Snow (Ice!) Day

Top Ten Reasons to Love a Snow Day
10. Fireplace S'Mores!
9. Experiencing Natalie's first S'Mores.
8. Seeing Mollie become completely enthralled by watching falling snow.
7. The perfect excuse for Brad and I to spend the girls' naptime watching a movie curled up on the couch together.
6. Trying out a new recipe using ingredients I just happen to have in the pantry - and loving it! (see my previous post).
5. No work!
4. Brad's experiementing in the kitchen too - chocolate chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, and . . .
3. Homemade General Tso's Chicken for dinner!
2. Cool photo opportunities outside.
1. Staying warm with the ones we love! :)

And here are some photos from the past two days. :)

Mollie LOVES Baby Mum-Mums!

Lesson of the day: NEVER leave a 6-month old alone for 5 seconds with a valve-less sippy cup - and if you do, do NOT be surprised when she makes a huge mess.

Yummy Birthday Lunch

So here's my yummy snowed-in birthday lunch. Seriously THE easiest pasta sauce ever - it only has THREE ingredients! And it's SO good. I didn't even have the right tomatoes, but I wanted to give it a shot anyway. SO. GOOD. and SO. EASY. Yummmm!!!!

Here's the recipe: Tomato Sauce with Onion & Butter

Ice, Ice Birthday

Let me start out by saying this ice LOOKS cool, but it's scary and just generally awful. It doesn't take long for this much ice to weigh down powerlines and trees (that fall and take down powerlines). We started out yesterday afternoon getting freezing rain, which turned to sleet, and I learned that although it sounds bad, it's better than freezing rain because the sleet tends to bounce off the power lines and trees instead of sticking and weighing them down. Now we're getting huge fluffy snowflakes - correction, we were getting those - now it's tiny snowflakes falling quickly. I managed to get out for a few minutes this morning in the 27 degree weather to snap some cool pictures.

Please pray for our family in Lawton! Most of the city is without power, trees in general are being totally ruined, and power lines are down all over. My mom does still have power, but barely, and her home is quickly becoming a safe haven for practically everyone they know!

We still have power at our house - PRAISE JESUS - and we're praying we can stay that way. We do have gas logs in our fireplace, so we should continue to have heat, but it wouldn't be easy to have no power and two little ones.

What a birthday this is for me! Interestingly, there was a similiar ice storm in Lawton the day I was born - a big 30 years ago today!! So we're celebrating indoors today, not necessarily by choice, but that's ok. I got to sleep in this morning, and Brad made us chocolate chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast! Yummmm!!!

Sibling Stories

I have a few to share today - and they are all from yesterday!

ONE:
While Mollie was eating yesterday, Natalie and I were looking through her Princess & the Frog sticker book, and she keeps referring to the princess as "Princessinafrog," as if that's her actual name. Here's our convo:

Me: Natalie, her name is actually Princess Tiana, remember?
Nat: Ohhhhh yah. Princess Tiana.
Me: They all have names, you know, like Princess Aurora or Princess Jasmine?
Nat: Yah. Princess Tiana.
Me: Are you Princess Natalie?
Nat: No, I Na-alie. (smiles)
Me: Ohhhh ok.
Nat: Hmm. Princess Na-alie. (smiles) Lil Mermean (Mermaid) Na-alie.
Me: (giggling) Sure! What's Mollie?
Nat: (NO hesitation) Mah-lis-if-bet (Maleficient)
Me: Awww! The bad lady on Sleeping Beauty?
Nat: Yah. She Mah-lis-if-bet.

I told Brad this, and he said that he didn't think Natalie was being insulting, I mean, after all, she has named her favorite baby doll Maleficient/Baaalady. She's just really intrigued by that character! Hopefully this is nothing to be concerned about! HA!


TWO:
Mollie was seeming a bit touchy, and I thought she might be ready for a bottle. I sat her on my bed so I could do something real quick before we went into the kitchen. She started to whimper a tiny bit.

Me: Mollie, you're ok! I'm just getting something out of the closet riiight here, I'll be right back - and you have Natalie! (said more for Nat's benefit than Mollie's)
Nat: Yeah, Mollie. You ok. Mommy go bye-bye. She RIGHT back.
Me: (from the closet) Mollie - I'm right here!
Nat: OK Mollie. You OK. You wan me? (pause) Yeah? (pause) OK. (gives her a hug)
Me: OK let's get your bottle, Mollie!
Nat: See Mollie, Mommy right back! See? OK!


THREE:
While she was eating lunch, Natalie saw a Tummy Time mat that I used to lay Mollie on . . . and I took a few pictures of them laying on it together back in the day. The girl's memory is insane. She forgets NOTHING.

Nat: Dat Mollie's?
Me: You're right, it's Mollie's.
Nat: Mollie usa lay on tummy. I lay tummy too. You say (changes her voice and tilts her head) "I cake-a peekture?" (changes voice back) I "Yeah. OK." En you cake-a peekture me Mollie.

The Girls

Just a few photos for your Thursday. :)

Happy Half to Mollie!

