oh winter

A picture that my brother-in-law took when we went sledding.

Benj is always trying to climb into Maddie's chair with her.  Sometimes we indulge him.

We can't believe all the snow we've been getting!  Another huge storm hit (after this picture was taken) and we now we are just buried in snow and ice!  Our poor car still does not have snow tires on yet and last night after driving home from our date night, we pulled in the driveway and got so far that the front of the car was ALMOST inside the garage and that was as far as the car could make it.  But at least we made it home!  It took us a few tries to make it up the hill to our house before backing up and going a different direction.

Funny pictures taken through ice.

We are spending all our time inside our warm house.  Just snuggling.

For family home evening, we wrote down our goals for 2013.  It is good to announce your goals over the interwebs for all the world to hold you accountable.

One of my goals is to better my sewing skills.  For my first project I turned a pair of pants into shorts.  When I modeled them for Jesse he said, "They look good.  Really good actually.  I'm impressed."  I was just beaming with pride.

We are really hurting for some more indoor activities.  This is Benj squirting colored vinegar into baking soda.
I also made him some slime out of cornstarch which he flung wildly all over the bathroom.  He loves playing with his squirt bottle and bath crayons in the bathtub.  And all day long we film Benj with my phone and he watches the videos over and over.  And he also loves looking at himself in the mirror.  He has such a healthy self-esteem.  

This girl deserves a huge reward.  We started "sleep training" this week as I realized I was sick of getting up at night to feed her.  The experts assured me that most babies only need three nights of crying it out and last night was our 4th night and she slept for a straight 11.5 hours.  So I don't want to jinx myself but I think it worked!

 Mom and Dad, you will be happy to know that we finally took the kids to the Jacobson's for babysitting so we could go on a date with the Apos.  Neither child cried the whole time, which is a miracle, and Scott and Benjamin made a fast friendship.  We also hired our first non-relative babysitter, which was a big step for us and very liberating.  Of course we took Maddie with us, because, as Jesse said: We can't put all our eggs in one basket.