Random

The girls make sure they are with Mama when she's getting ready, because they love putting on make-up! Mama has the best make-up in darker colors than mommy. :)

We went to the "big" park for the first time this year. The girls have grown! Their feet touch the ground on the little kids' monkey bars this year. Doesn't make it much of a challenge!

As part of our "getting ready for kindergarten", we took the girls for an eye check-up. Avery picked out glasses for when she needs them. Of course, she picked purple! For now, both girls do not need glasses. But, Avery is supposed to come back in 6 months, because she's probably going to need them soon. I think she ended up with my crappy eyes. I had glasses from right around her age. Hopefully, Morgan will take after Daddy and not need glasses ever. Fingers crossed!

A visit from Grandma Ruth

Ruth came for a visit the week before Christmas. The girls love visiting with her and we had a ton of fun!

The girls wanted to do gingerbread houses and this year we had a set that you had to build the houses yourself first. Well, that was a big fail! Those little houses did not want to stay together. We almost got out the glue. I ended up just putting on a TON of icing and letting them sit overnight. We were able to decorate them the next morning. In the meantime, the girls decorated the pieces on a plate. :)

Grandma had some really fun gifts for the girls. Morgan got a bug vacuum, which was a huge hit with all the kids! You can suck up a bug and then stare at it through a little magnifying glass, then let it go outside. Can't wait until we have more bugs to check out this summer. Avery got a fairy house with four little fairies.

Finally got to decorate the gingerbread houses the next morning! The girls love dumping lots of sprinkles everywhere, so they made their gingerbread village into a "sprinkle village".

Then, we baked sugar cookies and decorated those. We manage to keep the sprinkle usage down so that the cookies were edible!

  

We went to swim lessons after that. Avery got a badge! This is a big accomplishment for her. She just really hates swimming and isn't that motivated to move up to the next level (mainly because it means she will have to swim more on her own and put her face underwater even more than she does now). But, she was really excited to get a badge. Hopefully, it will boost her confidence a little and keep her somewhat excited to go.

On Sunday, the girls had a dance recital. They've been taking a ballet and tap class through the park district the past few months. The girls seemed to like the dance school better than the park district classes. Avery is really interested in dancing and does really well at it.

My little ballerinas posing by the tree. They wanted me to get a picture of their hairdos. :)

Waiting for their part of the recital to start with their friend Eliza.

Their number was Have Yourself a Merry Christmas and was a tap dance with some ballet moves incorporated in.

My dad was in town helping Ross out with the boys while Erin was out of town, so he brought Grayson to watch the girls dance.

After the recital, we celebrated a job well done with lunch at Steak-n-Shake. Milkshakes for the ballerinas!

So, Morgan has a really hard time being quiet. Matt told her if she could be quiet for a whole 30 seconds, he would give her a quarter. This is him timing her and Morgan trying REALLY hard to not make a peep. She did it!

Ruth taught the girls a new game by drawing letters on their backs and trying to see if they could guess what the letter was. I was surprised how well they did. They just love when she comes to visit! :)

Sorry for the craziness, Ruth!

The second weekend in October, we got a visit from Grandma Ruth. She likes to visit around the girls' birthday every year. Unfortunately, during her visit we had a sick kiddo, a ton of storms, no electricity and a flooded basement. Talk about craziness!

On that Friday, Ruth and I grabbed lunch and went shopping in downtown Downers Grove. She needed a few gifts for people and we thought it would be fun to check out some of the different shops in the area. She found some unique and fun gifts and was able to check everything off her list! Matt took the express train to the main street station where we were shopping and caught a ride home with us. We spent the evening hanging out at home with the girls.

The next morning, Avery woke up sick. That poor kiddo was still fighting something off from the weekend before and now she came down with a stomach bug. She laid around most of the morning/afternoon. Matt and Ruth went with Morgan to swimming lessons and out to lunch at the Harvest while Avery rested. 

