Snow & Santa

Last Friday night we went to see Santa and Olivia sat on his lap for the first time without crying. It was a momentous event in our family. Ben & Olivia both told Santa what they wanted from him and Will promptly took Olivia's place as the crier. You can see in the following picture that he is terrified. Right after I took the picture he completely broke down.

Olivia with Santa. She is so proud of herself.
That night we got a ton of snow so the next morning we went sledding for the first time this season.

My little snow bunny

Daddy & Will

Ben & the hill

This was the first time Will had seen snow. He was so bundled up he couldn't bend to sit (Christmas Story style). Rick had to hold him up, he didn't seem to mind though.

White Christmas

This year, we had a really wonderful Christmas. It was different in a lot of ways. First, there was snow, lots and lots of snow. It was gorgeous. Rick in the kids played out in it for a long time. The kids ate a lot of snow too.

One of the kids favorite things to do is slide down the slide and knock all the snow off.

On Christmas Eve, we had dinner with friends and came back to our house for hot chocolate, talked about the Nativity story and then had a surprise Rudolph sighting out our back window that sent children wide-eyed running up to their rooms. Olivia said "Whew that was a close one!"
Christmas morning is just so fun with little kids. Ben and Olivia were so sweet about getting and giving their gifts. Lots of 'thank you's', hugs and "you are going to love what I got you's".

Another thing that was different was that we didn't have any family around. This was the first Christmas in our married life that we had spent with just us. Although I missed everyone in Georgia and Washington it was kind of nice to just be the four of us. We did get to talk/skype to almost all of our family that day.

Since we had always had family around, I had never cooked an entire Christmas dinner (shameful, I know). So I went overboard and cooked a huge Christmas dinner that could have fed at least 20 people. After dinner we went and saw "Princess and the Frog".

As a side note, Buddy our elf, went back to live with Santa until next year. I miss him already. It really helped the behavior level when he was watching all the time.

Christmas things and funny stuff

I just walked in the house from shoveling snow for the first time in my life!! No, Rick is not a slacker husband, he is out of town, which gave me this wonderful experience. Picture this...I have a huge black down coat zipped up with the hood so tightly drawstringed you can't really see my face (it was a good thing, I looked crazy), gray sweatpants, Rick's snow boots (I don't have any yet. I haven't wrapped my mind around being cute and warm, so I haven't bought any boots yet.), and my almost 6 month prego belly shoveling our driveway in 30 mile an hour winds and snow. Funny, really funny!!
I started and it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I had done about half of the driveway when a sweet neighbor saw me and had pity on me. For one thing, I didn't know if there is a right way to shovel snow. It turns out there is. I was going top to bottom and my angel neighbor told me to go side to side so you don't have to pick up the shovel as much. I learned something new today and I am pretty proud of myself.
Last night, it was snowing like crazy outside, we had a fire going, the kids were making their yearly gingerbread houses (this year they opted for the village), drinking yummy homemade hot chocolate and then watched 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas'. It was such a great night. I am looking forward to the kids and I having our first white Christmas.

Two nights ago we went to visit Santa. Isn't this such a sweet picture of Ben with Santa. This is the official picture that was taken. What you can't see in this picture is the bigger picture.

This is the bigger picture...

Rick and I have laughed about this picture for the last 2 days. I asked her to take a picture with the elf but really wanted to get a picture of her with Santa in the background. She wasn't happy!

What's a guy got to do to win a girl over? Apparently yearly presents and candy canes isn't enough.

April snow showers!!

The first Sunday we were in Chicago it snowed!! Not just a little snow...no, no a lot of snow (at least to me. Although any snow in April is unacceptable.) When it started snowing it was just after dinnertime so we all ran outside. We were the only crazy people outside taking pictures and throwing snowballs but we're new to this.

Yes, Olivia has on a Cinderella dress on under her coat. She really wanted to keep it on and play in the snow.



The next morning it had snowed between 2-3 inches. We got bundled up again and headed out to play. Ben made his first snow angel. After about 10 minutes of being outside both kids were freezing and wanted to go inside. The snow was fun but I hope we don't see it again until December.
I thought I would list some of the things we have done over the first two weeks of being in Chicago.

• Went to the JumpZone
• Celebrated my 32nd birthday and had dinner at the famous Gino's East. Famous for there deep dish pizzas.
• Went to several parks in the area
• Story time at Barnes and Noble
• Went to our new gym. The kids love it because there is a rockwall in the kids area.
• Ate dinner with our new Bishop and his family. They are so nice.
• Went to another Globe Trotters game, courtesy of America's Best. They are a sponsor. Globe Trotters won again, surprisingly!! The 38 year streak continues.
• Looked for houses, much to the kids dismay