Saturday

We went to Swimming lessons this morning and then went to the indoor farmers market. It wasn't much of a market, but we did get a wonderful chocolate ginger cookie. Probably the best cookie I have ever eaten--and it met the criteria of having chocolate in it. I'm going to have to research a recipe on that one. Anyway, when we got back, we ate some lunch. All of us except Annalise. She was too busy playing Polly Pocket. Then we all layed down for a nap. Only mom and dad slept. Dad and Evie headed outside around 3 and Annalise got out of bed. Immediately, she demanded her crown. Her crown is very important. She must wear it at all times. Especially when playing Pollies. If anyone has any cast off Polly Pockets, send them our way. I asked her if she wanted to go outside, but she would rather stay inside and play by herself. She was probably happy that she didn't have to compete with Evie.
Meanwhile Dad and Evie were outside shoveling, playing, and just putzing around. I got new wiper blades out if it and an afternoon to myself. It was great!

Dad and Evie built an igloo out of a snow pile. It was quite strong.

Evie goes in for the winter. Maybe she will hibernate.

Looks cozy. I wonder if this is how Pa felt when he fell in the snowbank on the Banks of Plum Creek in the Little House Series. Good thing he had crackers and Christmas candy to sustain himself. Evie, on the other hand, needed something to warm her up. She requested Hot Chocolate. When Annalise heard about the Hot chocolate, she wanted some too. In our house, the rule is you only get Hot Chocolate when you go outside so she suited up.

They enjoyed a cup of Hot chocolate outside the igloo.

This winter thing is for the birds in Annalise's book. She can hardly wait for spring. In preparation for Spring, she got out the scooter. But then when the wheels came out, she needed something else....

Hey Uncle Kevin, it official. Annalise had the first bike ride of the year!

Dance Fever

For Christmas, Jim got a little tiny video camera. I think this is the first movie that we have posted from it. Enjoy.

Thanks Grandma and Grandpa Taller

Before Grandma and Grandpa Taller left last week, Grandma left a Valentine's present for the girls to be opened at a later time. I decided that this snow day could use some excitement so we opened it this morning. They both opened the flower pots at the same time.
Annalise loves the new books.

These shirts will look great!

We decided to get a jump on spring and plant the flowers. The soil came in pellet form and we added water to reconsitute. Then, the fun part of planting the seeds came.

Evie carefully placed her seeds. She was concerned that they weren't getting enough water or light. I had to remind her that in a former lifetime, I used to grow plants and these would do just fine in the window. I don't think she believed me.

Snow Day!

As I said in my earlier post, Jim is stranded in Boston. He was trying to make it back before the storm hit. He changed his flight and everything was on schedule until he was actually in line to board (15 minutes before takeoff) and they canceled his flight. Since Boston is getting the snow today, he is scheduled to return home on Thursday. That left me to deal with the 6th highest snowfall on Indiana Record (12.5 inches at the airport, about 11 inches here).

I rolled the snowblower from its resting place and attempted to start it. It didn't do anything, but then I realized it needed gas. I tried a few more times and it was sounding like it wasn't turning over. I was really wishing we were back in MN where my neighbors would have come to the resuce with their blowers. And back inMN, SOMEBODY would have tuned the snowblower up before Thanksgiving, JIM.

Anyway, I was at the end of my rope after shoveling about 5 feet of the drive way. Our neighbor, an engineer, was shoveling. I figured that he may be able to help. He came over and asked me how to start it and wouldn't you know it, it started right up. I guess I just needed a Y chromosome to be present. I got the driveway cleared (the girls were at the neighbor's house playing) and I cleared the sidewalks. I'm glad the snowblower started, but now, I need some Advil for my aching back. I haven't run it in about 5 years and forgot how heavy it is.Here's our lovely house blanketed with fresh snow. Evie and I just finished "the Long Winter" of the little house on the prairie series. Now she has an idea what a blizzard is like--even if it wasn't windy here.
Here's a shot to show the snow depth. Towards the end of the drive, we probably had 16 inches to go through. It was slow going.

Here's the backyard, all fresh and pristine. It will probably stay that way for a while because the snow is too deep for Annalise to walk through.

For Dad

Dad is stranded in Boston by our big snow storm (more on that later). Stinks sends big kisses to Daddy!

Yesterday was Colts (Blue) day at preschool Kind of late in the season, but maybe the teachers had high hopes for a superbowl appearance. Evie got to wear her Peyton Manning jersey. I don't have any Colts gear for Annalise, so I found something blue. Lucky for me, she can't read. Although, here's my official shout out to Uncle Bran--We hope your Decs go down tonight!!

