Bath Time With Avery

She is definitely the child with the stronger maternal instincts.

Pictures from Today

Today we took a nice walk around the neighborhood a bit. Tonight was movie night in our house. Enjoy!


SkiDoo Tracks at the Park


Our House


Me and My Very Big Girl


Our Little Eater

Phone Conversation with Daddy

Jeramy: "Hey, what are you girls up to?"

Me: "We're just hanging out in the princess tent. Ryleigh brought her Barbie dolls and is pretending that they're corn. Avery brought her baby doll and is laying it down carefully on the blanket. What does that tell you about the children that we're raising?"

Jeramy: "That one likes to eat children and the other likes to mother them?"

I was thinking that one has a crazy imagination and the other like to take care of things, but good point.

Jenn, AKA Human Snow Plow

We had a second storm roll in this morning around 4am. This one dropped just as much snow as Wednesday, maybe more. There wasn't any wind and some rain was mixed in so it all just plopped right down on the ground and was really heavy. I know because I shoveled it this afternoon and it wasn't easy. I did manage to get my stoop clear and some of the driveway. The good thing was that it warmed to 5C this afternoon, so about 43F. That helped to melt some of the snow and clear some of my driveway, but it's still quite amazing how much snow there is in our yard...and it's a mild winter they say! We've definitely decided that next year we'll be getting a snow blower. The snow clearing guy kind of sucks and there isn't really enough room for him to push the snow much. If I had a snowblower my driveway would be the cleanest in the neighborhood. Yes, I do totally suffer from driveway envy. One of our neighbors is retired and that's all in the world he has to do...clear his driveway...and it's sooo purdy!

School was cancelled again today, so I had both the girls at home. Plus, I had already promised to watch my friend's two youngest children so with her two young ones, the two older kids home from school and Avery, that was 5 kids in my care for almost 3 hours. And, the house is still standing! It was actually a lot of fun. After nap time, we all went to her house for some more play time and pizza. Ryleigh didn't want to leave and was pretty grumpy up until we sat down to read books.

One of her books is a word recognition type book. There are pictures of princess scenes with small words next to certain objects. One of the scenes had a bowl of fruit sitting on a table. The word was "fruit". When we got to it, I could tell that she didn't quite know what the word was intending to label. Then she made an "f" sound and shouted out "fruit!" in a real excited way. She had just sounded out a word and got it right! I was so totally proud. It was s definite "Aha!" moment for her and after that she tried sounding out everything. I love those moments, those moments when you see them take a step up, turn a new page and grow just a little bit more.

Here are a few shots from bath time last night.

Big Storm

The girls and I have been riding out a big storm all day long. School was canceled and Ryleigh declared that she would be spending the entire day in her pajamas..and so it was so. It's a long day when you can't leave the house and those cookies on the counter just get more and more tempting by the second. Somehow, we managed to survive. The wind is so bad tonight though, that Avery had a hard time going to sleep. We have had three consecutive nights of 11 hours of straight sleep I am very pleased to say. I hope this storm doesn't go and screw that up! It's about time that girl learned to sleep through the night! Mama-is-TIRED!

On a serious note, Jeramy's grandmother (Pam's mom) fell and broke her hip yesterday. She had surgery this morning and is recovering in the Granbury hospital. We love you Nana and are thinking about you!

I'm off to enjoy a few more minutes of peace before bed time while I read a book...a very long book...so long that Ryleigh declared tonight that she just can't see how I will ever finish such a long book. To which I replied: Duuhhh..by neglecting my children of course...geeze. Now go watch cartoons, and make sure your sister doesn't put something small in her mouth.

Playing Hockey

This afternoon I received a phone call from my neighbor. She asked us if we were interested in taking a walk or playing outside...it's -5 C (about 22 F) with no wind, we should really take advantage of the great weather before the big storm rolls in tomorrow! So I bundled up the children and myself and we headed up Jack's Hill to do a little ice skating in their home made skating rink...which is AWESOME! Here is a short video of Ryleigh taking her first shot at a hockey puck. Shortly after I turned the camera off she and Jack threw down the sticks and started wailing into each other like good little hockey players. Then we all went in for cheerios and gold fish.

Winter Driving

On my way to go work out this morning I caught this little video.



Here is our driveway before shoveling this afternoon:



And here is after an hour of slaving away:



We are supposed to get a ton of snow this weekend...so stay tuned!

Going Solo

Jeramy left today for a 12 day trip to Houston. I always hate the first night that he's gone. The house makes so many strange noises and I usually have a hard time sleeping. *sigh*...it's only 12 days.

Yesterday afternoon we went to a birthday party at Little Gym. Lots of fun and a great outlet for Ryleigh's energy. We did have a slight meltdown when it was time to go because the retaurant next door had an hour wait and we had already told Ryleigh we could go. Instead we hit the drive through at A&W and enjoyed some greasy burgers, onion rings and root beer floats at home. I got my nice camera all cleaned up and good to use again. The birthday party was my first time to use it in months. Here are my favorite pics and a link to all the birthday party pics are over to the right. Enjoy!

