Winter Olympics

Do I like snow? No
Do I like the cold? No
Do I have a reputation for being a superior athlete? NO
Do I follow a ton of sports? No

Then why is it I am totally and completely addicted to watching the Olympics? I have DVR'd them I have ignored my children to watch the last stone being thrown in a tight curling match. I have watched commercials during live broadcasts of the luge and bobsled so I did not miss a single run.

I tell myself I should feel better about this because Jeremy is also sleep deprived from the Olympic coverage. The kids get a glazed over look on their face and cheer like crazed loonies when the US is in the running for a metal. We spend time looking up sports we know nothing about on the Internet so we can cheer and root on athletes with an understanding of why they wear skies longer then their height. We freak out when they almost forget to put on the goggles or don't have their coat zipped up all the way. That one right there, that causes yelling from Addie!! Lucas hates when the different countries wear similar colors and have to wear the Olympic bib and you can't really tell who is who.

Even as I try to type this I am watching large hill Nordic event and the US appears to have the energy to make a run for the gold. Don't even think about sleep folks. This could be a good ending! After this we have the final for freestyle skiing and I think I am going to have to set the DVR again because they moved the semifinals of women's curling to 3am. Who thought that was good programing? I know the US is not in it but the Canada women are impressive.

Just think 2 more years and I will be sleep deprived again watching the summer Olympics.
GOD BLESS AMERICA!! and my DVR

Gymnastics

Addie's gymnastics class has moved from Friday to Monday so it is harder for me to go watch every class but since Monday was President's Day Lucas and I were able to watch the entire time. Addie loves her gymnastics!!

After the party

Addie dug right in to her presents on Sunday. She tried to put on as much as possible. I was able to snap a couple of pictures when she had on a few items. What I was not able to get a picture of was all the other thing she got for her birthday that she "organized"

THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR ALL THE WONDERFUL GIFTS!

A party for Gwynn

We could not very well call Saturday party day without having a party for all the February kids. Gwynn's birthday is a week before Addie's so after Hunter's celebration we headed up to the farm. Sadly, this party did not go as planned. It started off wonderfully. Char was making chicken n noodles. Grandma Jan was making burritos for dinner and the kids were burning off some burnt up energy. All the kids were together and the only one missing was Josh.

Then it happened, crash, boom, scream, tears. The birthday girl crashed into Lucas and split open her gum where her front top teeth were. The decision was made to visit urgent care at Children's Mercy. A few hours later they returned with no real word. Gwynn would need to see a dentist. Here front teeth were loose and there was nothing they could do about the cut.

We did not even get to start the party so we cut to the chase, skipped the cake, since eating was not going to work and went straight for the presents. Taralyn was nice enough to offer her help since Gwynn still needed to keep the wash cloth on it since her mouth hurt.

Next year we are going to have a very calm party for her. Good thing her mom and dad took her to the indoor water park for her real party!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GWYNN!! WE HOPE YOU FEEL BETTER!!

Hunter's Party

After Addie's party we headed over to Aunt Carrie's house for Hunter's Big Day. His birthday was officially a week away but we decided to turn 2-13 into party day. Hunter seemed okay with celebrating exactly a week early. He took a nap before the celebrations and it took a couple minutes for him to get in the spirit but once he was ready he was ready to celebrate his farm party in style!


Hunter was not excited about us singing Happy Birthday to him and covered his face for most of it.

Everyone was ready to help Hunter blow out his candles, but he did it all by himself.

Addie's favorite part....PRESENTS. Can you believe Hunter did not want or need any help this year. Addie found this very discouraging but remained a good sport about it.

Hunter got some really cool things that will keep him busy for many hours to come!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HUNTER!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ADDISON!

February 13, 2010......where were you. If you were not at our place according to Addie you missed the party of the year. Addie is still talking about her party. She loved every second of it. She is still reliving every moment. When she sees her Cinderella dress she reminds us she wore it for her entire party. When we sit at the table for dinner she reminds us that she blew out her candles in her chair. I have disappointed her because I threw away the princess tablecloth. I am hoping she can eventually recover.

Addie wore her dress and tiara for the entire party! It was a bit of a fight to get her to take it off in order to get her over to Hunter's.

Here she is in her chair getting ready to blow out her candles.

Even Addie's best friend got to come. She was even given a party hat. I made her best friend spend the party in the living room up against the wall, which I know makes me a mean mom and all but eventually Addie did not notice.

Here is the castle cake. It was not my favorite or best work I will admit. I should have ditched the plastic stands and gone 100% homemade but you live and learn. Addie demanded the princess cut outs so there you go.

And the birthday girl gets to blow out 3 big candles.

One stubborn candle that Luke got to help out with.


And then the presents........

Thank you everyone for all the wonderful gifts. Addie has loved playing with them all!!

