Christmas 2010!

It's been a crazy and fun couple of weeks so far and I have so many photos so I needed to put on a quick update. We spent a couple of days at a waterpark in Wisconsin Dells just before Christmas - it was nice to have some water play instead of snow play for a little while!! Morgan and Rowan have enjoyed the snow and have spent plenty of time sledding and tubing. Oliver is loving having his cousins here to play with and the two boys do a fantastic job of keeping Emily entertained as well. A couple of days ago we went to the Mall of America where Morgan and Rowan spent their time in the theme park on the rides!! Morgan wishes there was a shopping centre with rides like that in England!

Oliver was sick over Christmas with pinkeye and an ear infection but he is much better now and all the presents on Christmas morning made him forget about it for a little while. Emily is doing a great job of pulling herself up to standing on almost anything. She claps her hands all the time and does a great "so big" with her arms in the air. And today she started waving! I'll be taking her to the docs on Monday to get her latest vital statistics!

We have had some snowfall while the Curry's have been here but nothing like the blizzard of the weekend before they arrived. Mark has had a chance to use the snowblower though! Today it is raining (!) and it's amazing how fast the snow is melting although there is way way too much for it to go for good. It will be turning cold again though overnight and the weekend will be bitter so we'll have a nice ice skating rink to play with instead :)

Just a few more days of holiday to go and we have lots to pack in, including Rowan's 5th birthday tomorrow - fun!!!


Kneeling!

Playing with Scoop

Sledding fun!!

Emily meets Aunty Steph!

Cute dress :)

The two Supermen - looking deeply unimpressed

Wolf ears are a nice look Mark

Give me my food!!

Ah, the wolf ears look better on Rowan!

Yep, more food please :)

Oliver loves Applebees!

I found this gorgeous little cape for Emily when we were on our trip

Daddy and Oliver at the hotel

Mark snowblowing

Emily playing peekaboo under the table

This is what happens when you leave a 3 year old alone with a sticker book

Emily's cot has now been lowered - thank you Mark!

Standing with the help of mummy

Oliver had to hang this on his door on Christmas Eve

Oliver's stocking!

Emily just wanted to play with Oliver's stuff!

Rowan and Oliver with Oliver's magnetic trucks

Oliver with his set of cars from Grandma Colleen - yes, he's smiling!

Emily loves Morgan's lightsaber

Morgan showing Oliver how to count his money!

So big!!

Loving this sweater dress from my friend Sarah :)

Standing up at the gate

Mark and Steph at the Rainforest Cafe with a couple of very pink drinks!

Jon with Mark's new iPad - guess what Jon wants now???

Blizzard 2010!!!

Yep, that's what the news channels were calling the snowfall we got this past weekend. You know it's big when they just call it Blizzard 2010 :) We totalled out at 17 inches of snow which was the 5th highest snowfall in recorded history. I went to work on Saturday morning when it really wasn't too bad but at 2pm I was given the option to go home so I did. By then I had to dig my car out of it's space and the roads were pretty nasty. We were supposed to have a family Christmas party that evening but we opted to stay home and be safe which was probably a good choice. Now we have so much snow on the ground it's hard to know where the rest of it is going to go!!

Tomorrow the Curry's arrive from the UK and I think we are all ready for their arrival. Oliver is very excited for his cousins to come and visit. That, on top of the general Christmas excitement is making one crazy little boy in this house!! And he doesn't even know about the trip to the waterpark next week!

Emily continues to do well. Now she is trying to stand up - obviously not content just to crawl! We are fast running out of safe places for Oliver to do his puzzles!!

Well, I just wanted to get a little update on before things get really busy here. I'll try to get some pics on before xmas!

Reading time!

Yep, she loves the Christmas tree!!

My first Christmas card!!

Hey Oliver, did you see what I got?

Sillies!

Oliver found his football.....

.....and caught it loads of times!!!!

Emily finding a tasty toy at a play date

And Oliver colouring with his friends Celia and Chase (Chase is wearing the monkey costume!!)

What I discovered when I left work on Saturday. It doesn't look that bad in this picture but the snow behind and in front was too high for me to drive through.

Emily was more than ready to get out; Oliver wanted to pose!

The morning after........

Thank goodness for snowblowers!!!

And the wonderful roof art on our garage :)

Emily playing this afternoon

Thanksgiving 2010!

We had a great Thanksgiving weekend with Grandma Colleen. Oliver and Mikayla had lots of fun together as usual and Oliver enjoyed having someone else to entertain him! Emily did great too so I think she is finally getting used to being with other people (fingers crossed......).

Emily's crawling has really come on and she is fast now!! She follows Oliver everywhere and is pretty much a one woman wrecking machine. She is even trying to pull herself up to standing - using people or furniture! She got herself on her knees this morning using Oliver's train table. He wasn't impressed with that as this is his new place to do puzzles since he can't use the floor anymore. Maybe we need a taller table!

We put our Christmas tree up the day after Thanksgiving. Oliver really enjoyed hanging all the ornaments on it and loves all the lights. It's great if we go out at night because he is just fascinated by it all! And if he had the money to buy all the outside Christmas ornaments in Target he certainly would. I was doing the ironing this morning and gave him all the toy magazines to look through and he pretty much wanted everything (apart from the dolls and anything scary)!

We are now on the countdown to the Curry family arriving for Christmas - yay!! They arrive on the 15th so only 10 days or so to go. Very exciting :) Hope they don't find it too cold, ha ha!!

Daddy, you're home!!!

Probably not the best place to crawl Emily....

Our Christmas lights (which haven't worked for about a week now. Hopefully the slight technical issues will be fixed soon!)

Thanksgiving baby!

Hanging out with Grandma

The kids helping with the Christmas tree

Oliver after eating a candy cane

And Mikayla showing us all her blue tongue :)

The finished tree :)

Love the look on Emily's face. I'm not sure what effect Matt has on her :)

I want to get out and play with Scoop!!!

Happy playing with cars

Mummy and Oliver being silly - he wanted me to keep kissing his hand :)

We had a fantastic snowstorm on Friday night (while I was at work) and this is the aftermath before the ploughs came around. Those are my tyre tracks coming up the driveway - it was a crazy drive home!! And now it's flippin' freezing!