That afternoon around 2:30, while we were all napping/watching football, the electricity went out. Matt had ran out to the grocery store really fast and when he came back, the garage door wouldn't open. Ugh. ComEd originally said the electricity would be back on around 5:00, but then they kept revising the schedule. As the day went on and turned dark, we decided to go to Erin's house for dinner. We were hoping the electricity would be back on around 11:00pm since that was what ComEd said was going to happen. Of course, at 11:10pm, ComEd revised that again and said 3:00AM. Not good. It was pouring down rain and our back-up sump pump battery is really only good for 8 or 9 hours at the most. Considering the sump pump was running pretty much non-stop, we were lucky it lasted as long as it did. We ended up running back to Erin's house around midnight to get their back-up battery, but it had already started flooding in our basement. So, it didn't help much. So, we just waited. Every time it started raining hard again, I just cringed. Eventually around 3:30AM, the power came back on. I was laying on the floor in the girls' room and Matt was in the family room, neither of us were sleeping. I think Ruth was asleep - she loved the quiet! :) 

Nightime by candlelight in the girls' room

As soon as the power came on, I could hear the sump pumps kick on. Both of them were running non-stop. Matt and I went downstairs to assess the damage. We were lucky that the water was less than 2 inches deep. Any more than that, it would have hit the drywall and that would have been super bad. As it was, most of our stuff was in plastic bins and we only had really one big rug that got soaked. Surprisingly, the kids play mat area kind of floated above the water, so a lot of the toys sitting on top of that did not get wet. It could have been so much worse. It was a good excuse to get rid of stuff we don't want/need anymore. 

The water drained out of the basement pretty quickly once the sump pumps started working. We went back to bed and got a couple hours sleep before the big clean up started.

On Sunday, we spent some time cleaning up the basement and moving stuff to the garage to dry. Ruth got a lot of time to play with the girls while Matt and I were busy. So, it really worked out well to have her at our house during that time.

That afternoon, the girls had a birthday party for a friend of theirs from school, Olivia. It was at Olivia's house and the girls had fun playing with someone else's toys for a few hours. I was so exhausted from not getting any sleep. I loaded up on beer and cake. Ha!

I think we are finally back to normal in the basement. It took a while to dry out the carpet and get the humidity level back down. We started out at like 80% and it was bad. Our dehumidifier has been running non-stop, along with a bunch of fans. I bleach mopped the floors and play mats and Lysol'ed everything. I just hope we don't find mold anywhere in the future.

And the first item on our shopping list... a generator.

Weekend in Rochester

The girls and I spent the past weekend in Rochester visiting my parents. We walked with my mom and bunch of her friends in the Komen for the Cure walk on Friday night. Fortunately for us, the rain let up just as we were getting ready to start the walk.

We walk in celebration of Grandma!

Checking out the fountain

Spinning the wheel for prizes

Avery won a pom-pom

Playing in the kids area - bubbles!

Group photo before the race

Crossing the finish line

We also spent a lot of time outdoors - playing at the park, picking strawberries from Grandpa's garden, playing at my Dad's partner's wedding reception. This girls had an absolute blast! Avery already told me she wants to go back!

First time on a merry-go-round. Morgan said: "I no like it mommy!"

Checking out Lake Springfield (or as Morgan says "Papa's Lake")

Blowing bubbles at Grandpa's partner's wedding

Morgan got brave and actually pet a dog! Huge step towards getting over her fear!

Throwing rocks - nevermind that they're wearing white dresses

The girls got lollipops from a piñata and carried them around everywhere

And Morgan pet another dog - can't believe she did this!

Morgan's new friend Jessie let her sit up in the Kubota

Avery was excited to sit up there, too

Watching all the "gooses" at "Papa's Lake"

Slow-going when you have to wait for the doll to walk

Avery and Grandpa checking out the strawberries

Avery helped by pointing out strawberries for Grandpa to pick

The girls have been getting so big lately (seriously - stop growing up!) that we have to find other options for sleeping when traveling besides the pack-n-plays. This was our first attempt at using these kids' air mattresses (or as everyone was calling them - the rafts). The girls did pretty well the first night. But, the second night they were wound up and jumping and rolling around on these like they were trampolines. It took a while to get them settled. :)