Our Valentine's Day 2015

A number of random pictures mixed in here.  Been a pretty good week for us, though it's been quite cold here in Chicago.  We put together some Valentine's for school parties, the girls got some treats from Mark and I, and Sawyer had a friend's birthday party and school field trip.  In addition, Mark and I have been super low key because we are trying to eat super clean for 30 days.  We are just finishing up week 2 and doing really well, but that means no eating out and so our lives have gotten substantially more boring.

And now for my random pictures - first up is Margot sitting on the chair watching TV.  She does whatever her sisters do and so she's taken to sitting on the arm of the chair.  I often watch her waiting for her to roll the wrong way, but so far she's been good to go.

 As I was trying to take this picture, Sawyer tried to photo bomb.  Rather than take one of them together, I did snap one of her by herself.  This girl is such a poser, and always tries to get in on whatever picture i'm taking.

I ran out the other night to the mall to return a few of my online purchases and despite my intentions to focus on myself, I did go in one store for the girls and of course bought them something.  As I told Mark, make sure these girls know when they're older that there Mom spoils them all the time, even though they give me no credit for it.  Sawyer got a new shirt and looked super cute in it...and so old.

And both girls got the exact same Valentine's outfit.  Sawyer was distressed that she didn't have a great outfit to wear, so that is what initially drew me into the store.  I was trying to find some sort of heart t-shirt, and walked out with a full new outfit for each.  I typically am not into dressing the girls the same - but this outfit was super cute and since their parties were on different days they didn't wear it the same day anyway.  The pants have a cutout heart by the heel, and the shirt has hearts and arrows on it.  Here is Isla stoically showing it off.

Isla had a great Valentine's party and is seriously the most generous girl in our house.  She got lots of candy and gave more than half of it to her sister Sawyer, willingly.  Her reasoning was that Sawyer was bigger than her and so she probably needed more.  I asked Sawyer if she thought she'd be as generous as Isla was to her, and we all know the answer is NO.

Each of the girls got a stuffed animal, chocolate sucker, and some swedish fish from Mark and I. Mark picked up the stuffed animals and decided Margot deserved a BIG one.  This is "Val" the bulldog.  She gets lots of love and kisses from Margot.

 Sawyer and Isla both got some small thing that I forget the name of, but that they are both a fan of.  Ha - how's that for a description.  Each happily posed with their new animal, and more than happily dug into their candy.

 And again, the poser strikes, changing it up for the camera, so I included them both.

 And Isla with hers...

And then they pose together...I see this picture and think someday the fighting and bickering has to stop.

And we get all three together.  Margot is actually yelling "CHEESE" here.  Here cheese smile is a big, hammy one.

Unfortunately our girl Margot caught a stomach bug this weekend and woke up throwing up at 2am on Saturday.  Mark caught the first round of it and delivered Margot to me in bed, in some new jammies while he switched out her sheets.  Unfortunately she did not settle down back to sleep like we hoped and when she started gagging an hour later that was my cue that we were headed downstairs.  So Margot and I hung out downstairs from 3-5:30am while she had 2-3 more episodes. She requested, and we watched, all of Polar Express, and then one of my shows until she finally passed out on my lap.  She got three good hours in, threw up one more time and that was it.  Our girl didn't eat more than a few cheerios and some soup broth today but thankfully she's better now. Babies should not get the stomach flu - it makes them so scared and is really quite sad to see.  Plus, this girl was meant to smile, not be sad!

 Sadly, this picture below is one of her big smiles.  I fear that we have some braces in our future with this mouth.  When she smiles big and says cheese she also pushes her bottom jaw to the right and it looks pretty crazy, but it makes us smile everytime she does it.

 

In other news, Isla came home from school the other day and told us she held a boy's hand.  It totally made her blush too, especially as she told us it was William.  She's such her mother's daughter - I love a good hand hold...always did.  About an hour after she told us that though we learned that they held hands because they were playing ring around the rosey - HAHA...that made me laugh for a good long while.  Other than that, she might be our most creative child.  Today she spent over an hour playing with the house and barn and figurine people just talking to and about them.  It was a constant stream of chatter coming out of the playroom.

So long story long, these girls certainly don't keep it quiet around here, but they keep it interesting.

Our Weekend Apart

A little bit of excitement in our world these days - a snow storm and a weekend vacation.  Yes, that probably only makes up four of the last 14 days or so since I last posted but what can I say it's not like that much happens during the week.  We do school and work, and gymnastics and coloring, and meals and baths, and usually end the day pretty tired all around.

