What's Wrong With These Pictures?

Yes, it's January and my pussy willows are blooming.

Boxes

I finally have my computer so now I can post pictures again!  I ordered diapers from Amazon the other day.  I did order 2 different kinds.  Normally each box comes individually.  Not this time.  We got a ridiculously large box-way too big for the 2 diaper boxes inside.  But boxes are great fun!  N2 had great time playing in this box.   Most recently we've colored on the box.  That's fun too.

You have to vaccum the box, didn't you know that?

It's our "monster box." When you get closed inside the box, you become a monster!

How many people can fit in the box?



Goth

Natalie can look back at these pictures and reminisce about the time that mom and dad made her look goth.

(Really she ate a sugar cookie that had been decorated black.  I can't remember which kid wanted to decorate with black but they decorated a gingerbread man with black sugar).

Sledding!

We finally got snow!  N2 were very excited and wanted to go out and play.  They were home "sick" the day that it snowed so they went out for a little bit.  There wasn't enough snow to sled so we had to wait until Sunday to go sledding.  We have a slight hill south of our house that leads into the neighbor's empty lot.  That's where we sled last year.  They used to go all the way across the lot but this year they didn't go very far!  Here are some sledding pictures.

Natalie's Purse

One of the highlights of Christmas presents for Natalie was a purse that Grandma gave her full of all sorts of things a purse should have: white gloves (who doesn't carry around those!), bracelets, a hairbrush with mirror, comb, necklaces, play money, rings, a makeup brush, sunglasses, an ID lanyard (I still haven't made the ID like I said I would-oops!), a wallet picture holder, a keychain with keys and possibly more.  As soon as she opened the present, she put everything on and started to play.  Megan really liked the purse too!  Once we got home, the purse became a huge problem-Noah wanted one too!  He wanted his own set of keys, brush, lanyard and more.  He often takes the makeup brush and uses it to paint Natalie's room.  Natalie gets upset because the purse is hers and then fighting/crying ensues.  Who knew a purse would be what they fight over?  I think Noah will be getting a "man bag" for his birthday.

Game Playing

N2 got a few games for Christmas-Candyland, Nativity Go Fish cards, and cards that were homemade that can be used for Go Fish or Memory.  I was excited about games because I thouught they would be at the age where they can start to understand games.  They can....kind of.  Here's our first adventure in playing Candyland.

They understood the colors but they didn't understand following the path and finding the next color.  So they would get a card with 2 purples and they would want to skip forward 5 purples!  Natalie managed to skunk us all at the first game.  She got one of the special pink cards with candy on them and skipped almost all the way to the end.  Noah, Brian and I played another time and Noah really skunked us all.  He got one of the candy cards that took him to the end whereas I got cards that made me go one by one along the board!

More block building

Here are a couple more pictures with our fun blocks.  I highly recommend blocks like these!

The next stylist

I came home from work to find Natalie in this outfit:

Pink pants, brick red shirt, green socks, white/brown/chartruese/lilac/purple hoodie.  Nice look!   Normally she picks out her shirt and we find pants that match when we are going somewhere.  I guess Brian decided that it didn't matter what she looked like today!

Play with Food

My kids like to play with their food and I normally stop them but this time it was quite creative so I didn't put a stop to it.

Natalie: Noah look at my tunnel.
Noah: Wow!
Natalie: It's a tunnel.
Noah: It's a rainbow.
Natalie: It's a dinosaur.  Roar!
Noah: It's a big rainbow.
I think there was more to the conversation but it may have just been repeating.   I thought it was clever and harmless so I let it go :)

Present from Santa

When we asked Noah what he wanted for Christmas he always responded "a lion like Natalie's."  On Christmas morning he found a box from Santa and after Natalie announced that in her box was her monkey, Noah said his lion was in his box.  Lo and behold, he was right!  He was bothered that Santa didn't cut the tags off!  I'll have to have a conversation with Santa and ask him to remove tags before giving Noah gifts!

Hiding

When we got together to make Christmas cookies back in early December, N2 and Amelia found a great hiding spot behind Grandma and Grandpa's couch.  They had so much fun and played there for a while!

Umbrellas!

I found this really cute fireman raincoat and rainboots that I thought were on clearance at Wal-mart so I decided to get them for Noah for Christmas.  Then I found the fireman umbrella in another section.  When I got to the checkout I found out the coat and boots weren't on clearance :(  I ended up getting the coat and umbrella. To tell you the truth, Noah didn't really care at all about the coat but he LOVED the umbrella.  We've been wanting to get them umbrellas for a while because they love walking under our umbrellas.  It was so hard to find one for Natalie-they were all princesses or plain ugly.  Finally I found a cute one at the Botanic Garden gift shop of all places.  They played with their umbrellas all over the house!

Cousins on the Couch

I know it's hard to take pictures of 2 preschoolers together where they are both smiling and looking at the camera but get 5 little kids under the age of 4 to smile and look at the camera is impossible, especially if one of them is a baby who they haven't seen before or seen in a long time.  We put N2, Amelia, Megan and Abigail on the couch to try to get pictures on Christmas.  I have to say the pictures are quite funny.  Here are some of them.

best picture of Natalie

first picture with Abigail

best picture of Megan

best picture of Amelia

best picture of Abigail

best picture of Noah

all of them are looking forward!

