Guess who's 1 year older!!

Since Ian's & Brooke's (his oldest cousin) birthdays are only 3 days apart, we decided to have their parties together again. Ian is now 2 and Brooke is now officially a teenager! Look out world, here they come!!

I purposely made the writing on the cake to look messy...really!

"I love sweets SOOOO much!"

And with a tip of the ol' hat...

...he rides off into the sunset on his trusty steed.

Enough already!

I think many share those sentiments with me about our winter flurries accompanied by blustery winds and 4 days in a row of school being cancelled. When they finally got to go on Friday, it was still 2 hours late, and again this morning. Let's just say I will be surprised if they get off to a normal start tomorrow since the wind is blowing the fluffy stuff around, not to mention that the roads are crappy from it melting the other day & then when it gets cold and windy, it makes for a nice layer of ice on the roads.

I think what disgusts me more is how poorly I utilized that time. With a list chocked full of to-do's for me, it threw me for a loop on how to accomplish all of it in a timely manner with all of the kids and Jason at home needing attention and stuff to do to pass the day along. With that in mind, I did not take the time to do things that would have made those days even better. We could have learned more Latin (I finally did some on Thursday), we could have done more baking and made play dough.

Don't get me wrong, we made our fair share of forts and read books, we played endless games of basketball and football, and they had time to run off energy outside and with cousins, but overall, I think I have a sense that last week passed by and the only thing that built up were the mounds of snow and ice outside our house and maybe the anticipation of school to be back to normal.

Heat wave

You know that it's been really cold when everyone starts saying how nice and warm it is when we hit 20 degrees.

Now is a good time for: snowballs, cleaning off the ice that wouldn't melt with Ice Melt on it because it was too cold for it to work, and knocking down the giant icicles that form on your roof so they don't impale anyone.

Not what I had in mind...

Ian is progressively saying more words and expecting us to understand him more & has even been putting a few words together like, "No Mommy!" or "I eat" or "I bite!" (I want a bite). Most of his words are understood by his actions, such as "Da!", which is unified with an affirming nod, which means "yes", and then there's "FiFi". That took a little guessing, but when he finally pointed at Faith, then I knew it was his way of saying, "Faithy". His favorite requests to say (that are usually fulfilled when his godfather comes to visit) are "bum" and "a suck". That's "gum" and "sucker" respectively.

So the other day I was delighted to hear his first "real" sentence. What was not so thrilling was was it was about. He was running around with AJ playing Nerf guns, and I hear him from the other room. As he approaches me in the kitchen he says, "I shoot Mommy." Not exactly what I had in mind for a first sentence.

Winter Wonderland

In the midst of winter in Minnesota, looking out over what has accumulated to over 50 inches of snow and temperatures dropping to -20-30 below zero with wind chill, I find myself wondering, why do we live in this land?? So, in order to see the positive side and in an attempt to beat the winter blues, I decided to make an effort to think of 10 good things about winters here "up Nort", as us Norweigan's would say.

10) Too cold for mosquitos
9) Threatening misbehaving children that you'll throw them out into the snow if they don't listen really works! And if the threat doesn't, you can actually do it and they learn from it and you get a good laugh out of it.
8) Snow forts, snowmen, snowballs - anything that gets the kids outside for a time to burn off some built up energy.
7) Beer stays nice and cold and you don't have to use electricity.
6) After you get past the burning sensation feeling, your extremities actually start to "feel" warm.
5) When having a bad hair day, you can wear your stocking hat out and pretend you tried to fix your hair and just blame it on the hat.
4) Sitting by fireplaces watching the fire dance and listening to the crackle of the burning wood.
3) Hot chocolate!
2) Static electricity can be fun entertainment.
1) Snuggling with loved ones to get warm.

Here's a scene from one of my favorite movies to help me keep light my winter attitude...
"Baby it's cold outside!" - Will Ferrell in "Elf"

Go fish!

This past weekend, we met up with my brothers and their families to spend some time together for Christmas. We stayed in a hotel with a mini waterpark that was the perfect size for our little ones. One waterslide, a pool, hot tub and wading pool with a baby slide was more than enough to entertain all of our monkeys.

Ian spent most of his time either splashing or laying in the water.

The 3 older kids loved that they had unlimited runs down the waterslide,

and that they were big enough to go on their own!

Water totter ;)

Oh, and the coveted present that now goes almost everywhere with Ian...

(in the footsteps of little Riley)

Christmas 2010 was...

...a time to make cookies at G'ma Myhre's.

As well as spending lots of time with family.

We are truly blessed!

Laney enjoyed putting her 2 passions together - art and cooking.

Faith liked adding sprinkles...

...and don't forget the tasting!

We didn't have many left.

These 3 do almost everything together.

Usually it's fighting over a toy, but occasionally they

work together to create a musical ensemble.

Growing way too fast!!

So is this one! She eats 4 times as much

as when we first found her.

I think it's time to switch to adult food...

she's starting to get a belly on her!

Doesn't help that she "cleans up" after Ian is done eating.