A whole bunch of stuff (catch-up part 1)

I got way too far behind on blogging, so here is one big photo dump so that I can just be caught up now and post things as they happen again.  Here we go... (53 pictures in one post. Told ya it was a ton!)

Lucy loves to play with Claire.  I do have to watch her sometimes though because she easily ends up smothering her, squishing her, or just seeing what Claire's eyeballs feel like. :)

If I have to put Claire down to do something and she starts crying, I will often ask Lucy to go "make Claire happy" and she will more often than not go play with her.  She usually starts out by saying "Hi Claire!" and then shows her some toys.  Such a good big helper and Claire loves it too.

 Lucy loves to hang on things, and she recently started pushing her step stool out of the way and just hanging onto the sink and swinging her legs up in the air.

 Lucy was begging for a treat one day and I wouldn't give it to her.  Of course, this resulted in a meltdown, but part way through it she stopped and ran somewhere.  When she returned, she had these two pumpkins and said "trick-or-treat!"  haha.  I had a hard time saying no to that cuteness, so I gave her a treat, but then she quickly pointed out that she had two pumpkins and needed two treats.  Funny girl- she knows how to get what she wants!  She'll get somewhere in life... ;)

 This happens multiple times a day.  They always end up in one of their two cribs, depending on who wakes up for the morning/from nap first.  Claire loves hearing Lucy get in and immediately starts looking around for her and Lucy loves getting in with Claire under her blankie.

 She loves peanut butter on bananas.  She insisted on getting her own one day, so I let her go at it.  She made a big mess, which was fine because she had fun and it killed some time.  We also decided that this would now be just Lucy's peanut butter with the amount of double-dipping that took place. ha!

We went to a place called World of Bounce that is close to us.  We went with a playgroup and I hesitatingly went because Lucy has always hated bounce houses with a passion and I hated to waste the money to pay to take her, but I'm so glad I did because she LOVED it!  She asks to go back all the time.  I had to go on them with her about 20 times first, but once she started getting the confidence to do it herself, she had such a blast!

 Lucy loves painting her nails, and last week she let me use my gel nail stuff on her. It took a lot of effort and I had to keep my hand in there with hers, but she thought it was cool that her arm and necklace turned blue.

 It's way too cold to be outside this winter (way below negative) and so we brought all ofLucy's "bikes" and riding toys into our basement.  Since it's unfinished and mostly open, she has a blast riding around down there.  Too bad we don't have a million neighbor kids just randomly joining in the afternoon like we do in the summer.

 Lucy insisted that Claire try her bike.

In an effort to get some wiggles out, we've been going downstairs and having daily races.  

 Lucy realized that this is how I stood at the beginning of each race, and so she started putting one foot forward and one behind too.

 Claire is a belly sleeper and a thumb sucker.  As long as she can have the two together, she will be out cold.  She had a good little nap on Ryan a few days ago.  I love that she will snuggle right up on you.

 This was our house one disastrous day... and after being stuck inside so much this winter, this is actually a pretty typical day for us.  Luckily, it's easy to clean up.

 Just a random pic.  Doesn't Lucy look thrilled to be taking it? :)

 Again, I love snuggles with babies, especially when they are asleep.

 Ryan got a fondue pot and a couple big bags of melting chocolate at a white elephant gift exchange at work, so we put it to good use one night.  It was so good.

 We drove to Washington Court House to have dinner with one of Ryan's co-workers he used to work with.  Since we have to drive out in the country with nothing around, the wind was blowing like crazy during a snowstorm and it was hard to see very far.  It wasn't even snowing that hard at the moment, it was just all wind swirling it around like crazy!

 We got a beautiful sunrise a couple Sunday mornings ago.  I wish I wasn't up this early, but I was. 

 The same day as this beautiful sunrise we got a huge snowstorm and were sent home from church early.  Lucy was just excited that she still got a treat from nursery.  Food makes this girl happy!

 Lucy thinks that anyone with a white beard is Santa.  She held up this Little People Noah character and said "ho, ho, ho?"  No, no, no.  She also has a book about Noah's ark and every time we read it, she gets excited and says "ho, ho, ho!"

 This picture cracks me up.  Lucy was playing hide and seek and really wanted Claire to join.  Ryan helped them hide behind pillows. When I found them, Lucy kept refusing to look at me.  She's still in the "if I can't see you, then you can't see me" phase.  But it looks like Claire is purposely doing it too.  Haha.

 We got yet another big snowstorm (surprise, surprise) late at night, so at 11:30 p.m. Ryan and I decided to go out and see it.  I couldn't believe how light it was all night.  It felt like the middle of an afternoon!

 This was just at the beginning.  It got WAY deeper!

 See?  Total thumb sucker.  I tried to avoid it at first, but now I embrace the awesomeness of never having to go in during the night to put a pacifier back in her mouth.  I'm just hoping it doesn't stay long enough where I have to figure out how to wean her from this habit.

 We bought a dollhouse and accessories from a friend in our ward.  It somehow got put in my bedroom one morning and has since stayed there because Lucy often plays with it while I shower and get ready. She loves it, and especially loves it when mom or dad will play with it with her.

 Have I mentioned how cold and awful this winter has been?!  For a while it was in the negatives, but with windchill we were setting record lows, like -30 something.  I'm not going to lie, I can't handle the cold so I keep my thermostat at 74, which is totally worth a little larger bill to me.  This picture though shows ice inside the window right above our heat duct! What the heck?!  I can't handle the cold!

 Our fun neighbors invited us over to their house.  It was way too cold to be outside (even with all of their snow clothes on), so we brought the snow inside!  The kids had fun.  We also made some s'more treats in crescent rolls.  It was a fun play date.

 Again, a daily thing.  Big Bear often joins and sometimes has to match them with a pink shirt and bow.  Lucy thought Big Bear was pretty hilarious that day.

Lucy found birthday candles in our pantry and now her thing is to sing happy birthday to a new princess or prince all the time.

 Happy birthday Cinderella!

 This picture was to show how high the snow was, but I don't think it even does it justice.  Also, Lucy was freezing to death, poor thing.  We don't have proper snow clothes for her.

 We got Lucy some v-day window clings.  She loved playing with them on the window for a while.

But then for some reason she decided to tear them all up into little pieces and when I saw it, she said, "Mama.  Uh-oh. Broke!" Ha.  Good thing they were only .75 cents from Target.

And pardon the no pants.  She doesn't like to wear anything but pajamas these days and if I say no to that, she will take off her regular clothes at any given point.

Just me and Goose.

 Toys all lined up to give to Claire. :)

 Lucy's first time in the snow here at home.

 It was really heavy and icy, and not powdery and soft at all, so she kept getting stuck and hated it and cried anytime we mentioned the snow after this.

 We've lived in Columbus for 3 years now and have never bought a shovel or needed to shovel until now.  Luckily a neighbor had pity on us and let us borrow their snow shovel, which was good since Ryan only had this little garden shovel to start with and wasn't getting anywhere fast.

Whew! That was a lot of updating!  Another post or two and I will be all caught up.