VEGAS, baby!

Dan and I took a little weekend trip to Vegas, and here is a little peek into how we spent our time...

See... Vegas... except it looks TOTALLY boring during the day time (and from way up high):

waaaay more fun-looking...


mmm... Mimosa...

We ate at a place called Hash House a Go-Go...  the tagline to their restaurant is "where you go to over-eat" (or something similar to that)... the portion sizes are seriously ridiculous, but OH sooo good... just don't plan to finish your meal or you might go into cardiac arrest...

This was Dan's... mine looked far less 'pretty'

When we first drove to the strip it was so weird to see everything look so small, yet it was so ginormous.

There were plenty of interesting characters walking the streets... at all times of the day...

Case-in-point...

who let this guy in here????  ;)

As an after-thought, Dan was a little concerned about what else might have been placed in that hand at one time...

The strangest part of this trip was just how many small children were there.  I never would have imagined Vegas as a family vacation destination.  Not only did we see lots of small kids, but they were out late at night on the strip...

Now... when we left this show, we both commented that Evan would have loved to see it...

There were so many pretty things if you looked up...

This was my attempt at getting a nice shot of the Bellagio fountain... which I have to say, is a pretty amazing sight to see and hear... 

I had a chance to get a little girl time in...

I still haven't written my matron of honor speech... eeeek!!!

And spend some time with my favorite man...

(funny story about this picture... we took it standing in front of the mirror in our hotel room, and the first shot we took, we were looking at ourselves, not the camera.  Duh.  Ok, so that doesn't sound as funny after I just took the time to write it out, but oh well...)

10 on 2sday

1.  We are finally getting some decent weather around here... and we are hoping this is the last we see of this stuff...

 and this stuff...

so we can do more of this stuff...

and this stuff...

...except, without the coats on!

2.  Brynn figured out how to open the refrigerator.  Then she showed Avery.  For some reason they only open it when I'm around... which is totally the opposite of what they normally do... which is to wait.  until I'm not around.  then get into trouble.  weird.

3.  Let me tell you something about this girl... her hair is going crAYzay...

4.  Let me tell you something about this girl... she's an AWESOME bubble blower...

5.  Let me tell you something about this boy... when he puts his mind to something... he does it... even if it's as 'little' as the tight rope game on our wii fit...

6.  Last week I met up with a couple photographer friends to play around with our cameras and learn from each other... and while we were there I asked if I could get some head shots for my website while we all had our cameras out... and one of the shots is posted here!!  Let me just say... I do NOT make a good subject... it was hard not to go into dork mode with the camera pointed at me...  :)

7. While playing hide-and-seek Evan says to me... "Mommy, hide someplace special... where I can find you."

8.  Recently the girls have been very interested in numbers... letters a little bit, but mostly numbers.  Brynn started counting one day... 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8... and Avery comes up and chimes in... 9!  Another speechless moment...

9.  Sometimes I take random pictures of the girls hair, just because.  I thought about doing a post with the progression from birth to now (which I may still do)... but for now, A little more of Avery's crazy hair:

10.  The recent tragedy in Japan has had me glued to the news these days... and I realized just how impressionable kids can be when Evan asked me... "what if I die?"  Ugh.  I was not prepared for that.  Fortunately he accepted and moved on when I told him he doesn't need to worry about that right now. 

10 on 2sday

1.  Sorry that I'm so generic at the end/beginning of each month... but it's not right that it's February already.  As ready as I am for spring to bring warm weather... I'm not ready for time to fly by so quickly!  Although the winter storm we are in the middle of right now is making me re-think that statement!

2.  I'm sure you are dying to know if I managed to take a nap last week... RiIIIIiiight... no.  I did not.

3.  Today is the last day I will ever have a one year old.  (well, 2 one year olds, but you get what I mean...)

4.  I SWEAR that right before I grabbed my phone to take this picture... Evan & Brynn were actually cuddling.  It was quite possibly the sweetest moment a mother can experience.  Even if it did only last for about 3 minutes. 

