited girl! Thank you everyone for sending her gifts. We had a small party today with neighbors and cake and ice cream. Fun time had by all. Ended the night going out to eat at Bertucci's, Lily's favorite restaurant b/c she gets to play with pizza dough. :)

Per Lily's request a Minnie Mouse cake

Singing Happy Bday

Blowing out candles

Opening present...Minnie Mouse PJs!

We love dominoes

We can't believe she is 3 already. These years have flown by and you have grown to be such a "big girl." You love playing with your babies and princesses. You even like to play with Alaina when she is cooperating with you. You are such a protector to Alaina and if she is doing anything that is "dangerous" you don't let her. Such a great big sister. You love to swing outside, play board games, and color. You have a great laugh that makes me smile every time I hear it. We love you Lillian Marie!

The Halloween that Almost Never Was...

We celebrated Halloween on Nov. 6th due to our city's power outages. The weather was not great, but not freezing like last year. Enjoy our pictures of our little duck and ballerina princess. Yes that is what she called her costume b/c she couldn't decide what she wanted to be. I think it worked out to be both. :)

Alaina preferred to climb up on the table (our new favorite thing and she can do it all by herself) and grab the candy. She was pretty quick at grabbing it at peoples houses as well.

Happy Halloween....a little late!

Lots of pictures, very random order.

Hopefully it won't be a month from now when I post their Halloween costumes. Tonight is our trick-or-treat.

Just starting to snow...

the next morning....of course we're going to build....

...a snowman!

Making Halloween sugar cookies

Carving pumpkins when we were out of power.

Everyone loves to go and pick apples!

The next are from our trip back to Wisconsin at the beginning of October. We went back for Shannon and Tom's wedding and then Grant and I got to celebrate our 5 year anniversary with a few days to ourselves while the grandparents watched the girls. It was fantastic, Grant golfed and I went to the spa. We went to an art museum (pic below) and of course ate lots of cheese. :)

Beer and cheese stop

View from our hotel room

Cave of the Mounds National Landmark

Shannon and Tom's wedding. The girls loved dancing!!

Best family pic we could get

Hard to get them all 4 looking at the camera

The ceremony on top of the ski hill was beautiful.

Random lunch outside in September ( I know this is an old pic)

Loving our new swingset

and this has happened many times

Our 5 Days of NO Power!

First off....I am so thankful for electricity and before this last week I didn't know exactly how much. As most of you I'm sure know last Saturday we got about 6-8 inches of snow on top of our trees that still had all their leaves on them, which means lots of heavy snow will break most branches off. Not a good thing with electrical lines! Around 11pm Saturday night we lost power. We never thought it would be out for 5 days. Sunday morning Alaina and I took a quick shower with the warm water that was left in the hot water heater. We thought it would be a good morning to carve pumpkins since the sun was shining in so bright. The girls loved helping. Sunday afternoon we then moved all our food out of the fridge and freezer to coolers and took them outside and covered them with snow. Fridge is another wonderful invention! Lunch and dinners consisted of grilled food and surprisingly we never ate out once. Night came and we lit a bunch of candles and had our flashlights. The girls went to bed pretty early (by 7pm) b/c they thought it was later since we didn't have any lights on. Oh and I forgot our heat source. We have a gas fireplace that we were using to heat the whole house (and remember the fan doesn't work so it took a while to heat everything up). We did all sleep in our own beds and only had Lily climb in with us 1 night. We'd head it up all day so it would get to around 68 in the house and by morning it was down to 60 downstairs so I'm sure in the 50s in our bedrooms. Grant's work never lost power so he went into work Monday after grilling sausages and scrambled eggs for breakfast. We spent most of the day in front of the fireplace keeping warm. Thank goodness for fantastic neighbors who let us shower and use their microwave for dinner Monday night. (They have a huge generator). Monday night the daycare center called and they also didn't have power so no daycare Tuesday for the girls which meant no work for me. I was really upset about this and I'm not kidding. Would have preferred to be at work in a warm hospital. Trick-or-Treat was also cancelled on Monday and rescheduled to tonight since a very large majority of us and surrounding towns were all out of power. Anyway, Tuesday we spent some time at the library then headed to eat lunch with Daddy since their is a microwave at his office. Tuesday night into Wed. Lily got a temp and was not feeling. Wednesday we spent some time at the neighbors and again the girls got baths. At this time we heard we were supposed to have power by noon on Friday. Ugh! By Wednesday the neighbors had run an extension cord from their house so that we could at least plug in the fridge since most of the snow was melting and our food would soon all be spoiled. On Thursday Grant stayed home with Lily since she had a fever and I went to work. By 9am the daycare called and Alaina had a fever so Grant had to go pick her up as well. He took both of them to the Dr. Thursday and said both were probably just viruses. But to our surprise and utter joy the power came back on Thursday! Yay, for no more darkness. Lily just kept saying, "Look, the light works." So anyway, I hope no one ever has to go through this and I'm thinking maybe we should get a generator so if it happens again we will at least have a fridge and heater. I'm going to post some pics, but I have to upload them.

Picking Apples and Pumpkins

Hello everyone! Sorry it's been a while since we posted. This weekend we finally made it out to pick out our pumpkins at a local orchard. The girls enjoyed the nice fall air and Lily is excited to make a face on her's.

Alaina 1 year stats

We had Alaina's 1 year visit this last week at our new pediatrician's office. So sad that Dr. Nelson is gone, but the place we're going to now everyone seems really nice. Bad part...had to wait 30 mins. to get in. That's not fun in a small confined place with 2 kids. Anyway, she is doing everything she is supposed to be doing now, they were surprised to see her practically running down the hallway. She of course hated her shots and also had to get her toe pricked (not sure why they don't do the finger) to test for Lead and Iron levels. Her iron is fine although they said it wouldn't hurt it to be a bit higher. Perhaps b/c she's not a huge meat fan we're having that problem. ;)

Weight 19lbs 8oz (21%) I think she's 20lbs, we've weighed her on our scaled at home multiple times. ;)
Height 28.5 inches (26%)
Head Circumference 48.5 cm (99%) perhaps this is why Lily's hats fit her?!

Other things she is doing...she loves to go down on her slide all by herself. Eats pretty much everything. Sleeps all night usually around 11 hrs. She is completely done breastfeeding now (sad face for Mommy, but I had to be done before next week when Grant and I actually get a few days without the girls...1st time in ~3 years we've had a night without children). She takes whole milk now in a bottle and loves it, but has figured out she hates milk in a sippy cup, but loves water (and somehow she knows the difference before even tasting it). She's also down to just one nap a day and I can only hope that nap is at the same time as Lily's. :) She points to everything she wants and if you don't get it for her she gets pretty angry.

Alaina 1 year pictures