Snow Day!

This morning we woke up to a fun sight..SNOW! And Emma Claire just so happened to be wearing her snowy polar bear jammies. She just knew it was going to snow.

Once EC and I were up and  dressed we ate a quick breakfast so we could go play! Sadly the hubs went into work early so he didn't get to enjoy the snow with us. 

We explored the patio first. EC was SO excited! So were the dogs. My three kiddos crack me up.

I love those baby blues. 

The pond in the backyard was semi frozen this morning, and the fountain started to freeze up as well!

When we went to play in the backyard EC insisted on swinging. 

I promise she was much more excited than her face lets on. 

She loved having our street to herself. You can see our car in the background, it was COVERED! Good thing we didn't have to go anywhere!

Sweet baby tracks. 

Ready to go inside. 

Of course I wore snow socks to play outside in the snow!

Aaaaand sadly playing inside is not nearly as fun as playing in the snow. Bless her heart. 

The only type of post I do now...

So as sat here and tried to come up with a cute little title for this random post, I realized that's almost ALL I blog about lately! But that's how our lives are now a days. Random. An assortment of friends, activities, food, and fun. So here you go, another mish mash of pictures and stories.

I've been working on painting our bead board this week. It's looking so much better. Can't wait for all kitchen projects to be done. AKA cabinets.

EC has been using a little bucket to carry snacks around in these days. Pretty funny. And the dogs love following her around waiting her to share the wealth.

So do all husbands just not see laundry hampers? Or is it just mine? ha! I snapped this the other day and it still makes me laugh. Our room was perfectly clean EXCEPT for a certain someone's clothes lying on the floor. 

Today EC threw her first all out toddler tantrum. In the DMV. In front of about 100 people. Complete with going limp in my arms and trying to fall on the floor.  And the husband took pictures. Of course.

Do you ever just NEED fresh baked chocolate chip cookies? And by that I mean cookie dough, obviously.

Aaaaand this is what we were doing right before bedtime tonight. Totally normal, yes?

Our Monday

Yesterday Emma Claire and I had a pretty busy day. We started the day by picking up our friend Bekah to go thrifting. We went to Goodwill, the Salvation Army, and after headed to Chick-fil-A for lunch.

I usually don't let EC out of the buggy at Goodwill but yesterday there was a toy that had just been brought in {aka hadn't been touched by a thousand kiddos already} So I let her play on it. She was too funny! It was only $3 but made really annoying sounds, so we passed!

EC just loves Bekah and was such a ham at lunch!

I now introduce to you Emma Claire's "Cheese" face. If I tell her to smile she will smile sweetly, but if I say "Cheeeese!" she does THIS. It is by far the funniest face she makes now a days. 

After running a few errands {Lowes, UPS, and grocery store} we bundled up and went out for a walk. These days EC loves walking/running around more than anything.

Love this sweet face. 

 My favorite find from yesterday. Hand stitched hearts. Since my mom is a quilter, things like this just call to me. It's perfect for Valentine's day! I plan on putting it in the guest room after Valentine's day. There's just something sweet about having a hand stitched piece of quilting hung up in my house.

The hubs has had a few long days of work this week. He went to work Sunday around noon then worked his usual shift, stayed at work, and then started work again around 3am on Monday. I knew he would be getting home around 8pm so I baked his favorite {chocolate chip muffins} for him before putting EC to bed.

Sure sign that it's bedtime...using Mommy's oven mitt for a pillow. 

After baking muffins it was off to bath time. I took this picture of EC examining her toes. Her expression just makes me laugh, so serious!

I made bread pizza for dinner. It was simple, quick, and DELICIOUS. A winner in my book. I added a special "secret" ingredient that I think made it 10x better. I will have to share soon! 

When the hubs got home we ate and watched the Bachelor together. ;-) Such a good husband. I've got to say it's way more entertaining watching with him. He does a pretty good Sean impression. ha!

After the Bachelor I got to work. Several months ago my Dad installed bead board in our kitchen. Now something you may or may not know about bead board is that you can't just put it up. It requires much more attention, namely caulking and painting. I had caulked and painted part of the bead board but I am tired of looking at a half finished kitchen back splash. So last night I stayed up way too late caulking the remainder of the kitchen so that tonight I can paint it. 

Next up? Painting the cabinets. I'm fairly certain that my kitchen will look much worse than this for the next few weeks.

Well that was our Monday, y'all! Pretty full day. Did I mention that the only nap Emma Claire took was a 45 minute car nap? I'm quite impressed with how well she did sans nap! Although I don't want to make a habit out of it!

When the Weather Outside is Frightful

I'm pretty sure all moms of small children dread the winter months. It's cold, dark, snowy, and can be gloomy. Shorter days, cold weather, and not enough play time outside can add up to some stir crazy kiddos and a CRAZY momma! ha! Thankfully Emma Claire and I have been pretty busy this winter. With bible study, MOPS, church activities, and play dates we keep ourselves pretty active. Just the way we like it. However, I don't want to get too busy that I forget to document exactly WHAT we are doing for fun! So this is a random hodgepodge of fun things we did this last week. 

We started our week by going to Spanish Circle Time at our local library. We had never been but I heard about it, and since I speak some Spanish I thought it would be a great thing for us to start going to.

The class was AWESOME! Emma Claire's friends John and William came along with us. The teacher {in the white top} was just awesome. There was no English spoken at all {except by us!} and the class was full of songs, stories, and activities. We even made our own play dough! Emma Claire had SO much fun. She insisted on being in the center of the group the majority of the time, of course. And in this picture she was shushing everyone, such a ham!

Something fun I have been wanting to do for a while is let EC paint with REAL paint and a paintbrush. I also needed some wall art in her room to fill an empty space AND happened to have a pretty big canvas laying around. So the other night before bath time I got out some pink paint and let her go to town. She LOVED it! I wish I had pictures of her during because she was so into it! Obviously she quickly became covered in pink paint as did I..so the camera did not make an appearance! 

TA DA! I just love it. I texted the hubs telling him we now had our very own authentic "Emma Claire" hanging in our house. She is too cute about it as well. She knows that SHE painted it and is constantly pointing to it and clapping!

And something that is ALWAYS fun is playing dress up with mommy. I mean really, who needs Barbie when you have mommy?!

We obviously love our library, as I'm sure you can tell! Another fun thing our library offers is toddler story time. Actually they have a story time for every age on every day of the week! Our day is Tuesday.

There is a limit to how many children are allowed into story time so when you enter you have to get a token to reserve your spot. Well Emma Claire thinks this is just the neatest thing and LOVES to hold on to her token like a big girl. 

And of course our buddies William and John came with ;-) These three just crack me up together. I love it. 

Handing in the tokens to go into story time. There isn't a picture of Emma Claire doing this because she didn't want to hand it over and ran away from the sweet story time lady. 

Emma Claire was the youngest in the class but did pretty well! She only tried to steal the storyteller's puppet twice. 

 And this picture is part of this post because it just makes me smile.

This one too. She's a mess. And please ignore my horrid mums. Momma needs to do some planting.

She is too cool.

Wednesday night we had friends from church over. I made nachos, taco soup, and "healthy" sopapilla cheesecake. Hint: It's not nearly as good when you make it with reduced fat crescents and fat free cream cheese. Womp womp. 

LOVE me some taco soup. 

We played Apples to Apples and had a BALL. Hindsight says I should have taken a picture of the actual people playing the game and not just the cards...next time ;-) 

So that's a bit of what we've been doing this winter. Thankfully we haven't had too much snow or ice. It was supposed to snow all day yesterday but we didn't get a single flake!