It's a snowday here. No school. No youth activities at church. ~8" of powdery snow on the ground. Temp's in the low 20's with a bit of wind.

We went out. We played. We dug in the snow. Mom made us come in after only 30 minutes. She said something about Tanner's cough, Alia's throat, and Elena's runny nose. Go figure!

Can you see it?

It's ....
It's...
It's a missing tooth!

Tanner woke up this morning and his very loose tooth was no longer attached to his gums. It may have come out sometime in the night (I think he put it under his pillow!).

He's pretty excited!

Here's our three-year old opening her birthday presents!

Mom had fun making the "pink" cake...it turns out that Pampered Chef glass mixing bowls are oven safe (to 350F) and make great "skirts".

:)

Elena did request that her doll be removed from the cake...Mom had to talk her into leaving it in for pictures and blowing out candles!

Happy Birthday, little one!

Hooray! Alia got a new scarf today! This one is knit with three separate skeins of yarn (which turned out to be a pain!), but is very soft and cuddly.

One of the colors ran out before the others and Alia helped choose the replacement--bright pink! The name of the three other colors (when purchased in roving form to spin) was "Mermaid". I think a mermaid would like a bright pink accent, just like Alia!


Little Elena wanted her picture taken too. Here she is 'holding the scarf like a snakey'.

We had a friendly visitor last week--Wall*e !!!

He came with much help from Dad, although all the kids were in on the design process!

Like his counterparts in the movie, our Wall*e was prone to breakdowns, and he is mostly recycled into the lego bin, but we had fun while he was here!












Another visitor this week is Gizmo (I think that's his name!). He requested that his picture be taken while sitting on Elena's little yellow ball.

:)

Check out the missing tooth!

Alia pulled it all by herself!

We had a fun vacation! We went to the "dinosaur museum" (aka the Natural History Museum).



We participated in the great lego division (half of which followed us home! :).








We went to the hands-on museum.









And, we went to the petting zoo and saw lots and lots of amazing sheep!

Best of all, we had lots of Grandma & Grandpa time, played with aunts and uncles, followed fun little cousins and played with (tortured?) cats!

Happy New Year!