All Dressed Up

Easter festivities

dying our Easter eggs and sprinkling gliter

The finished product

Bed head and all, Taylor emptying her eggs left by the easter bunnyKennedy "hunting" for eggs (or just following Taylor around)

"I can do it..."

Lately Taylor has been interested in doing things all by herself. Usually she wants to put on her shoes and brush her teeth all by herself. One morning as we are trying to get out the door and I asked Taylor multiple times to get off the chair so that I can help her get dressed. On typical days, Taylor usually ignores my requests or runs away from me until I am reduced to getting mad and making threats. This particular day instead of the usual "I guess you don't want to go with us..." (which is followed by screams and tears), to my surprise I looked over to see her getting dressed all by herself! It probably took three times as long as it usually does to get ready and her shirt was on backwards but the look on her face of accomplishment was priceless.

Whaaa!!

Half of our little family have been sick with the wretched flu and the other half have been busy taking care of those with the flu. Well that's not entirely true. Kennedy didn't help much other than helping the sick ones smile every now and then. It has been a long and sad week for Nate and Taylor. Other than a weak attempt on Nate's part to go to work, and trips to the grocery store for more medicine...we haven't left the house for 7 days!! We have felt a little disconnected with the world while we have been quarantined in our house trying to get everyone healthy again. You would think with the modern luxuries of Internet and TV we could survive one week with little contact with the outside world and not be left out of the loop. Surprisingly (as we learned at what we thought was 8:30 pm but really 9:30 pm) we have missed one major yearly occurrence as winter ends and spring begins. Tonight we rounded up the girls, bathed and put them to bed, same as any day. We were both hard at work surfing the web, as our usual routine after the kids are down for the night, and still it didn't hit us that the world had moved on with out us by one hour. We did think it a bit odd that Extreme Home Make Over wasn't on at its usual time (we missed it) and that the evening news came on one hour too early. How could we miss something like day light savings?? It really made us feel strange that we lived one whole day one hour behind all of you! If Nate hadn't checked the time in the bottom right hand corner of his computer and caught our mistake we would have began another day the same way. It may not seem like a big deal, and really its not, but it was a strange feeling to know we were so disconnected with the rest of civilization.

The Butterfly Pavillion-a family outing

She held a taranchula and got a sticker to prove it!

Getting a close up of bed bugs and such

We got a close up when one landed on my arm
Kennedy more interested in the flower
The main attraction

So Big!

Kennedy has grown so much so fast. In about one week she went from the beloved army crawl to the officially crawling and now pulling herself up to standing. She also learned how to go up stairs. Is there any such thing as a development growth spurt?? So with that said it should be no surprise that she is into everything and goes everywhere. Mostly she loves to follow Taylor and I around the house. Next month she'll be 1 and I can't believe how fast this first year has gone.

Happy Presidents Day

I am always thankful for those random Monday holidays when Nate doesn't have to go to work. With half the year's Saturdays being dedicated to YW sports on my part, we don't have a lot of time to do many fun things as a family. So a free Monday together is a good thing. We wanted to get out and enjoy the snow, since it doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon, so we headed up to Evergreen to go ice skating. Taylor was very excited to go and did surprisingly well on the ice. It took her awhile to get the concept that the point was to stand up on her skates and not lean back into Nate's arms. We went up with Jami, Spencer, Crew, and Jaclyn (Jami's sister) and had a fun time. Crew was even nice enough to give Kennedy a turn in his sled. She loved being pulled around the ice by her dad.

Kennedy all bundled and so cute in her one-piece snowsuit
Learning to balance via a folding chairResting her legs
Spencer helping Taylor
Taylor during one of her many breaks The girls: Jacyln, Jami, Rachelle, and Kennedy

Taylor and Crew getting escorted back to the car

The boys: Nate and Spencer