S'Winter

Call me crazy but I love the winter. The hot chocolate. The warm sweaters. The fireplaces. The festivities. Staying indoors a lot and being more creative with my kids. Playing in the snow. I even love getting all bundled up to go outside. I can do without the slippery roads, but gratefully it's been a mild winter so far. Here's some of the fun we've had:

 Making cakes for no reason

 Even though they have a playroom, they prefer the closet

Snow time...they always want to go out when we have fresh snow, even if it's less than an inch

Yes, they are in dresses. At least they let me up leggings on them.

Niels is jealous...he just stands and watches them

Tupperware city

One day Hattie decided to "experiment" with food dye. Completely on her own, she dyed the apples all different colors, and did a decent job of not making a complete mess.

Lots of painting and other art projects

Hattie has really taken off with her writing. She made these one day after watching Winnie the Pooh. They are hard to see, but they say "Robin," "Pink" for piglet, "carrot" for Rabbit, "toy train," and "honey pot" for Pooh.

Then there's this boy who gets cuter every day. He is a master at climbing up stairs...but has yet to figure out going down. So in a tri-level house, it's REALLY hard to keep an eye on him. We need 4 gates to truly keep him safe. As much as we try to teach him, he isn't picking it up.

 Naps...he is folded over in half, but somehow is still sleeping...the flexibility of babies.

 And we often find the girls asleep together...we're glad they love each other so much.
 

Much to Paul's happiness, we have discovered a couple who is fanatical about board games as we are. During November and December, it wasn't uncommon to play games 2 or 3 times a week! We would put our kids to bed at their house (or they would put their kids to sleep at our house) and stay as long as we could stay awake! (in this picture we hired a sitter so that we could go out to dinner before playing games). This month, due to Paul's work schedule, our fanatic game playing has slowed, but we are happy to still get a game in about once a week.

And one of the most exciting things for me was an early Christmas/birthday/anniversary gift...an electric piano! I've been doing pretty well at playing almost every day, and I'm amazing at how quickly I feel like I am improving. The kids love it too and like to take a turn every day.

Next post: Christmas in Virginia!