I'm a couple days late posting this, but Miss Mollie is officially halfway to her first birthday! Can you believe it? I know I can't!

Mollie has been filling her days lately sitting up playing with toys, rolling over, watching Natalie, keenly observing Casey, and LOVING baby food. I can't really tell you her favorite food because she hasn't met one she doesn't like. I don't know how our family was blessed with TWO good eaters. That's about the only similarity between them, though, aside from any family resemblance you might see. :) Otherwise, they couldn't be much more different.

Here are just a couple of pictures. If the sun will ever come out, I'm planning on doing a little 6-month photo shoot with Miss Mollie. :)

So here's another observation I made today about Miss Nat. She loves Sleeping Beauty - ok, that's not the observation, but that's a little background - anyway, she loves it. She would watch it like 5 times a day if we let her (we don't). However, it's starting to appear to me that Sleeping Beauty is on a constant loop in the back of Natalie's mind.

Background: Natalie did not watch Sleeping Beauty AT ALL yesterday. In fact, it's been a few days since she's watched it.

Exhibit A:
Last night, Natalie was taking a bath. She was making me soup and pies and ice cream cones (all out of clear water), and playing with her bath toys. She would hand me a spoon with water on it, and make little fake eating noises and motion to the spoon - she wanted me to pretend to drink my "pie" from the spoon (obviously she's not totally clear on the consistency of pie, but that's beside the point). So my point is, she's completely involved in her pretend play. She then rolls over on her tummy and is kind of swimming around in the tub. She sits up and says, "She skaaaary." I ask her who is scary. She replies, "Baaalady (bad lady) on Seepa Booly. She skary." Just like that, like we'd been talking about Sleeping Beauty the whole time.

Exhibit B:
About an hour later, Natalie is "reading" ME her bedtime books (this is her new thing). We're reading a book about Clifford, and she's having fun reading, then turning the page and answering the "who are we?" question from the previous page. We're on our second time through the Clifford book, and in the middle of the book, she turns the page to answer the question, and instead, looks at the page, then looks at me and says, "She runaway. Seepa Booly runaway." I say, "Oh, yeah? She does, doesn't she?" She agrees. Then we're right back to Clifford - it's a seamless transition.

Not sure what this says about Natalie. Is it good that she's able to multi-task? Bad that she's so thoroughly obsessed with a movie? Just a toddler thing in general? I wish I knew! :)

Since my access to big chunks of free time is basically nil at this point, I am going to attempt to quickly post cute things closer to the time that they happen, instead of storing them up until I have a big long post with lots of pictures. :)

Here's my first attempt:

Last week, Natalie decided that she really wanted to help feed Mollie, so whenever she saw a full bottle ready to go, she snatched it up, saying, "I hep Mommmmmy!" and carried it over to wherever I was going to feed Mollie. I humored her by letting her hold the bottle after I realized that she tired of it quickly. It's easier to let her get bored in 60 seconds and let her feel helpful than fight for 2 minutes about it. So anyway, while she was holding the bottle in Mollie's mouth, she looked at her lovingly, stroked her fuzzy little head, leaned down a bit so she was right on her level, and said, "You'a liiiike it, Mollie? (small pause) Yeah, you do. OK good." I thought I was going to die laughing. It's her new big thing to ask Mollie a question, then pause as if Mollie is answering (generally she "answers" yes), then respond to Mollie's answer. TOO cute!

Happy Birthday Brad!

Happy birthday to the best hubby ever! :)

Yesterday, Natalie and I went grocery shopping, and I told her that today was Daddy's birthday and asked her what we should get for him. She immediately said, "kin-els! En bowww kin-els!" I was like - you're right! We should get Daddy a cake so he can blow out some candles! :) After some shopping, we settled on some festive cupcakes. We also picked up some of his favorite candy and it was Natalie's idea to get him some "Snowman," aka Egg Nog - his favorite. Amazing what good ideas a two-year-old can come up with sometimes. ;) Natalie also helped me to pick out a birthday card. She painstakingly chose the perfect card for him . . .

Nat: Doggy? (looks at it) No. MONKEY! Yes! (looks at it) No! Neena puffaflyer!

Me: Pacifier?

Nat: No! Puffaflyer! (points at a pink card with a butterfly on the front)

Me: Oh! A butterfly. Well, that one won't work, it says "Congratulations on your new baby girl."

Nat: Uhhh . . . Monkey.

Me: (giving her back the monkey card) This one?

Nat: Ummm yeah. No! This one! (pointing to another card with a jungle scene on it).

Me: OK are you sure?

Nat: Yeah! I liiiiike dis-a one. (satisfied)

So, once again, Happy Birthday to the best hubby a girl could ask for! And . . .

..v///.Ff................DDDDDDD

Happy Birthday! Love, Natalie.

Happy New Year!!

Brad and I worked really hard on this slideshow yesterday and today - hope you enjoy it! It's a bit long, but hey, it's been a BIG year around here! :)

2009 Year In Photos from Sarah Billheimer on Vimeo.