Marbles Fun!

Anthony even took the day off on Friday so we were ALL on vacation!! We decided to head to Marbles, the children's museum in downtown Raleigh, for our adventure that morning! We've been there before (it was a few years ago - I had less children...) but it's always SO much fun and there's all kinds of fun for everyone!

Probably the perfect way to start the morning for these boys! (And yes, they have the same robe...and they both LOVE their robes!) After a good breakfast, we were off!

I can't believe that after having 4 kids, we still don't have a train table! Just a big basket that all the train stuff stays in and we pull it out to set up on the carpet. These train tables are always a HUGE hit for my kids because of that!

This was Callie's favorite section. They had a little pet shop and a spot where you could take your dog for a walk - she and Caleb loved it!!!

Josiah and Harrison's pizzaria :)

This is how daddies "watch" children...sitting at a table....talking...hmmm....good thing Beth & I weren't far away!

We headed over to another section to work on a huge LEGO tower...

Callie enjoyed cutting some wood in half

Josiah headed to the art project table to see what he could design

David and Anthony got so focused on building the tower that I think they lost track of the fact that none of the KIDS were there anymore!! :)

They had a little racetrack where you could build your own car out of Kid K'nex (love those things!) and then race them down a track. Caleb stood at the end and clapped and cheered for all the cars! :)

A little painting (Caleb's first time - I don't get paint out very often at home! :) )

Oh dear - Callie found the dance stage! Daddy was showing her how to do a cheer...

He's pretty good isn't he? I guess all the dancing from his Brother's Keeper days was coming right back to him!

Surf's up dude!

Climbing Mt. Everest

Jacob will always find a ball - here's the soccer "field"

I told her that Uncle Scott would be proud! :)

Hang ten!

They even had a little hockey rink that kids could do in their sock feet!!

We had a BLAST - the kids were exhausted and had SO much fun! I don't know why I don't have a single picture of Jackson - except that the kids were running from station to station so fast that I'm amazed I have any pictures at all! We LOVE that place - and even better to do it with friends!

Off to Raleigh!

Long ago, we had made plans to take advantage of the Friday holiday and go see the our friends, Anthony & Beth, in Raleigh for the weekend. Friday holidays are very rare, and since that's David's day off, it makes for a great way to get a weekend visit in that doesn't require us to miss a Sunday! Then we had all this snow and school was cancelled for the week anyways - but the roads were clear enough for us to head out of town! We couldn't wait! :)

To say that Addison & Callie were glad to see each other is an understatement! These girls are two of a kind. Both have survived having 2 older brothers (and are pretty tough as a result) but they are also ALL GIRL - so they are quickly becoming BFFs! :)

They're about a year apart, so in the past there was definitely a gap between the two - but now they are both at a great age and played awesome together. Just give them a few babies and some dress up clothes and they were SET! :)

Look at that hair - getting a wee bit out of control. Doesn't take him long to find a microphone anywhere he goes though! :)

My boys were very impressed with Mrs. Beth's new phone. Harrison was showing them how he can play "Angry Birds" on it - they loved it!

Happy friends together again!

More happy friends together again! :)

(Beth surprised me with another matchy matchy sweatshirt from our alma mater! They should put us on a commercial don't you think? Love it!)

Fun with Friends

Playing Twister Hoopla - what a FUN game! :)

This is how my house looked for most of the week. The kids were SO excited to get to play all they wanted and not have to deal with distractions like homework and school! So we had our friends from the neighborhood over quite a bit! They'd go outside and play in the snow for a couple of hours, then come back, take all their wet stuff off (quite a mess!), dry off and play inside for a while. Made me very thankful to live in a neighborhood like we do and be able to do that. I've always said that we want our house to be a place that our kids and their friends WANT to hang out at - so i reminded myself of that OFTEN as I was cleaning up snow clothes and wet boots all over my house all week! :) We had fun though!

Two Days in a Row!

Yep - another snow day today! I LOVE it! (Although as a mom, what snow day really means is more work - more soggy mess on the floor, more laundry, more crying kids when they get wet and cold). Still, trying to focus on the FUN part of it and enjoy! And of course back to the blog update!! I'm still in November, but am ready to blog about our vacation to Massanutten now! :)

It really did snow!!!