BIRTHDAY GIRL

Saturday was Addie's birthday as well as her party. Addie started the day off with a huge smile and pure joy. She knew exactly what Saturday was. I told her Happy Birthday when she woke up and came in our room and she said, I know. It's my day. We then had to do a short review of the fact we had several parties to go to but we were glad it was her day.

Addie was ready to celebrate even before breakfast!!

Valentine's Day

Lucas needed a Valentine's box for his class party right before Valentine's Day. He had a plan on exactly what he wanted to do. A hunting theme box. He wanted it to look like a duck blind. We only had to help him with attaching the grass to the front.

Doesn't it look great?

The GreenWing stickers are from Ducks Unlimited youth program.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY

Happy Birthday GG

GG birthday was last week. Lucas made the decision to get GG a cake she had never had before. An ice cream cake!! What a delicious choice for all of us. It was a wonderful night at home and a nice celebration.

We got GG a picture frame with her favorite great grand kids in it. We hope she loves it. Now daddy just has to find time to hang it on the wall for her.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GG!

Helper

I am so lucky to have such great helpers with the shoveling. Typically I don't mind shoveling at all. I sort of look at is as the best form of exercise I get on those days. This year it has been a bit much for Jeremy and I. Lucas declared last week that if it started snowing a little bit he was going to start shoveling right away so it was not so hard to push.

Today we were to get a lot of snow, like over 4 inches. It started last night was to continue on into Tuesday morning. As you can see from the below pictures the good educated weather folks were wrong! Lucas was not taking any chances though. He headed out right after I got home to scrape the driveway clean. Only problem was the cold. It was pretty much dropping a degree or two every hour. It was also very windy which never helps with shoveling.
I feel so lucky to have such a great helper. I am going to enjoy these years of helpfulness before they go by the way side and he moves onto video games and texting!

Lucas wanted me to mention you can pay him to do your driveway.

Superbowl

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Sunday night was the Superbowl. We had our annual party. Oh how our Superbowl parties have evolved. This year we had more fun watching Addie dance with Lucas in her purple dress druing halftime then the scheduled show. Actually they may be a compliment to us because the halftime show was "The Who" and it was sort of painful to listen to. Cool to watch the light show, painful to listen to them try and sing. The kids on the other hand were entertaining.
Next year we are going to go back to a big party, yeah! I mean after all the Chiefs could be in the Superbowl next year!!




Way to go Saints!!

Snow and snow and snow

I am really going to try and do this post without any bias but global warming....I am to believe global warming is a serious problem for me. I can't go a week without shovelling the driveway. As you can see the kids don't mind it at all. I could up load all 500 pictures of us playing in the snow day after day but I will spare you that and give you a broad overview.
As you can see I tried to turn shoveling my driveway into a game for the neighborhood kids but the snowball fights won instead.

Even Addie got in on the fun.

I hear we might have spring one of these months. I won't know what to do if I don't have to bundle up for ten minutes prior to going outside!!

Wrestling season is almost over. I have not done the best at posting from every tournament this year but his season is wrapping up to be at 50/50 split of wins and losses. It is a bit sad considering how happy he is when he wins but we are using each weekend as a learning tool to be the best sport you can be. I will say this year you can really see it starting to click more in his head and next year should be pretty exciting because this year was his up year, meaning he had to wrestle kids a year old then him which means they had another year of wrestling up on him.

a pen.

the lee's summit tournament ended with Lucas in 3rd place. He has placed 3rd in most tournaments this season for his bracket.

Grandma Trish Birthday Celebration

Grandma Trish and PAPA came to town the last weekend in January to celebrate Grandma Trish's birthday. They had a nice dinner in town Friday night and then made it to our place just in time to go eat dinner with the rest of us. Our life suffers from chaos in various forms and that particular Friday night we had a large amount of chaos. We headed over to dinner and then brought back some hyped up kids. PAPA was kind enough to help them burn off some energy. You can see Taralyn and Lucas wrestling in the background. PAPA opted to watch those two and not participate.

The double team

Oh no PAPA took the Hulk hand Hunter's in trouble......

Not for long, looks like Hunter moves so fast even the camera can't keep up with him.

Saturday night after dinner we came back to celebrate Grandma Trish's birthday, on her actual birthday. What a nice treat for all of us.

Look at how young she is, only 6 this year.....haha

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDMA TRISH

There is a certain percentage of people in our house that love Texas. Anything Texas. We pretty much cheer for K-State in college sports except when Texas is playing.

Lucas is especially turning into a big Texas fan and Marissa next door is only encouraging this as she is also a fan.
Apparently Lucas loves Texas so much he needed to take a couple of pictures of Texas v Houston to remember it forever.

Note to self.....keep camera up higher or be glad I don't have to go to the expense of film development.