We spent Valentines weekend in Greenville celebrating Grammy 70th birthday!
The birthday girl with her original three
Grammy with her 8 grand kids - 15 months - 17 years!
Carvel ice cream cake!
Mary Elizabeth is a crackup! Grammy's namesake!
She had lots of help blowing out her candles
Sailor knows who's lap to climb into if she wants a sweet treat!
We all went in together to get Mary a mother's ring.
Birthstones of her 3 children!
Keaton made a birthday card from all of the grands and collected all of their signatures.
Yes, it looks like an 9 headed monster, but its actually Grammy with all of her grands peeking out from behind.
Happy Birthday Mary! I hope that I am as classy and content as you when I turn 70! So happy we were able to celebrate this milestone with you!
The next morning was Valentines day. Sailor loved her new balloon! Thanks Aunt Jenny!
We had fun exchanging valentines with our cousins before church!
These kiddos looked so cute, I had to take their picture before church started...
Our baby girl Valentine!
Love this pic of Sailor with her Nana on Valentines Day. So happy that they know each other at 15 months and 96 years!!
We had a great day hanging out and bingeing on Valentines candy and leftover birthday cake.
Because of impending weather, we decided to drive on to Charlotte on Sunday evening. The storm was bad enough that we thought it better to wait until Tuesday to make our way to back to Virginia.
Which means...another fun day with cousins! We slept in and played Wii (for way to long). Then we went to CFA for lunch and had a fun afternoon at Discovery Place.
Since Monday was
Presidents Day, I challenged Keaton to see how fast he could say the
presidents' last names in order. His goal was 15 seconds, but he
couldn't seem to break the 19 sec mark.
I told him he breathes to much
and spends way to much time on Washington, Van Buren, and Eisenhower. :-)
We made it home to VA on Tuesday with no incident or delay. The boys' schools were cancelled because of the snow, so they didn't even have to miss a day! Thankful for safe travel and the extra day to spend with family.
Our baby girl is 15 months old this week! She's changing so much every day.
Sometime during the last 3 months, she officially graduated from baby to toddler.
She's ALL OVER the place.
She's
walking quite proficiently - running most of the time actually. She has
full reign of the house. Up and down stairs with ease - following her
brothers everywhere.
She explores constantly. She loves to empty cabinets, trash cans, and kleenex boxes.
She climbs to the top of anything she can - chairs, stools, tables. If
she's awake, there's no leaving her alone for one minute. She's either
making a mess or endangering her life. But that's the life of a toddler,
right?
She
still loves books and animals (enough that she drew kitty whiskers on herself with a pen!). She's broadened her dance moves, and she's even started singing on her own. Her favorite song goes, "Da da
da dada da." It's the sweetest thing you've EVER HEARD.
She loves her family and is happiest when we're all home together.
She's down to one nap which gives me roughly 90 minutes of
productive time in my day. She consistently sleeps from 8:00pm to
6:30am at night.
Her hair is getting long and is completely out of control. It's Donald
Trump hair - fine and poofy - too long for headbands (not that she would
leave them in) and too short for pony tails. Her mom is at a complete loss.
This fridge toy is one of her favorites from Christmas. She loves interchanging the letters and listening to the songs. It's usually the first thing she wants to show any guests that enter our house.
Today, her favorite food is peanut butter sandwiches and applesauce. She
still loves most fruits - still no taste for bananas or cantaloupe
though. She loves pasta, chicken, and Baby Girl can down three slices of
pizza faster than her brothers. She's drinks only one bottle of whole
milk first thing in the morning. Sometimes she asks for one after her
afternoon nap as well.
She babbles a lot, and her expanding vocabulary includes Mama, Dada,
Bubba, ball, whoa, WOW, that, and uh oh. She can point on demand to her hair,
nose, mouth, belly, and feet.
It's clear that she understands almost everything we say to her. She's unfortunately reached that very frustrating stage where she knows
exactly what she wants, but still cannot communicate very effectively.
This leads to lots of whining and pointing "THAT! THAT! THAT!" and exhaustive tantrums when
we don't understand.
She loves to cuddle and be rocked. She's makes smacking noises with her mouth when you ask for a kiss...
We sure love our Sailor June. In the words of her biggest brother, "She like having a pet, but BETTER!"
Two weeks ago, we were hunkering down excitedly as we awaited our first blizzard! It all started around 2:30pm on Friday...
This is after it had only been snowing a couple of hours. It was already starting to cover the ground.
It was so pretty and peaceful!
We're so excited!
A little snack.
Wow!
That smile!
Brothers gotta hug!
It was still snowing when we woke up Saturday morning. There was already an 18in drift on the deck. Sailor just kept pointing and saying "Oh! Wow!"
The boys ventured out once with Dad to explore. Too cold and windy for Mom and Sailor! A crew continued to plow the roads through the storm creating mountains of snow on the sides of the road. Fun for climbing!
Couldn't resist the urge to sled even while the snow continued to fall. BRRR!!
Scott took this in one of the mirrors on the golf cart path.
Back inside for hot chocolate and many games of Electronic Battleship.
Yep, still snowing! 26 hours and counting... as the day progressed, the conditions got more "blizzardy."
Time to cozy up by the fire!
This is the snowdrift on the deck by Saturday night.
Good Morning Sunshine! Sunday morning the storm was finally over.
We were left with a frozen tundra out front.
And our view from the back...that's Scott's truck on the far left. Buried!
Where's our van? We purposefully left it outside thinking it would mean less shoveling of the driveway. All it did was create very awkward snow drifts that we had to dig the van out of...it literally took 3 days to finally get it out!
After we did "home church," we bundled up and took a little family trek around the neighborhood to survey the damage.
Wow!
This is a park bench completely flush with the snow.
Of course the boys had a blast climbing and jumping off the huge piles!
Mark loves the snow in Virginia as much as he loved the beach in Hawaii!
Definitely the most snow we've ever seen!
Don't even think about it, Keaton!
Our little snow bunny was content riding on Daddy's back.
First snowman of the year! They named him "Freezer." FYI: Oreo minis work great for eyes and mouth!
On Monday, we went sledding with our good friends, the Wicshmeiers. The golf course had some awesome sledding hills!
Sailor and her best buddy, Isabel
Not a bad view!
My handsome dude!
So much fun!
Sailor "tolerated" sledding, but it was a little cold for her!
Dennis and Ethan
Scott's the videographer of the family.
We like to call Mark "Cold-i-locks"
These hills were steep!
Sea turtles are great for sledding too!
Sailor preferred watching from the comfort of Mom's lap!
Snowzilla 2016 dropped at least 20 inches of snow on us when it was all over- 3-4 ft
in other areas not far from here. We ended up with 7 school snow days
and 2 days where the federal offices in DC were closed completely. I kept thinking about how blessed we are to live in a warm home where we could enjoy the wonder of the storm with hardly an inconvenience. We never even lost power or ran out of milk (or wine!). We are so thankful that this historic blizzard brought us nothing but fun and great memories!
