We got our first dusting of snow around new years and decided to take the girls sledding on new years day. the new park near our house has the biggest hill around so we gave it a wurl.

as you can see, there is not a whole lot of snow! lucky for us, our sled is super awesome. it didn’t care about the amount of snow.. it cruised down the hill like the champ that it was!

we finished sledding and walked over to the play area. annalise can never pass up an opportunity to swing!

she’s pretending to be asleep (and turning blue!)

when nighttime came, scott lit two floating lanterns.

the lanters come from china. the translated directions say to “release the lantern and wish oh”. gotta follow those directions so that’s just what we did!

happy 2013!

we obviously have a lot to catch up on!

Halloween:

Ava chose to paint her pumpkins face this year.

scott carved his. i love this guy. he carves his pumpkin with a jigsaw and always thinks of something original.

we had a few events to attend. ava decided to be a prairie girl for one of them.

and a mermaid for the others:

who can resist that adorable pink poodle?!

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Skitters and Ratsie’s 1st Birthday!

Ava made some fabulous birthday crowns for each of us to wear during the rats birthday party.

She also knew exactly how she wanted to prepare their cakes: a chunk of cheese with a dab of ice cream and a drizzle of coffee.

then off to the bathroom where the celebration would begin.

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And I just couldn’t resist sneaking in this cute video. Scott and the girls were playing, and after 20 minutes of constant giggling, i dug out the camera to capture some of the fun!

Ava’s favorite movie is Charlotte’s Web. So, naturally, she didn’t want to just be a spider for Halloween.. she wanted to be Charlotte, a grey barn spider. Annalise was going to be a tiger since that’s what Ava was around her age, but Ava really wanted Lisey to be Wilbur the pig from Charlotte’s Web. So, I did the best I could with what we had.

It was a Nana day so I put the girls in their costume when I picked them up. Ava is very cute and very excited!

everyone thought Annalise was piglet.. unless she was standing right next to Ava.

trick-or-treating at Grandma and Grandpa’s.

one excited girl and two handsome guys.

posing in front of a giant web

Lisey trick-or-treated at 3 houses. She was such a trooper. I thought for sure I was going to have to go home and put her to bed while Scott and Ava carried on, but Lisey loved being in the stroller watching all the action.

And that was that. We came home and Ava spent the rest of the night passing out candy. She was so good at answering the door, making sure everyone got some candy and saying, “happy halloween!” When asked about her favorite part of halloween, Ava will say, “passing out the candy.”