hodge podge

 Since Joey and Kylah go to a year round school they had all of last week off. They spent a few fun days with friends while Joe and I were at work, they spent one day at our offices (which they also love!), and then they had a few days home with me. Since it was cold outside, we needed something fun to do to burn some energy. So, we got a guest pass to a local gym and used their pool. So did a few of our friends. :) It was a blast, and we did it two different days!

 -------------------------------------------

My parents got Norah her very own baby cradle for her birthday. Norah and I (yes, me, Michelle...not Joe!!) put the cradle together. Now both the girls have matching cradles with their beds, and they love it!

 --------------------------------------------

Since Joe is training for a marathon, he has had some long runs. His long runs are always on Sundays, which means the kids and I have been around to cheer him on or meet him. For his 20 and 22 milers, we met him and brought him some water. The kids love cheering daddy on and yell "Go, Daddy, Go!" from the car window. They are so proud!

All things Valentine

 Joey and Kylah had their class Valentine's parties the week before Valentine's Day because they weren't actually in school on Valentine's Day.

The class parties are always fun. I was thankful they were both on a Friday so I could go to both of them!

Norah tagged along and got to do all the activities with the kids. She was in heaven.

She even got to eat pizza, make brownies and play Valentine bingo with Kylah.

 And then it was time for Joey's party. Silly face.

 Again she got to do all the games with Joey. Here she is concentrating hard and making Valentine's cards with him. So cute!

Papa and Gramma sent a fun Valentine box for the kids. They LOVE getting mail addressed to them, so they were so excited to open this package.

 And then we face-timed with Papa and Gramma to tell them thank you. (yes, my girls are always wearing princess dresses...)

 Joe brought home gifts for all the kids on Valentine's day. So cute, and they loved it! Flowers and necklaces for the girls and cologne for Joey.

 After dinner we made chocolate covered strawberries. Kylah was a fan.

And Joey.

And Norah.

After the kids went to bed, Joe grilled yummy steaks and asparagus and potatoes on the Green Egg for us. It was fabulous!

Norah is 3!

 It's hard to believe our youngest is turning three, but she is! We have been talking about her upcoming birthday for a while, so she's been working on putting up three fingers (she has also been telling everyone that she is three for about the last six months, so at least now it's actually true!)

Her actually birthday is today (Sunday), but we had her party on Saturday. 

She has talked about having a Cinderella cake for a while, which I knew I could deliver. :)

Unfortunately, the birthday girl swiped some frosting off the front of her Cinderella cake after I finished decorating it (and after I threw out all the excess frosting.)

 Joe's parents were on their way down to Hot Springs to visit Joe's brothers, so they stopped on their way to wish Norah a happy birthday (and to see Joey's basketball game). 

Norah was excited to blow out the candles on  the cupcake Nana brought for her. And she was also excited that Nana and Grandpa brought Naomi with them!

She has gotten pretty good at blowing out candles by herself.

I still love seeing these two little twin cousins together. (Naomi will celebrate her third birthday in less than 2 weeks!) 

I can't believe how old she looks all of a sudden!

It was hard to wait until 4:00 for her swimming party, so she was so ready when the time finally came to swim. We got a great deal on a hotel room and had a swimming party so we could let all the kids get all their energy out. It was perfect for a cold February birthday.

The spread (minus pizza, which came later).

Norah loved having all her little and big friends there, but she is always very very happy when her little buddy Matty is around. 

It was amazing how many kids we fit in the pool. I think we had about 20 kids there, and they all seemed to have a great time. The dads didn't even have to get in this time, because there really wasn't any room for them to swim/throw kids around.

Norah tried to see how many M&Ms I would let her eat.

The hot tub was a hit too.

Eagerly anticipating her birthday cake.

And blowing out the candles.

And opening her birthday gifts, which she loved!

Joe saw this sign on the wall towards the end of the party.... Ha!

What a fun day! Since we had a hotel room, Joe stayed with the three kids (while I got to go home and sleep all by myself!) After swimming for 2.5 hours straight and not having a nap, Norah was pretty exhausted. She cuddled up to Joe while watching a show around 7:00, and she was out within minutes. 

