Devil's Hopyard Hike

We had a great time hiking at Devil's Hopyard State Park yesterday for our President's Day adventure as a family. I'm not generally a fan of cold, snow or all things winter. But we had such a great time together. I didn't mind the cold one bit. The kids had a blast -- our only trouble is that John refuses to wear mittens. He wants my nice leather gloves instead.
I took about a thousand pictures, and I love looking at pictures of my family, so I hope you enjoy them too --

Of course, this winter wonderland led to a pretty fierce snowball fight--

Weather Week

We had a fun weather week last week. Jared had a couple of days off work due to high winds and Maddie missed one day for snow. The kids had a good time playing outside, and I enjoyed working on sewing projects like this Whirlygiggle quilt:

Superbowl 2010

We love the Superbowl. We may not watch another football game all year, but our little family settles in to watch this one game. Why? It might have something to do with the food, I can't deny it. Also, we really like the commercials. But, as far as football goes, last night's game was absolutely fun to watch!
For snacks this year we had soft buttery pretzels, popcorn, chocolate covered pretzels, chocolate cream cheese brownies, root beer and pink sugar cookies. We had nachos, grapes and burritos on hand, but we were too full to eat those so they'll just have to wait until another day.

John made us sing into the wii rock band microphone all through the game. Old MacDonald is his favorite rockin' tune at the moment.

Not so happy feet...

I've been battling sore feet for the last two years. The pictures above are my most recent x-rays -- you can see the extra bone sticking out on my heel that is causing so much pain. Now I have an extra piece of bone growing at the top of my right foot. Both problems are leading to tarsal tunnel. Yes, it's like carpel tunnel, but for the feet. UGH!

I've been to see the doctor twice this year, and the first visit I was lucky enough to take home and air-cast. Today I got giant pink inserts for my shoes. These babies go all the way up the sides of my feet, almost to the top of the tennis shoe.

Hopefully these beautiful pink things work, or the next step is plaster casts!

What's the up side? I'm only allowed to wear tennis shoes. Nothing else. Not until I finish physical therapy, a neurological study and have doctor clearance. Wearing tennis shoes makes my feet so much more happy at church!

Growing up

I can't believe that I had to buy Maddie two size 14 swimming suits this year. Seriously! She's seven-years-old. UGH! We're going to need to start our own clothing line for tall children soon!

OK, so I'll admit that it's a tiny bit big, but it is January and I'm hoping to make it last through the summer. And, if you look closely at the picture, it's not all that big.

We all had a good chuckle this weekend when we noticed that Maddie's head was taller than one of Jared's co-worker's shoulder. It was pretty funny to most of us anyway.

Office party

We had a great time at Jared's office party last weekend. People hung out at our house for about 6 1/2 hours. We talked, we ate, we played Rock Band, we talked and ate. It's always fun to get to know the people from the office better.

Girl Scout cookies

It's that time again! Maddie is selling Girl scout cookies for $4 a box. Let me know if you are interested, and I'll email you all the details.

New Snow

We are having snowy day after snowy day. On New Year's Eve, the snow almost caused an end to our party, but my wonderful friends came over anyway. Saturday, it snowed again, ruining our planned trip to Costco and other errands.

Now, it's started snowing for the third time this week and they've cancelled church. We've been home for almost two weeks -- a long time now, but today is the first day I've had cabin fever.

On Saturday, John tried to help take the lights off the tree -- he kept getting told not to touch them, so he'd just use a toe rather than his fingers.John-John loves Cookie monster! His uncle Brandon gave him this new beloved toy:

New Year's Eve

We had a great party last night with lots of food and friends. The kids had a great time, and the parents got to sit and chat.

We made Maddie go to sleep around 10 PM, but then woke her up to see the ball drop in Time Square.

Bedtime Rituals

In our house, bedtime rituals are a big thing. It is important to understand that when attempting anything new just before bed. Jared offered to take the kids to bed one night on his back. It's now a nightly occurrence. I have to admit, they are pretty cute!

Merry Christmas!

We had a fantastic Christmas day! We stayed in our pajamas, played with all our new toys and ate candy all day long.

Here's Maddie with the Christmas bounty before we started to open things.

The frenzy begins!

Maddie helped John open his presents. He understood that they contained toys for him, but he liked someone else to open it while he watched on.

Those cheeks are so full of chocolate that he can't even chew.

Little John is fully capable of walking, has never seen anyone walking with two canes, but intuitively knew that he could balance on them to walk. Note the large piece of chocolate hanging out of his mouth.

A wonderful friend gave us all her Thomas trains and John played with them all day.

I hope Christmas brought you all great joy and happiness. It was so much fun here I don't want to go to sleep. We let the kids stay up until after 11 PM. We are probably going to pay for it tomorrow, but today was absolutely perfect!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was calm and bright at our house. We slept in, then went sledding with one of Maddie's friends from school.

We had a nice mellow afternoon and I even took a nap. We started our family evening tradition by reading Luke 2 and using the navitiy set to act it out. Somehow this is a tradition in Maddie's mind, but I didn't know we were supposed to do it that way. We sang carols, watched Merry Christmas Charlie Brown and had cookies and popcorn for dinner. The kids were in bed by 9:00 and we followed shortly after that.