Celebrating V-Day

A few weeks ago I decided that I wanted a small pair of white gold earrings that I could wear every day, with anything I had on...my life needs to be simple and who am I dressing up for these day, the receptionist at Ryleigh's school?? So I headed down to the jewellry (Canadian spelling)store to see what they had. I picked out a pair and they offered to make a note on our account of the ones that I picked out. That evening I told Jeramy what I had done and kindly reminded him that Valentines was coming up.

Fast forward to yesterday...Jeramy heads to the jewellry store to get me a pair of white gold earrings. After looking at every pair in the store, he picked a set out and had them rung up. When the lady brought up our account she noticed that I had been in previously and had picked out a pair. She showed Jeramy the picture on the screen of the ones that I had selected and guess what folks...they were the exact same ones he had picked out himself!

Now this situation could have gone badly for my husband, being that he forgot that I told him I had picked out a pair and noted them on our account. Lucky for him, he knows me as well as he should and I am happily wearing my new white gold earrings.

Of course, they are no match for the card that Ryleigh and Jeramy each made me this morning while I took advantage of a little extra rest time. Jeramy is heading to Houston tomorrow for a two week stay so the girls have been enjoying their daddy time as much as they can today. They need time with their main squeeze on Valentine's Day as well!

Love to all, enjoy the day with the one (or ones) who matter the most to you.

Hello Internet

So, I have a new addiction. It's called Facebook and it sucks the life out of you. It definitely keeps you from posting lots of good stuff about your kids on your blog for all of the internet to read. I have comes to terms with my addiction and now that I have Facebook on my Blackberry, I expect to be able to spend more quality time online writing on my blog.

So the kids did survive my time away and my wonderful husband even had the house nice and tidy upon my return. I pretty much spent all of last week getting the laundry caught up and working my butt off in the gym to undo the damage that my weekend in New York caused.

I picked up one of these in New York as a gift for Ryleigh. I thought it was unique and cool and that she would love it. Little did I know that Avery would want one too. They have spent every day since I've been back fighting over Penelope so Jeramy will be picking up another one the next time he's in Houston, which by the way happens to be the next few weeks.

Things around here remain cold. It's been snowing every few days, but the overall accumulation hasn't been that bad. We even had one day last week that the temperature got up to around 50 degrees F., so a lot of the snow melted. We leave for a week in Mexico on March 17th and I really can't wait. The thought of natural heat warming my body just sounds too good to be true.

On Sunday I took Ryleigh ice skating for the second time. Open skate is every Sunday night and she is quite a natural I must say. The first time I wouldn't allow her to let go of the "helper" (PVC pipe shaped like a walker to provide support), but on Sunday she just took off without me. I do plan on taking the camera the next time we go, so look for that. But with Jeramy being gone, I don't know when we'll get another chance to go skating.

Oh, and guess what y'all...my neighbour (Canadian spelling) built a skating rink in their backyard. No kidding, it's kind of like a 3 inch wading pool that they let freeze and then keep it clean and even and there you go. Really cool, something I just never thought about one being able to do in their backyard.

Okay, Avery is asleep and Ryleigh just ate lunch, time to go read some books and get some snuggle time in.

Preparing for Departure

What a great weekend! I accomplished pretty much everything that I wanted to, except for finding a bathing suit. It's just a little too early for that so I'll either have to find one back home of just get one in Mexico next month. Since trying on bathing suits is really never that much fun with my post baby body, I'm not too disappointed. Especially since we got to see Regis and Kelly this morning!

We had a wake-up call at 6am, got dresseed and headed out at about 6:45. We got to the studio at 6:55 and took our place in the standby line. We weren't really sure how long it would take to find out if we were going to get a seat or not. You can get tickets to the show, but that has to be done months in advance and planning that far ahead just doesn't happen in my world. At 8:10 they finally had let all the ticket holders in and they gave us a standby number. I was 15, Becca was 16. It wasn't looking good. They told us we could go have some breakfast and coffee and come back at 8:30. At 8:45 they finally asked for numbers 1-10. They didn't tell us to leave, so we just stood there looking desperate. At 8:55, they called 11-16. We couldn't hear the numbers called and the beotches in front of us that had higher numbers were trying really hard to keep us from knowing we had just been called. I asked the guy what he said and when I heard through 16, I grabbed Becca and we dashed inside. We took our seats and enjoyed the show. Kelly is way skinnier in person than on TV, yeah, that is possible. I'm talking 10 year old boy skinny. She was very funny though and quite lively. We got to see Terri Hatcher and Adam Samburg (from SNL), oh yeah, and Scary Spice. It was cool and was worth getting up early and waiting in the cold for.

We're all packed and are about to head out the door for the airport. Looking forward to seeing my girls and my husband! It's been a great trip, but there's no place like home.