The toys are among us

Christmas time.... let the plastic decor multiply! Wow! The kids made a haul this year. They are having a ball with all the new toys. We had family parties Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and are supposed to have one Saturday - mother nature may be calling that one off for us. The red suited man made an appearance here on Christmas Eve so Christmas morning was extra exciting for Vinny and Addie. Elise doesn't much know what is going on! It has been a super Christmas for all of us and has been great to make it to the family gatherings.
Vinny is excited about all his gifts and had a hard time going to bed tonight because he has not gotten to play his new Monopoly game yet! Addie is all over her new baby gear and barbies. At nearly 2 1/2 Addie already has more Barbies than I ever had! :) I wanted to take the shoes away so they don't end up in Elise's diapers, but Addie will have no part in that!
We have had several late nights in a row and not much for naps. All of us are getting tired out. We have a long recoup stretch coming up as Vinny has next week off from school and Dave heads back to work, so we will be doing some lounging and playing with the new 'stuff'. That is it from here tonight.... been some late nights for mom and dad too, time to snooze!

snow, snow, snow

Well, I do not claim to be a fan of winter or snow or any of the things that go along with it. Why I am still living in Wisconsin, I am not sure. I would say it is because it is simpler than trying to convince our entire family to move elsewhere. I am already working on my own kids suggesting that they can live someplace warm so mommy can have a way out of here:):) I guess the snow is pretty. If we could have snow and not freezing cold, I think I would be okay with it. I almost like it when it just snows and the temps are reasonable (like 20's or 30's). Dave claims to enjoy it (another big reason we are in WI!) and thinks I should just give snowmobiling another shot (I find this pastime to be cold!).
So, anyway, this rant about winter is brought on by the continual snow events taking place and the fact that we have a horrendous driveway (somewhat long -about 500 feet and VERY steep). I took Addie to the store this morning to pick up a few things and we could not get up the driveway - grrrr! At least I was able to back it into the snow halfway down so we didn't have to walk the whole thing. She was super funny when I got stuck and started sliding backwards. She started whimpering and saying 'me house, me house'. Then she thought it was pretty funny when I told her mommy got the van (which,btw, is AWD) stuck in the snow. At least the cleanup was not my deal - that is Dave's department:)
Definately looking like a white Christmas and Santa should have smooth sailing!

Time sure flies. Especially this time of year. It has been a busy month so far and will be super hectic next week for all the Christmas parties. I spent a week cut off from the cyber world! That was hard to take. Dave was out of town and had to take the laptop (currently our only computer) with him. I really seemed to accomplish a lot of things that week with no internet distractions and much less food prep - kids got easy kid food all week and I had easy stuff. I watched the nightly news since I did not have any of my news websites to periodically check up on the happenings around the world. Anyway, since then I guess I have been busy with the normal stuff and holiday things on top of them just didn't make room for my poor little blog.
I am currently trying to create a warm vacation atmosphere by loading up the woodstove and pretending it is the ocean instead of a sea of snow out my windows! Hope I didn't kill my fire with the big log I just added!
So to catch up on things...
Elise is super cute and really getting an attitude and moving around like crazy! On Sunday her first tooth finally poked through. It had been blistery for a good month. Last week she started pulling herself up to standing. Now she pulls herself and starts to scream (an earpiercing one!) because she doesn't know how to get back down. She started sleeping in her crib at night on Sunday night. She has been doing pretty well. The first night she slept all night (I hadn't gotten to sleep through the night in a couple months). Since then it hasn't been quite as long, but still an improvement over what we had before.
Adelaide has become a princess (in her mind anyway). She will grab Vinny and they dance and twirl about. This morning when I went to get her, she was twilrling her bear blankie and calling it her princess:) She still likes the pirates and dinosaur toys too, but she has been giving her babies and dollhouse a LOT of attention lately.
Vinny is so super excited about Christmas it is almost contagious! It is so fun to be 4!!! He will run around and say this is going to be the best Christmas EVER! he wants everything - yikes! He had his first school Christmas program last week. It was very cute. He was a shepherd. He was standing next to one of his buddies during the last portion of the program and the two of them had to be sushed by the older kids several times!
We have started to use our wood stove in the basement and it has proved to make a very warm cozy place to spend our days! Last weekend it was in the 80's down here! We are figuring out the best way to keep it hot overnight and working out the kinks. So, as much as I was not sure about the thing, I am starting to really like it. Now if I can just get it going today. hmmmm.

In preparation for Christmas we went to see Santa at the library a couple weeks ago and then went to get our tree. It was very very cold. I got pics of Santa, but was too frozen to take any shots of the trek to get the tree. Last weekend we got to have a lot of snowy fun. We built a snowman and a fort on Saturday (all of which melted on Sunday). We had gone sledding when we first got the snow and Vinny and I just came back in the house from going today. So, as much as I don't like snow and could really do without winter and cold, it is fun to go out and play in it now and then.