January Wrap Up

Wrap up for January!

We went on a family date to Malawi's Pizza.  It has yummy food.  They have a steak salad that is pretty good...not as good as Panera's or Newk's though. 

The kids got to do a painting project.  We taped a snowflake pattern on canvas and then they painted it blue and white.  Oh my, they loved it!

Here's the finished product.

I believe this is my 20 week belly.  Definitely popped out from the 16 week pic.

We love the library.   Kira picks out horse books.  I don't know how she finds them, but she just walks down the aisle of books and pulls them out.  For a while, Isak loved Halloween books.  Now he just wants Paw Patrol books.

One day, Kira got to play with Isak's toys and ...

Isak played with Kira's.  It rarely happens...they are pretty possessive about their toys.

I was upstairs getting ready, when I noticed it was somewhat quiet.  Not usually a good sign.  haha.  So I rushed downstairs to find this scene.  Kira sitting in the chair singing to Isak while he went potty.  haha.

Stair beds for all of the animals.

Little Isak, came and curled up beside me and fell right to sleep.  :)

Nels's sister Kierstin had a 1 year old party for her daughter Annica.  The kids loved frosting the huge sugar cookies.

Isak was proud of his coloring and asked me to take his picture.

Cold days=mall days.  Not usually, but Red Robin is in the mall and so is Motherhood Maternity.  So while I shopped for some clothes Nels let the kids play on the toys.

They had fun!

So my checklist of things I needed to help the older twins with before the younger twins arrived, included potty training (check) and transitioning them to sharing a room and big beds.  We bought white twin beds, night stands and dressers to match.  Then we went all over the place to find the perfect comforters.  Yes, Kira's is a horsey comforter and it was worth the 3 Targets we went to in order to find it in stock.  And Isak's is a construction comforter.

Here's Kira pretending to sleep on her bed.

Isak on his bed.

And the whole room.  It definitely took a couple of nights for them and us to get used to a new routine and sharing the same room.  I love their beds though.  And I am glad we transitioned them in January instead of April!  It takes a while to settle into new things.

Helping me do the dishes.  One of their favorite things to do.

I crocheted these hats of my sister Kari's twins.  I thought they turned out cute.  She wanted to do a princess and the frog picture so I made the frog hat and she bought a little crown for the girl.

Another sleeping stair picture.

We all got our hair cut...

And we finally paid a babysitter so we could go out!  And it was wonderful.  We celebrated our 13 years of meeting each other and reenacted our first date at Outback Steakhouse.

And that's January. :)

Snow Day!

It snowed one Sunday.  So after church, Nels dressed up the kids in their winter attire and out in the snow they all played.

I took a few snow pictures. :)

They played for a long time in our little patch of a front yard.  Nels shoveled our driveway and the neighbors driveway so they didn't run out of snow.

Nels helped build a snowman too.  They were pretty happy about it.

I think the snow was a big hit at our house.

December Wrap Up

And now for the last post for December.

I bought these little window stickers for the kids to play with.  Boy, did they love spending time decorating the window over and over again.

One of their favorite toys from Christmas was from Aunt Kierstin.  It's Kinetic Sand.  They do really well at keeping it in the box and they play and play with it.  It's easy clean up and a good time.

We made lots of chocolate covered pretzels.  We gave them to Nels's home teaching families and then we ate the rest.  Everyone liked them...even Kira. :)

Something I've been working on...a quilt for Isak.  It took a lot longer than I thought, but it's finally done as of the end of March.  Now I am working on a quilt for Kira.  I am hoping to get it done before the babies come...30 days from today (today being April 11).  

A pregnancy photo.  I think I was around 15 weeks here.

After potty training the kids, this is what my bathroom always looks like.  A Car stool and a Minnie Mouse stool that both light up.

Hanging out (or torturing) Dad.

The kids went through a phase where they would dump all sorts of toys in a laundry basket, put a blanket on top and sit on it.  I guess that's fun...they sure thought it was and spent hours rearranging their toys in the baskets.

On one of Nels's days off, he went snowboarding at Brighton.  I challenged him to take a few pictures. :) And he did great.  I think I asked him to take a selfie, ask someone to take his pic, a photo of nature, a photo of a sign and then one of anything he wanted to.
So here's his selfie...all ready to hit the slopes.

Here's the photo of whatever he wanted.

Bonus selfie.

He asked someone to take his pic.

Nature photo.

And a picture of a sign and bonus points...he is in the pic too.  :)  He had fun snowboarding and the weather was awesome...snowy all day.

Just relaxing together!  I don't think this lasted long.  But I thought it was cute how they were close together.

Kira went through a very short dress up phase.  She dressed up at Nels's parents house.

Christmas pj's!

Sometimes I look at these two little miracles and I'm in awe that they are 3.

For New Years eve, we went sledding with my family and spent time at my sister Melissa's house afterwards.  We had coats, mittens and hats but we had yet to buy boots.  Apparently, if you don't buy them when they first go on the store's shelves, you're out of luck!  Nels went into a ton of stores during the week after work.  Then we tried again on our way to my sister's house.  We finally found boots at a Payless Shoe Source.  They were $30 a pair.  We got them a size too big...because that's all they had and hopefully, they will last another year.

So we finally got all decked out in our warm clothes and enjoyed our first sledding experience.

There they go!

It was cold...I think it was in the twenties.

Nels did awesome going up and down the hill with the kids.

My sister Kari and I were pregnant with boy/girl twins at the same time.  Here we are together.  I think I was 19 weeks and Kari was 33 weeks.  We were 14 weeks apart.  She had her babies January 29th.  And they are oh so cute.  I think I have pictures later of them.  Anyways, so we took this picture and I made her hold up two fingers...you can tell she is thrilled to be taking this picture.  :)

But it's not everyday two sisters are pregnant at the same time with twins. :)

And left to right...Kari, Mandi, Melissa and Me...we are missing our youngest sister Jenny.  We missed you Jenny girl.  It was a fun New Year's Eve.

One day...I sat down to rest for a bit and Kira sat on one side of me and fell asleep.

Shocking right....

and Isak fell asleep on the other side.  I didn't know what to do...oh wait...I fell asleep too.

And so everyone remembers that life isn't perfect even if I post lots of happy, smiling pictures...This is what happens lots of times.  Two crying toddlers.  Right now, when they get upset (usually because I said "no.") they run to the stairs and cry.  When they are "happy" again they get off the stairs and tell me, "I'm happy now."  Okay.  And we move on with our day.  Everyone needs a good cry.  

And that wraps up December and the year of 2015!!!