Touchdown! Or 3 Point Goal!

We spent a fair amount of time in the basement because the snow started on Tuesday. The girls are getting into the dollhouse from Marin. Annalise loves all the animals, and likes to brush the horses' hair.

Evie got it all set up. There were about 10 beds on the top floor full of babies.

This is about as good as sharing gets.

What else is going on?

I couldn't end my week of DC without this shot. The Space Shuttle. It is huge. I had a great time in DC. Thanks Erica for being a great hostess and tour guide. I hope your feet have forgiven you.

Back at the homestead, Grandma and Grandpa Taller hit the road on Thursday morning. During the week while they were here, we managed not to get any pictures. (Grandpa Taller is usually in charge of the camera). The girls reported that they had a wonderful time. Thank you very much for coming and watching the kids while Jim was at work and on was gone.

Jim got to stay home with the girls on Thursday. While he was home they set up a store.

Here are the two little shoppers choosing their purchases. They came up with the "bookshelves" all themselves.


Evie buys her baby a aquadot cake. Just don't lick it,baby.

Annalise bought dogs, of course!

We also had to work on Evie's homework. Monday begins her "Star of the week" at preschool. We needed to take pictures of things that she likes to do.

Here she is working on her lego contraptions.

And here she is concentrating on the fingerprint book that Grandma Taller brought (thanks!)

As soon as I got home and did the laundry, we packed up and headed to Ohio to give Grandma and Grandpa Seibert their Christmas present....

...a whole weekend of watching the girls!! Just kidding. The did watch the kids a lot when they weren't supervising us on the big project.....

....A newly painted bathroom (Price is Right model not included). Just thought you'd like to see how it turned out, Aunt Becky.

OBAMA!! OBAMA!! OBAMA!!

Good Morning America!!!! We were up at 6 am and flipped on the news. It seemed that many of our closest friends had already jammed the metro and were already at the Mall. We ate a quick breakfast, put on our layers, and stuffed our pockets with our cameras, handwarmers, and protein bars. We set off on our trip. Erica estimated it to be about 2 miles to the Lincoln Memorial and then about another 1 3/4 to where we ended up standing.

This was the view from VA near Arlington Cemetary before we crossed the icy Potomic. It was about 22 degrees when we left.

People were already getting comfortable. We did take this opportunity to stop at the almost unused port a johns. Not too bad yet. We decided to go in for a closer seat.

The beautiful reflecting pool. We stood in the approximate area that Bono and U2 (who aren't even American--can someone explain that to me??) performed.

Another sunrise shot. Those little blue dots are the jumbo trons that were everywhere.

Here we are around the Washington Monument. Right about when my mom and dad called. The people still weren't too bad and we were thinking we would try to get to 7th street, approximately a half mile from the Capitol building.

Then we met up with all our friends. This is as far as we went into the crowd. We thought we would be smart and stay near an exit (12th street), but they ended up closing that exit and when we left, we had to go down to 18th street. Anyway, more on that later. I put my camera up in the air to see what we could see, which was a lot of people.

All our friends in front of us. We were positioned near 12th street (about a mile from the Capitol Building. Where we were standing, we couldn't even see the building, but we could see a jumbotron and hear everything. We arrived at our spot about 8:10 and then stood there watching TV. We basically watched the CNN coverage that you all saw, except we were outside.

Check out our blinged out hats. Probably the best thing I bought all weekend. Not particularly warm though.

Here's Joe Biden taking the oath.

And the reason we all came. I have to say, I was expecting a lot more tears and a lot more chanting, but what we experienced was more like church. There was silence as people watched and listened. There was alot of shouting out AMEN during the closing prayer. This was the calmest mob that I have ever been in. Getting out was a pretty big nightmare because of the very limited access points. We were like cattle in the shoot. It was well past the Washington Monument before things got spaced out. Otherwise, we were fearful of someone tripping and getting trampled. I have to say that the security was tight but the people were all very respectful. Obama's speech was very inspirational and stirring. I truly believe that if the nation can continue to have hope and believe in this change things will happen because me and 1.8 million of my friends are all inspired to make our nation a better place. Today, I felt what it means to be American and proud to be with my fellow Americans on the Nation's Front yard. I'm glad I went.

It took us 1:25 to get down there and 2:45 to get back. I wore a pedometer and we took approximately 19500 steps.