BUT, back in November when I was checking on flights for my trip to Atlanta I stumbled on a very cheap fare to Florida and decided I just might enjoy a break from the Chicago winter.  I also thought perhaps my parents would like to see Margot since she's changing so much these days, and still flies free.  So off we went.  In the meantime, Sawyer and Isla were staying in Chicago with Mark and loved having his attention to themselves.

They started the weekend out with a play date after school on Friday.  We had five girls over to our house - four girls from Sawyer's class and one younger sister who is also in Isla's class and gymnastics session.  I was curious how Isla would do at the play date because in her recent report card the only things she "Needs Assistance from the Teacher" on are talking with other children during daily activities and using words to communicate her ideas and feelings.  Neither of these surprised us at all, and in fact kind of made us giggle.  Isla is social, but quiet and she never tells us anything about school.  She will tell us no one talked to her or played with her, and I'm pretty sure it's because she talks to no one!  We have started to hear a little more about specific kids, and I honestly think this play date went a long way because now she talks to her friend Maren more and tells us about it.  Sawyer of course has no trouble giving us a novel long story about her day, what she does with her friends, etc. so she was more than happy to host four of her good friends.  

A good amount of time was spent in the basement in the jump house.  Luckily I was not there working and Margot wasn't napping so they had free reign to be as loud as they wanted:

Sawyer was also given "Billy the Bear" on Friday to take home for the weekend from school.  She was responsible for taking care of him, doing fun things with him, taking pictures with him, and writing in the journal so her friends could see.  Here they are jumping with Billy.

Doing mosaics with Billy

Having a tea party with Billy

Getting ready to take Billy out to Potbelly's for dinner

They took Billy to the church fair where they played a lot of fun games, won lots of prizes, and got lots of candy.  They went to a Super bowl party at our friends' house and got to go sledding on their hill instead of watch the game.

And then come Monday, about a foot and a half of snow had fallen, and the schools were cancelled while they cleared the roads.  So Billy got an extra day at our home and the girls had a lot of fun shoveling and playing in the snow.

And while all this was happening, Margie and I were kicking it in Florida.  We left VERY early on Friday getting up far before the sun rose for our 6am flight.  Margot kept our cab driver entertained talking the whole way to the airport and then we lucked out because some Grandparent-Wannabe's came to sit with us on our full flight and couldn't have been nicer.  Margot was great on the flight and it was the perfect start to our trip.  After some lunch and rest though it was clear our girl wanted to hit the pool.

And she loved it!  She didn't want me to hold her and thought she could walk right into the pool so she dunked herself a few times, but after we found some floaties in the pool house she loved meandering around the pool and was not happy when I dragged her out.  Grandpa had plans so it was just us girls for dinner.  Margot showed everyone in that restaurant how polite she is, saying thank you for EVERYTHING, and earned herself a stop at Big Olaf's before bed.

Our weather wasn't crazy warm so we dressed warmly for our walks outside, and also made sure eyes were protected with some new shades she scammed from Grandma.  I have to say Grandma didn't use to pull out her wallet so fast to buy what we were begging for when I was a kid, but it only took Margot 2.2 seconds and these were on the counter.

We had another night out, and another ice cream cone earned.  No, not this one - Margot had a nice little cup but preferred the treat I got for myself and did not listen to Grandpa when he tried to make her give it back.  Our girl is stubborn.

But the real fun came on Sunday when we picked up Uncle Jon and went to the beach.  This girl is going to have so much fun come Spring Break because she loved the beach again.  She played in the sand for a good 45 min as the adults talked and didn't say a word.  But then she wanted to go play in the water and despite it being ridiculously cold didn't want to get out.  She sat there and alternated between telling me " Here comes another one (wave)" and "I like it".

Needless to say she was a tired girl and didn't make it 5 min into the football game.  The next day was pretty low key as we hung out till it was time to head home.  The flight was less enjoyable this time with a few tantrums, but we made it.  We got picked up by Mark and the girls, and Margot went into super-spaz mode she was so excited to see them.  She was giddy the whole way home and kept hugging Mark and telling him she loved him.  What can I say, she's our most affectionate girl.

And when we got home this girl was excited to finally put her boots on and play in some snow.  She's spent the last few times just watching from the window, but was totally into it this time...and looked seriously cute.

She did really well till Sawyer's shoveling efforts got out of hand - she threw a pile of snow behind her and it landed on Margot's head, with snow running down her back...she was less than pleased.

Here she is happily stomping..

And finally, a quick shot from play time today.  For some reason our kids love to crawl in to the cupboard and get the door shut on them.