The talk ALL weekend was about the forecasted snow. The kids had talked about it at school the week before, and EVERYONE was all atwitter about it at church on Sunday. My children's choir kickoff was that night, and I had people asking me if we were going to cancel it because of the FORECASTED snow! (No we did not!) So you can imagine how excited we all were to wake up and ACTUALLY see snow on the ground!!!

Look Caleb! That's snow outside!

I love these kind of pictures of snow - everything is covered, it's perfectly quiet and peaceful, no tracks or footprints yet - everything is still!!

I wanted all the kids to stand in front so I could get a picture - but Jacob simply could not contain himself - he had to go get IN it!! :) (And yes, he's in a tshirt in the snow!)

So much for no tracks and perfectly covered, right?

The first of many treks outside. The problem is none of our kids have appropriate snow clothes (i.e. snow pants, big puffy jackets, waterproof mittens/gloves). So what that means is they LOVE being outside and playing....until they are wet and cold. So it was lots of in and out ALL day long. Go out, play, come in, dry off, warm up by the fire, clothes in dryer, then back out again an hour later to do it all over again.

The accurate measuring tool - how much snow is on top of the mailbox! We got about 4-5 inches I suppose.

Work began on the snowman immediately...

Caleb loved it! He was very intrigued by it all (and yes, he has socks on his feet...we somehow lost his mittens after the FL everglades trip...poor baby)

She loved the snow...until she got the slightest bit wet and then she would start hysterically screaming and or crying. She was a mess. She hates to be bundled up anyways, so it was an ordeal to get her dressed to go out....only to have her throw a fit about it 5 minutes later. Sigh.

don't eat yellow snow caleb!!!

We made sno-cones with kool-aid...but i only had cherry flavor, so when they spilled stuff, it looked like drops of blood in the snow...sort of creepy.

Callie and our neighbor Sage - they are GREAT friends!

Our snow....creature. They used the water company pole to build him off of, so it ended up sort of a strange shape....fun though!

You've Been Warned!

It's a snow day here (!!!!! yes in South Carolina - 3-4 inches of snow!!!) and so while Caleb naps and the other 3 thaw out in front of the fire and a movie, I'm starting on the "update the blog" journey....so hang in there! It's going to take me all the way back to November 12 (terrible I know). So if you have any interest, you'll have to go all the way back there. I've got to get it finished though so that I'm all up to speed and can order the 2010 blog book! :)

Old but New Toys

With both of the boys' birthdays in the fall and then Christmas soon after, I like to try and go through all their stuff and clear things out a bit and rotate other things. I got rid of some stuff we'd accumulated, pulled some new toys out of the attic for Caleb, filled several tubs full of things we were done with and could consign, and put some other toys in the attic to give them a break.

Happy children with new (old) toys! :)

One Last Christmas Hurrah!

December was so crazy that there was still one special Christmas activity that we hadn't gotten a chance to do - the Lights at the Zoo! We had plans to go one night before Christmas, but it ended up raining and then we ran out of free evenings. So we saved it to do when we got home from vacation. We went on the very last night and LOVED it! It wasn't crowded at all (perhaps because most people were ready to move on from Christmas) and we had a blast! It was fun to do one last Christmas hurrah before we started back to school the next day!

It doesn't matter how many times we come to the zoo - the kids ALWAYS have to "milk" this cow!!!

They had a big firepit going and you could buy stuff to make s'mores. I learned my lesson last year and brought our own grahams, marshmallows, and chocolate (and wire hangers) and we roasted to our heart's content - for free!!

The kids enjoyed some horsey-riding :)

One sweet picture...

...and the silly picture (look - even Caleb is making a silly face!)

and an attempt to get a picture of David & I....sigh....it's so hard to get a good one when all you have it little people taking them!!

The Drive Home

The drive HOME from vacation isn't nearly as fun and exciting as the drive TO vacation. But we made it - and with these two fellas sitting behind me, it was pretty entertaining! :)

Yes, SOMEONE....taught him how to make armpit noises. Sigh.

These two love their blankets! :)

(Jacob's ORIGINAL baby blanket that he always slept with was white. When he turned 5, he (reluctantly) agreed to put it in the attic since he didn't "need" it anymore. He was okay for a few months, and then when Caleb was born, he brought me this blue blanket of Caleb's and said "Caleb told me that I can have this one". And so he has a "new" blanket. That boy!)