Happy Birthday Simon!

Yesterday, the 29th, was Simon's birthday. So we had a snow day to celebrate! Happy Birthday Simon. He and Eli played in the snow, even though it was still coming down and windy and cold. Somehow children are impervious to the cold when they are having fun playing in the snow. We also got to have the cousins over for cake since no one went to school. He blew out all the candles, once we got him close enough.He is now 3, but we all seem to feel like he has been around longer than that. He sure makes us laugh, and is a lot of fun. He got some fun I Spy computer games, the Curious George movie, and a stick horse, that makes galloping and neighing sounds. He loves it all! And we love Simon.

Halloween pictures coming next....

Cupcakes and dresses and bows, Oh My!

Our very kind neighbor brought over these fantastic, beautiful cupcakes the other day. Wow! She is quite talented. It is a little hard to see, but they are little babies in bassinets and the detail is incredible. It is all edible and she made them! Can you believe that? I want to learn how!
And I couldn't resist taking pictures of Alice dressed up for church in this adorable purple dress (Joe called it a "monstrosity", boys just don't get it!). And since Joe took the pictures, we actually got some of her smiling! She did great. I guess it must be time to take her to a professional and get some studio shots to send out with Christmas cards!

Sweet Smiles

Alice has learned to smile! Unfortunately, I have not learned to work the camera well enough to capture it decently. I will get it though. She smiles more and more each day. In the mean time, you can enjoy these somewhat blurry shots of her cute smile. (The pictures look better small!)

Photo shoot?

I tried to take pictures of my boys the other day for a project I am working on. We ended up with quite a few like this:

Eli doesn't seem to know how to just smile without being cheesy. And Simon thinks he is looking at the camera, but mostly is too busy with something else. We got a couple of cute pictures though.

Then we thought it would be fun to do a family photo. We hooked the camera to the TV so we could see our pose and used the camera timer. It was fun, but did not yield any great photos. Lots of fun, goofy ones, but I guess that is what we are.

Alice was the only one who cooperated and sat still....and I actually managed to capture a smile. She is doing more of that everyday, still not a lot, but more. One of these days soon we'll get some really good smiles.

Playing dress up

I thought I would post this picture of Alice all dressed up for church. My mom said it was so cute, so I figured I would share it with all of you. Girls really are more fun to dress up. I wasn't sure that would be true, but there is something about little girl clothes that just can't be captured with little boys. Maybe it is just because I am a girl too. We went to the doctor for a check up last week, she weighed 8lbs 4oz, which is doing really well. However I find it funny that at 5 weeks, she still weighs less than all my sister's babies when they were born! Of course they are boys, but still....it is amazing how much difference there can be in the weight of newborns. Rylan weighed almost 3lbs more than Alice at birth, he was over 9lbs!

We have been battling sickness at our house. I think everyone is finally on the tail end of it all. Eli started it the Friday before last. Then Simon got it, and then Joe came down with it this past Friday. Alice and I have been spared thus far, thankfully! We have been trying to be very careful about washing our hands and using hand sanitizer and Lysol. We kept Alice upstairs and the sick people downstairs. I am glad we have that option, but it has been exhausting. The doctor said it was probably rhinovirus, but we are thinking maybe it was flu - the H1N1 variety. That is what Rylan was diagnosed as having. Well, he tested positive for flu, and since it is too early for seasonal flu, that is what they are saying. Thankfully no one has any severe cases of it. Hopefully we are all over that now, and immune. But I am still planning to get the shots for all us, except Alice of course, who is too little. Hope everyone out there is doing well and staying healthy!

Simon has gone Maori

We were watching conference on Saturday and the boys were downstairs, coloring with Color Wonder markers, the ones that only work on certain paper. Well imagine my surprise when Simon emerged looking like this:

Apparently, he found a dry erase marker that I guess fell out of Joe's pocket. Why he feels the need to color on himself is beyond me, but he does almost every time he gets ahold of a marker. It mostly washed off. Guess it is a good thing we aren't actually going to church tomorrow.

Here are pictures we took of Alice this weekend. She certainly is growing and changing. I can't wait until she can really smile!

I feel nice

Like sugar and spice. Actually not so much like those, but almost refreshed since Alice slept from 10:30pm until just after 4am. She was up for an hour, but then went back to sleep until almost 9! So I got some good chunks of sleep. Of course that always just makes me want more. And I am not under any illusion that it will go like that tonight, but I can always hope, right? The hardest thing so far I think has been the inconsistency. She doesn't wake up at the same time every night. We have somewhat of a structured routine during the day, with eating, being awake, then sleeping. But it all happens at different times and intervals each day, so it all keeps changing. We will get there though. Happy 1 month to Alice today!