Chaos!

What do you think?



Going to Grandpa's

The other day Noah started taking a ton of toys and creating a monstrous pile in the play area.  He kept throwing more and more toys on his pile saying "I take this to Grandpa's house."  He decided to pack up his toys and go to Grandpa's house!  You may have seen this photo on Facebook but I thought I would post it here in case you missed it on Facebook.

Laundry Bag Fun

We needed somewhere to put all the blocks that we got for Christmas and they were definitely NOT going to fit back in the zippered bags they came in.  Mary Kay suggested a large mesh bag and I remembered that I still had my laundry bag from college.  These blocks just barely fit in the laundry bag!  N2 though decided that laundry bags are quite fun.  They would get in and they fit all the way up to their necks.  They both can fit in too! The other day Noah put all his cars in the bag, got in himself and then walked around the house.

Conducting

One of N2's favorite things to do is play marching band.  They get out their instruments and march around the house.  Sometimes they play the drum, the guitar, the recorder or the whistle.  We have other instruments but those are the favorites.  Brian and I get to join in as well.  Yesterday before Brian got home, they were playing marching band but both Natalie and Noah wanted to be the drum major and "duct the band."  They gave me a tamborine and told me to play while they conducted.  I also tried to take pictures but I was told I had to play as well (that was a challenge!)  Noah grabbed the stool from our little piano to stand on because he knows every marching band conductor needs a podium.  Duh!  Natalie wanted a stool but we don't have another little one (just popped in my head that we could have used the bathroom stool) and threw a fit when I tried to get her to stand on one of the little chairs.  Noah kindly moved to the chair so Natalie could have the stool and both of them stood on their podiums while conducting and yelling "duct the band...dah dah dah dah..." or some version of that while I played my lonely tambourine.

Brian commented that Noah's form in the 2nd and 3rd pictures are not bad.  He said the hands aren't great.  Brian also said that there is probably a very similar picture of him to the 3rd picture.  I imagine Brian was not yelling "duct the band" though :)  Funny thing I just noticed is that they could be in time with each other in the top 2 photos!

I tried to get a video of this because it was just so cute and funny but as I got my other camera, Noah told me that marching band was going home and he got down and started to play with something else.

Why I Should Put Things Away

I have to admit, I have the tendency of just stacking things on the stairs with the intention of putting them away but sometimes it takes weeks before I put them away.  I recently cleaned out our winter bins and took out the hats that were too small, one being an adorable monkey hat and the other being a pink bunny hat.  The monkey hat is supposed to go to Charlie and the bunny hat was going to be lent to Abigail but her head will probably be too big for it next winter!  So the bunny hat is still sitting on the stairs, not put away.  N2 found the hats the other day and squeezed them onto their heads and ran around the house.  They were quite cute.  Then this evening after Natalie had been put down to bed, she got up (which has become a very common occurrence-we now have the lock on the outside and I hadn't locked her door tonight since she is sick), came downstairs without us really realizing and then sat at the bottom of the stairs.  When I finally heard her and went over, she was wearing the hat and mittens and daddy's boots that were sitting there.  I guess I shouldn't leave theings on the stairs because they also get played with during time outs!

My Kitchen

I had posted on Facebook that Brian surprised me by painting the kitchen one day when I was out visiting my mom.  I came home and discovered that my off white kitchen was now green!  I was so excited!  We had picked out colors a while ago and I forgot that we had bought the paint.  I had originally wanted my kitchen a brick red or burnt orange but we decided that did NOT look good with the cabinets.  We did use orange for the inside of our push out window.  Here's how my kitchen looks.

Job Possibility for Noah

N2 received some awesome building blocks for Christmas (if I do say so myself since I bought them!). They are fairly dense foam but yet light enough and soft enough that they don't hurt when knocked over.  We have been having a great time with these blocks and they have been strewn out all over my living room since they were opened.  There are a lot of them and they are big so it's hard to figure out where to store them.  We had thought to put them in Natalie's room but N2 love playing with the blocks so much that we don't want to store them upstairs.  I'll share some other block pictures later but now I want to show you Noah's accomplishment.

Noah has been quite the builder!  One afternoon, he managed to use all the blocks (over 60 of them) to build a tower with a wall.  He also has made the tower quite symmetrical at the beginning.  I was quite impressed!  Here are some pictures.  He wouldn't pose with his end product (except to stand right in front of the tower!)  So I had to settle with him looking uninterested on the couch.

Christmas Joy

I know it's been a long time and that doesn't mean that I'm going to be posting regularly but I thought I would just share a couple pictures of Natalie on Christmas with her present from Santa.  When she saw the wrapped box from Santa she said "My monkey's in there!"  She had no doubt that she would be getting a monkey.  So glad mom and I managed to make one even if it took me several restarts!  The directions that I got from Hobby Lobby were NOT very clear.