Shopping in DC

We were going to go out to the big air and space museum to see the space shuttle and the concord, but instead decided to go to DC to see what we could see. What we saw was about a million jillion people and approximately half a million people selling stuff on the street. We bought some stuff, most notably our stocking caps that are bedazzled with OBAMA. We stepped into several stores selling souveniers and found some interesting stuff. We both bought offical bottle openers. Erica bought can cozies and I got a commerative spoon for Carol. We also got Obama canvas shopping bags to get our groceries with a nice dose of Democracy. Here is one of the T shirts we didn't buy. I have a collection of photos of inappropriate shirts. I"ll get those up when I have software to rotate my pics.
There are 4000 port-a-johns. As we walked around, it seemed more like 4 million. They are everywhere! And the best part is that every single one of them are locked so no one uses up all the toliet paper before tomorrow.

This is as close as we could get to the Capitol building today. By tomorrow, we think we will be lucky to be within a mile on the Mall. There were a lot of people out there today taking pictures and wandering around. Two things we noticed while we were out walking around:1. We were pretty pale in comparison to most of the crowd, and 2. A lot of people own full length fur coats. Much more stylish than the Columbia jacket.
One huge highlight of the day was walking past the MSNBC trailer and out popped JOSH GROBAN!!!!!!!Here he is walking down the steps. We heard him sing a little God Bless America. Erica's friend saw Anderson Cooper yesterday. It's pretty exciting.

I will update the blog again Tuesday, but don't be surprised if it is just full of people EVERYWHERE.

Homemade with love

The girls won't be cold this winter. There has been lots of love going into making them things. I made Evie this hat in November. I used the left over yarn to make a short scarf for her and just finished it on Friday.
Grandma Taller found some cute material to make Annalise Lamby Pajammies. She loves them. She also has a matching pillow case so she won't have any problems counting sheep tonight!

Cooped up

Winter finally came to Indiana on Wednesday. We got a nice coating of snow that lasted all day. All in all, we got a total of 3 inches. You would think it is 3 feet the way the news is reporting it. Cars skidding off the road!! Extremely cold temperatures!!! The winter that would never end!!! This allows me to get a few things off my chest.

1. The State says there is a shortage of salt. Every time the sky gets cloudy, there are salt trucks everywhere. If this is the shortage, I would hate to see what my car would look like when there is a surplus of salt.

2. Cars are skidding off the road. Well, this simply shouldn't be the case considering all the salt that is on the road. People see white and automatically do one of two things. They either drive at the speed of idling, or they drive straight into the nearest ditch, retention pond, highway sign. I saw an article on the front page of the paper this morning about this guy who crashed his truck. I started to feel bad for him until I realized he was standing in the snowy ditch wearing SHORTS! This brings me to 3.

3. It's Janurary. It's Winter. Start dressing like it people. My children had preschool canceled today because of the extreme cold. Get ready for this, my Minnesota and Wisconsin readers, it was -4!!!! Come on. I don't want to go "When I was in Minnesota..." on my neighbors,

but...

When we lived in Minnesota in the winter of 2004, I was pregnant with Evie. Like 8-9 months pregnant. In all of Janurary that year, the average temperature was probably 2 degrees. I had to walk about 1/3 mile from my parked car to the building I worked at the U. It was so cold one day that the power steering fluid in my car froze. We planned on going to the winter carnival to see the ice palace, but they closed it because it was too cold (-18 with a wind chill of -45). Now that is cold. All this and school wasn't even delayed. This -4 business is child's play. In fact, the kids in MN had to go outside for recess (even the preschoolers) until the weather got down to 10 degrees. No school delays because of the cold bus stop.

So, Indiana, suck it up, put a coat and hat on and consider dressing in layers. Fortunately, this weather will probably only last a week and we will be back to Indiana winter of 30 degrees.

Anyway, here's a picture of our winter wonderland. The one good thing about this weather and the mentality here is that people really look down on you for bringing your children out in this weather. This is a perfect excuse to stay in Pajammas or Sweatpants all day.
Our new year baby still celebrating.

This afternoon, Evie got out her 101 piece art set from Aunt Becky and Uncle Bran. (9 pieces are paper clips--I think I may have wrote that before)

Here's a picture she was drawing of me and Jim skiing. The finished product included pants, in case you were wondering.

The nice thing about this "extreme cold" is that the sky is nice and clear. We enjoyed sunshine through the windows all day today. The girls decided to read in the rocker. Evie is starting to read, but mostly is telling Annalise the story from memory.

Extreme Shlee.

These are the smocks that Aunt Becky made for Christmas for the girls. Aunt Becky, Annalise was excited about the dogs on her pocket.

LOVE. I may have to post this on my facebook page (hey, be my friend, if you aren't already!)

Then, I decided that they haven't drove me crazy today, so they would be rewarded with littering the floor with little bits of playdoh. Our playdoh is getting pretty old and hard and very crumbly.

Annalise made a square!!