We want a snow day!

Tonight, the kids wanted to sleep with their pajamas inside out (good luck for snow, apparently). The weathermen are predicting a few inches tomorrow. Unfortunately for Avery and Donovan, it looks like the bulk of it will be tomorrow afternoon, so the best they can hope for is an early release, I think. The picture is of Donovan only because Avery didn't want him touching her so I sent her up to her room and she didn't get to be in the picture.

In other news, Donovan is a little sponge these days. He is really drawn to numbers and loves figuring out simple addition and subtraction. Tonight, we had a conversation that went something like this:

Donovan: Sissy, do you know how much one million plus one million is?
Avery: No, no one knows the answer to that.
Dono: Mommy, do you know how much it is?
Me: Yes, it's two million.
Avery: It is not!! No one knows how many over a million is.
...it continued on with Donovan then asking 10 million plus 10 million, etc. Avery held her ground that it was too big a number for anyone to know. It struck me as funny. I remember thinking that a million was such a huge number too.

Donovan is also trying really hard to read right now. He loves sounding out words and figuring out what letter different words start with. The problem is, he still can't really say his L's or his R's. They all sound like W's. So one day recently, we were talking about our friends and what their names start with. It went something like this:
Me: What letter does Tre start with?
Dono: t...t....t... TEE!
Me: What does Rayna start with?
Dono: wa....wa....wa.... Double U!!!!

Crazy Haired Girls

Earlier this week, Avery surprised me by requesting a side ponytail for school. She asked the night before, and then reminded me in the morning, so it seems she was pretty excited about it. Hello 1980's!


I put Isla's hair into a pony tail on top of her head for the first time today. She doesn't have much, but it held! I think she kind of looks like Jack-Jack from The Incredibles in this picture.


In other news, Avery had a late over with one of her BFF's, Emma, on Friday night. It reminded me of the sleepovers I had when I was her age. I wish I got some pictures of the girls. They were so cute. I told them they could have the basement to themselves, and they watched an American Girl movie with their American Girl dolls, did each others makeup, had their very own pizza and made brownie sundaes. They giggled all night long (until 9 anyway) and were just generally adorable.

We have had a sick week this week. Isla came down with the stomach flu on Tuesday night. Poor baby, I hate when the little ones throw up and don't know what's going on, and especially the first time, when they just lay down in it and try to go back to sleep. :( By Friday, I was convinced that my other two kids had dodged the bullet, since stomach bugs seem to have a gestation of a couple of days. But Saturday morning, Donovan came down with it, and Avery got hit in the middle of the night. This week has also had the excitement of missing school for pink eye (Donovan), missing school for a federal holiday (Avery) and missing school for a snow day (both kids). It has been a long week.

New Year's Resolution:

to update my blog more regularly, so I don't have to spend hours at a time getting up to date.

Happy 2011!

We spent New Year's Eve with our good friends the Christensens and the Martins. We ate a bunch of Chinese food, played games, watched the ball drop on TV and made a lot of noise at midnight. Tons of fun.



We missed our friends the Waites, but made up for it by Skyping with them after midnight. It was cute to see all the kids talking to each other on the webcam.

Gaylord Getaway

The week between Christmas and New Years, we went for an over-nighter at the Gaylord Resort at the National Harbor. Well, we were supposed to go on the 23rd, but a brush with the stomach flu made us put it off for a week. It was tons of fun!
It snowed inside the hotel and had a pretty cool fountain show set to Christmas music:




We went swimming in the hotel pool, where they showed Christmas movies on a big screen (and wore matching swimming suits):

We snuggled in the big hotel bed:

We visited the sculpture garden, which featured Dr. Seuss sculptures:

And best of all (and why we went in the first place), we visited the ICE show, which was a big indoor arena filled with ice sculptures of the Grinch and the Who's. It was freezing inside (9 degrees), so we had to wear these big, blue parkas over our regular coats:

Isla got bundled up in about 37 blankets:

It was pretty cool inside:

Isla fell asleep right away:

The highlight was a slide made out of ice. I stayed with Isla, but Scott and the big kids loved it and said it was really fast:




It was a great little mini trip!

Big changes

The Monday after Christmas, Avery went from this:


to this:

She cut off 14 inches of her hair, and is donating it to locks of love. After she has a bit of fun with the hair bundle, of course (or as she refers to it her "pet rat").

Merry Christmas 2010

The kids on Christmas morning:


We were having too much fun to get many pictures, but did manage to get a couple of pics of Donovan's favorite present, his mini trampoline:

Christmas Eve 2010

On Christmas Eve, we headed down to the National Harbor to see the Water-skiing Santa. Besides being frigid, it was a lot of fun and we decided to make this an annual tradition.

That evening, Isla experienced her first present opening. She wasn't sure at first:


but after she got the idea, she thought it was pretty fun:

The footsie gang:

Oh Christmas Tree

We cut down our own Christmas tree again this year. We found a great Christmas tree farm in Poolesville Maryland, and Avery and Scott found the perfect tree.




On the way home, we took the ferry across the Potomac from Poolesville to Leesburg, VA. We didn't even know it existed prior to that day

The kids had a great time decorating the tree.



Later that evening, we went to the Christmas Attic in Old Town to let the kids pick out their yearly Christmas ornament.

Let it Snow!

After Snowmaggedon last year, the weather has been a huge disappointment to my kids this year. We did get a couple of inches in December though, which included an early release from school for Avery.

Ugly Christmas Sweater Party

Amanda came into town for a few days in December. Since she has always been so good at planning the annual ugly Christmas sweater party, we carried on the tradition in her honor. It was fun, because her visit was a surprise to some of the friends at the party.

Some of the awesome ugliness: