Belaying lessons and a THIRTIETH birthday!

Grandpa loves to have us climb with him and we often practice on his climbing wall on his house. We practice going up as quickly as we can, as quietly as we can, and as technical as we can. It's pretty fun.

One Sunday Grandpa decided to actually start teaching me how to belay Cara! It's a lot of responsibility but it was kind of fun to learn!

Aunt Angie turned 30 this year and my mom had a lot of fun dreaming up surprises for her! She snuck decorations and some presents to Angie's work buddies since Ang worked the night shift leading into her birthday. They pulled them all out at midnight and went and wiggle carred all over the hospital! My mom even had Aunt Hailey and Aunt Becca help decorate (and clean) her house for her when she got home from work!

Unfortunately, this is how I spent Angie's birthday, dealing with a high fever.

Everyone else enjoyed a very yummy cake that my mom made of oreos, peanut butter cups, peanut butter, whipped cream, and pudding. It was DELICIOUS.

Beautiful Weather

This winter we have had a lot of fairly cloudy and cold days. The weather system of El Nino has brought storms that are very much needed. Our mountains finally have a great snowpack. It's just kind of made it dreary for us where we don't get snow. This is St. George though and anytime the sun is out with no clouds it produces just enough warmth to make for beautiful days.

We have spent lots of time with Lexi in the backyard!

Lexi just kills me right here. She is glaring!

We have actually taken the dogs on some good walks and made use of our pretend double stroller!

Iva is so brave. She is done with baby swings and they actually kind of freak her out. Only big swings for her and she begs to go faster!

Cara was being a funny little stinker about smiling in the photos.

Unless it was capturing her being a baby.

Siena and Cara and School

Guest post by Mom:

I'm really proud of my two big girls. School comes easily for them, but they are always willing to do the extras. They find out about the bonus stuff you can do at school and they do it. They just had a Reading Fair at the school and both girls participated. To be fair, Cara originally told me that she DIDN'T want to do it and then three days before changed her mind. Lovely.

Siena's project was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which she loves. She even dressed up as Willy Wonka.

Cara picked a little I Can Read book that featured the fabulous Pinkalicious. She also dressed up as Pinkalicious.

I was surprised at how many kids did it, but even with that my girls took 2nd and 3rd in the K-2nd Category! We got $35 to Barnes and Noble between the two of them! Siena was also honored as the Super Scholar of the month for Mrs. Simonson's class. Cara got that honor back in September I think and I didn't even realize what it was! You'll notice Cara is holding a small second certificate. That one was for perfect attendance for a 6 week period. Siena didn't get it because I checked her out of school to go see The Good Dinosaur!

Woot Woot! Three Months Old!

Our little Sam finally hit the three month mark. I say finally like we were waiting for it when in truth it just crept up on us and then flew by. In fact, Mom and I are working on this blog post at almost his four month mark. Shame shame.

Sam at three months...what can we say? He has started finding his voice and doing lots more cooing. Mom really can't tell the difference between having a little boy babe and having a little girl babe at this time. In fact, knock on wood, Sam has been much less of a messy diaper kind of kid. With one exception, he pees out of his diapers at night WAY more often than we girls ever did. On the flip side, he hasn't "fire hosed" my mom hardly ever whereas us girlies tended to soak our changing table and clothes whenever we got changed.

Mom has gotten Sam to do one really good belly laugh. Everyone was in the room and we all thought it was Iva who had laughed until Mom said it was Sam! He hasn't done that big laugh since, but she can get him to giggle grunt almost every day.

He is back to having a cold. Between Iva and him, it's going to be a long winter season. Iva got croup and passed it on to the poor kid. That means though we got to find out how much he weighed at the doctor! He is 13 lbs 8 oz and he's starting to get that rolly polly look to him. He spits up all the time now mostly due to a mucus problem we think.

Mom brought out his three month clothes and is starting to bring out the three to six month outfits. He has short little legs which make all the outfits seem huge, but really they fit his upper body!

We tried out the baby swing outside on one of our warmer days. He loved it. He loves his swing inside and will fall asleep in it after talking to the little mobile for awhile!

Oh January

Full disclosure from Mom: January has not been exactly kind to our little crew. There will a more complete blog about it forthcoming, but she wants you to know that it has been more of a survival month than a joyous one.

There have been quite a few naked days. Iva has found great joy in just being naked and pretending to potty train. She mostly just likes to be nude.

We have built very large Jenga towers.

Mom, Grandma, Sam, and Dad have Group Powered it up!

We visited the eye doctor!

Went and played at House of Jump!

Iva has been quite mischievous. She got into the crib by herself with Sam sleeping in there. I'm glad she didn't hurt him!

We have spent quality time snuggled in bed.

More Iva antics...

There has been just a few days with some sun that weren't freezing!

We even played at the Rosenbruch museum on MLK Jr Day.

We went for a bike ride too!

We have had a lot of Shakeology drinking going on.

And Sam has just gotten smilier.

A Blogging Absence

So you might have noticed that we have gone quite awhile without posting. Mom actually asked Dad last night if she should maybe walk away from our blog. NO! How else would we be able to document our lives...I mean besides Instagram and Facebook, of course?! Good news, she has decided to hang in there. So we have back blogging to do.

Let's start with our New Year's Eve plans. Mom and Dad tossed some ideas back and forth including hosting a party for our neighbors, but it never happened. A lot of our neighbors had family in town or were out of town themselves and then we knew that we wanted to play in grandma and grandpa's hot tub anyway. So that's where we ended up, Grandma and Grandpa's, playing with cousins.

Unfortunately, I actually SLEPT most of New Year's Eve. I did not feel well at all. I had a fever and was just very achey and tired. My eyes just looked sick. I could perk up with a little ibuprofen, but it was kind of a miserable few days.

The celebration was a little lack luster. We played a few games, ate some food, and just kind of hung around which isn't really different than most days. However, we did have awesome headbands.

We did a countdown for an eastern time zone New Year and had fun with poppers and blowing horns and effectively cheered in a New Year.

The ever present post- Dad's photo catch up

We always have some massive post where we finally get all the pictures from Dad's phone. Most of these should be included in 2015, but Mom and I just don't have the energy to go back and edit all those posts! So here you go...this is what Dad's phone held:

My meet and greet with characters at our Star Wars viewing!

Posing with the Christmas lights...um we aren't wearing coats you'll notice. We weren't anticipating walking!

Mom and Iva playing on some slides. It was fun to go to the Washington Rec center and swim before Christmas.

Here Dad and Aunt Margaret were trying to recreate a photo from their childhood.

Iva loved playing at the Disney store. She had only one problem. She couldn't hold ALL the Mickeys!

She wanted to play in the snow and then very quickly didn't. She did look cute all bundled up originally. Should have snapped a picture then.