We celebrated our family birthday for Norah tonight. First we face-timed with my parents so Norah could open her gifts from them. She got her own doll cradle (her sister has one, and Norah likes to try to put her dolls to sleep in it too...) and a princess dress. I should have taken a screen shot of Norah face-timing with my parents because it was adorable!

We took the birthday girl to Steak 'n Shake for her birthday dinner. I'm pretty sure Kylah and Joey had a hand in helping her decide where to eat dinner tonight. (and we cheated by getting the kids Steak 'n Shake and taking it to Qdoba so Joe and I could eat there! :)

After bath time, it was time for presents. She got Cinderella on DVD, another princess dress, and a Dora book. Perfect! I am glad she got more princess dresses because she wears them all day every day, and now we can at least rotate!

So sweet.

We are so blessed to have Norah in our lives.

more snow days

 The kids have had THREE more snow days this week. That is 11 snow days total this year. A little crazy when you think about us living in Arkansas (but when you realize there are actually no snow plows here, you will realize why we have to cancel school for even 3 inches of snow!) 

Joe and I are blessed with awesome friends who volunteer to take our kiddos whenever they can (thanks Meredith, Tricia, Amy...), and we are also blessed that we have jobs where we can take our kids with us to work when we need to. 

Tuesday was my day off, though, so we had a fun snow day at home. I wasn't really in the mood to get all bundled up to go outside (or to spend 30 minutes getting the kids all bundled up...), so I brought the snow in to us. It worked like a charm. I think the kids played for over an hour with this snow. The water bottle with food coloring added to it was a hit too! It was a little messy, but so worth the clean up!

Don't worry, we also watched a few movies during the day (I'm not super crafty mom!) But, we did enjoy our relaxing day together. 

By the time Joe got home, the kids were ready to expend some pent up energy. We let them run around and yell, which we don't normally do, but we figured they really did need to get some energy out. I'm not sure how many laps they made around our house, but it was a lot.

 Norah's favorite thing in life is when Joey and Kylah include her in what they are doing and treat her like a big girl. She was in heaven.

But, as we all know, it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt. I think Norah got Joey's teeth into the back of her head. Ouch.

 Don't worry; she was fine two minutes later and so was Joey. They called this their trophy and were all very proud. 

I do love the games and things they make up. So cute.

 

Wednesday I went in to work in the morning, but most of my patients cancelled, so I had a free afternoon. I decided it would be fun to take Joey and Kylah bowling!

We had a great time, and both Joey and Kylah each got a spare, so it was a win in their books!

 

We've had some fun snow days. We may not think it's as fun when we are missing our scheduled May break (for our year-round-schedule), but we'll enjoy it now while we can.... :)

super bowl and dance parties

 Last weekend the big boys (Joe and Dave) took the little boys (Joey and Connor) to the Bentonville high school basketball game. (Did you know our high school has one of the top college recruits in the country? Pretty cool! And makes for some fun games to watch!) Anyway, while the boys were off at the basketball game, Meredith and I hung out with the rest of the kiddos at my house. What were we to do with mostly girls, other than have a Frozen singing party?! All of us love these songs, and love to dance to them!

 Matty and Andrew weren't quite as into dancing as they were into balancing on my foam roller....

We won't post any pictures of Meredith and I dancing, but we did our share. :) 

Can you say A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E?!?!

The boys had a great time at the game. When they got home, Connor had a bit of a tummy ache (maybe from the candy and nachos and ....). I showed him a good position to let some gas out, and Joey joined in on the fun. :) This will be a good one to post at their graduation someday...

 '

The girls were excited to wake up in the morning and realize they got to spend the night together. We didn't know when we laid them down if we would let them spend the night together, but we did, and they loved it! Audrey brought her matching jammies like Kylah's "just in case they got to stay the whole night." How could we say no?! Joe cooked up a yummy pancake breakfast the next morning.

 Sunday night was the Super Bowl. We got quite a bit of snow that day, so our fun Super Bowl plans for a big get together were not going to happen. Fortunately, we only live about 5 minutes from the Adair's, so we were able to drive over and still enjoy the game together. 

This was my view at one point when I looked down (Joey, Connor and Andrew). So cute that Andrew wants to be just like the big boys!

The little kids didn't really understand the importance of the big game, but they sure did like dancing to the music at half time!

We are so blessed to live 5 minutes from our best friends and blessed that we get to do life with them every day.