5.  Speaking of sweet moments.  Last week Evan and I had our lunch date, and when I told Evan about it earlier in the week he asked if we could bring along his sisters.  Melt my heart.  But.... no.

6.  We went to an indoor waterpark over the weekend with Dan's family ~ we have 7 winter birthdays from December to February ~ so we did a little celebration for everyone.  Awesome!  The kids had so much fun, and so did Dan and I for that matter ~ all three kiddos went crazy for the water slides!!

7.  I had to attempt a picture of me and the birthday girls during our weekend getaway... AAaaand... this is what we get:

(which is better than nothing... at least I show up in some pictures...)

8.  Our best attempt at a family picture:

(we had popped in a movie, which was right behind my SIL who was taking the picture... you can see where my girls' priorities fall... I'm just happy they weren't screaming!)

9.  The craziest part of our waterpark weekend was letting Evan go off on his own.  He never wandered far, but since Dan and I had to stick close to the girls (and take them down the slide 6-hundred times) he was mostly exploring by himself.  It was weird for me.  Especially as we get closer to sending him to kindergarten.

10.  Speaking of kindergarten.  I called the school last week to update the kids' information and make sure Evan is on the list to get info about kindergarten round up.  When I hung up the phone... I cried.

Snow!

We made it outside earlier this week (when it wasn't ridiculously cold), and lasted more than 4 minutes playing in the snow!  Apparently Avery learned from the last time and kept her gloves on! (and I'm not sure if you can really tell or not, but if you click on the link to our last snow experience, you will notice we have A LOT more snow now...)








Only a few face plants, and a couple attempts to throw snow at my camera (yikes!) ~ and again, totally worth the 25 minutes of preparation to get a chance to get outside to play!

It's SNOW!

I'm a bit behind posting this... but in early December when we finally saw our first stick-on-the-ground snow here, we started getting a bit giddy with anticipation...



...so we started working on getting dressed...








...and went outside to enjoy our first snow of the season!





I never took the girls out last year, mostly out of laziness cheapness not wanting to buy snow suits when they really wouldn't enjoy the snow anyway!  So this was their first experience getting to play with the wet white stuff!

Brynn kept trying to shake it off her mittens, not really caring for it at all.  Although, she did like to shuffle her feet through it.









Avery wanted to touch it so bad, that I had a hard time getting her to keep her gloves on.  It moved from annoying to kinda serious in a matter of about two minutes when I finally gave up and brought everyone back inside 'cause she refused to let me get near her with her glove!  By the time we got inside her poor little hand was pretty red and cold!







Evan was so excited to make his first? snow angel.  He's probably made one before, I've just never seen it since 2 winters ago I was on bed rest, and last year with the girls so little, we never went out together!



Overall it was worth the 25 minutes to get fully dressed, in order to enjoy the 4 minutes of playing outside!

Christmas Traditions

The Christmas Chain
Last year I started doing a Christmas chain with Evan, in the hopes that he would stop pestering me with... "is it Christmas yet? Is it Christmas yet?"  This year we did it again, and got the girls involved a little bit!









Elf on the Shelf
This is our first year with the Elf on the Shelf, and I must say, this is the perfect year (4-1/2) to introduce it ~ Evan is TOTALLY into this.  And I must admit, the past two days that our little "Santa Spy" has been with us, has gone much more smoothly... and Evan named her "Nare".  Now I just need to figure out a way to incorporate this concept year-round!



MOM Christmas Party
Last year was our first year going to our Mothers Of Multiples (MOM) Christmas party, and of course Santa and Mrs. Claus are there! So, this year we went again and Evan was SO excited to see Santa that he just about knocked over the kids that were finishing up in front of us to get on his lap!



Brynn... not so much...



But she was ok sitting on Dan's lap, so we at least got one picture of the kids not flipping out!!



Santa's beard...
I'm not sure if this is actually going to stick around as a tradition or not, but Evan's preschool class did these and took them home.  It's a cute idea, and Evan loves gluing the cotton ball on every morning!




What are some of your favorite traditions??