DIY- Valentine

I love crafty things and usually get a little discouraged at all the time and talent that most projects require but here's a decoration idea that took hardly anytime and still was fun. It happily brought me back to my middle school years when my spare time was consumed with beads and friendship bracelets!

So, here it is: a simple heart cut out of the top of shirt box, smothered in elmer's glue, then smashed with red beads and put into a frame. I found this idea on one of my most favorite blogs "just a girl" and the next day i happened to be in goodwill and found a bag of red beads for $.49 and knew it was meant to be. I probably shouldn't show you the original idea as my beads were definitely a little inferior- smaller is better. But, oh well, she's inspirational and lots of fun so you should have a look anyway!

Ta da!  :)

Oh and i didn't have any frames that i liked so since i am officially addicted to spray paint i painted an old wood frame cream and was happy.  i painted this mirror too. Spray paint is magical.

 

passing the days...

Andrew has been gone a bit more recently and since its also been cold and gloomy in "Colorful Colorado" we've been trying to keep busy and happy indoors.

This activity definitely kept Will and me busy- but not always happy. After putting up with the living room being completely useless for 2 days; while also interceding on numerous demolition attempts by the girls which were ALWAYS preceded by freak out attacks from Will; I was MORE than delighted to put it all away last night.  However, through his tears and words like: "It just makes me SO sad and tired [*sniff, sniff] that we have to tear down my [sniff*sniff] fort", he begged me to take a TON of pictures before we tore it down. poor boy.

But it we had jolly times nevertheless.

Will's looking a little intense here...

After being "holed up" for so long we thought it'd be a great idea to venture outside and take a walk to Auntie's house. and, what do ya know? but the sun decided to come out on our way back home. Those 28 degrees all of a sudden felt extra warm and lovely.

 

  

The only reason the girls are actually looking at me and standing still in this picture by the garage is because they were in the middle of a chorus of "no, no, no, no" telling me they were not interested in looking at me so i could take their picture! ha, outsmarted. ;)

SURPRISE! Nana drove by and stopped for a quick hello. Yay for nana who can always make the girls happy.

Self-Feeding=FUN

It's always thrilling when kids start feeding themselves, however, in my excitement that my hands no longer have to go 20 mph trying to keep up with filling 2 mouths every meal, i forgot how incredibly messy their independence can be. Even with the use of spoons, their food still goes everywhere.  I think that makes them extra happy and in the end gives me extra work. Yay for and an even trade! :) At least they continue to be super cute.

 

 Sophie is definitely the neater of the two. She's content with leaving whatever food remains in her bowl that she's unable to scoop while when Madeline has reached her spoon-feeding abilities, she pushes her whole face into the bowl and licks out whatever remains....

 

 These pictures actually don't depict the extent of Madeline's messiness. When i went to grab the camera she  smeared her face with her arm which rubbed off 1/2 of the goo all over her face! :)

andy-roo's birthday!

 For Andrew's birthday this year, i got to surprise him with a whole day of fun!. Thanks to our super grandparents we got to drop the kids off at their house and LEAVE them OVERNIGHT!!

But first Will and the girls helped me with a surprise breakfast in bed.

After we delivered the kids to grandma's house Andrew and i drove to the mtns. to cross-country ski. Actually "ski" is kind of an exaggeration: the trail was pretty steep and icy and since i  haven't been on any kind of skis for at least a couple years i spent more time sliding and falling. Finially i let the birthday boy carry my skis in his back pack while he skied the rest of the way and i hiked on foot! :) That was after i had lost one of my skis over the edge and he had to hike down in 4 ft. drifts to retrieve it! we like to keep things exciting. anyway, once we got to the lake the snow was much better and the ground was much flatter so we had a great time skiing around there!

 

you think andrew might be demonstrating a certain someone's clumsiness??

a beautiful mtn. sunset

After we got back home we went out to dinner and saw a late movie. Then, since it was only 11:00pm and we didn't have any kids to get home to, we thought we should really live it up. Apparently we've been parents for too long as we couldn't really think of anything to do except get coffee at a super fun new coffee place in greeley that's actually open until 12:00am.whoa. It's called Zoe's. By 11:45 we were feeling tired and achy and had to go home and get some advil.

Thanks for having a birthday Andrew- you are Super fun to hang with! love you!

**disclaimer: wanted to make sure everyone knew that as THRILLED as we were to have 24 hours without our sweet kids, we really did miss them and love them, and talked about them and were excited to pick them up the next day... just thought i should make that clear :)

Some random pics from the last couple weeks...

This picture is very significant because it involves me and snow.i generally have a pretty determined dislike of the snow and cold but i'm trying to embrace it for the children's sake. :)  So, not only did i take Will out to play in it this week, i took him out on a day that the temps barely got to double digits. we had fun-even if it was less than 20 minutes before the cold got to me and we had to go inside!

We are so excited to have 3 girls in the family. Little Calliope (my sis's girl) is only 9 months younger than Madeline and Sophie so we're sure they will be the best of friends.

 

Sisters hugging- how much better can it get?!  Especially when they are twin sisters and hugging can turn into screaming pretty quickly or the other way around.

 I've been friends with this group of gals since jr.high. However, this was the first time in many years that almost all of the original group were able to get together at the same time. it was so great to catch up- i love these girls!

 

Some good friends from CA visited over the holidays. Here's Will with his friend Madison. (we're secretly planning a betrothal...hope they're ok with that :)