The Great Blizzard of 2014

Wow, we got a whole .05 inches of snow last night!  Enough to shut down the whole city!

It is a good thing we got outside to play in it before noon when it will all get dried up!

Keeping Busy

A few weeks back when Ethan was in town, we made our first trip to The Thinkery.  My mom bought us a charter family membership as a gift, so we headed right in and broke in our membership.

The water room was a bit hit, but I think they had just as much fun with the hand dryers when we were heading off into another room! I had to pull them out before they were totally soaked.

We explored all the rooms and stations and had a great time.

They could have stayed in this grocery station for hours! I dont know what was so fun about it, but they pretty much took up residency at the weighing stations the whole time we were there.

After about an hour and a half, we were all ready to leave and go eat.

We spent a lot of time at my parents house the week Ethan was in town.  We would go visit Maw every day, and then spend the rest of the time at home hanging with Ethan and my parents.

 The boys dressed up like Pop with this hat and shoes! They go to his closet and pick out some shoes and hats and walk around the house calling themselves Pop.

Spent a lot of time with Lolli.

 Owen would help my dad with his cooking, tasting things as he went and asking my dad a few too many questions.

 My grandmother came over to see us.  She is so amazing.  87 years young and she is still up and playing with the boys, playing hide and seek, singing songs with them, building towers, and without a doubt she almost always brings them a cookie or granola bar or some toy she saw.  They LOVE her and talk to her just like she is one of their friends, even though I am pretty sure half the time she cant even hear what she is saying because her hearing aids arent on but she always nods and laughs.

We also hit up the new aquarium in town.

Cash hit the 18 month mark and Eli turned 5 this month!  I took them in for well-checks while Owen stayed back home with Blaine.
Cash is 31 1/2 inches tall, 25% and 22 pounds, 10%.  He drastically went down on the charts with this weight, but that is pretty normal for exclusively breastfed babies, and he by no means looks like he is missing any meals!
Grapes are his favorite food, followed by anything that is sweet.  He has a candy-radar and somehow knows where candy or sweets are anywhere he is.  At the grocery store if we walk by the bakery he throws a fit if he sees the cakes and I wont let him have them, which I never do!  He is sweet as sweet can be and I am not going to lie, he gets everything he wants when he wants it.

He can keep up with Eli and Owen a little too well and I find him climbing on everything.

And he will just jump right in with them, even when they dont like it!  If they are on the couch, he jumps right up and nuzzles himself in between them.

He still is not talking a ton, but does a darn good job of letting you just know what he wants.  If you ask him if he wants something and he does, he makes the goofiest smiley face you ever saw!
I hear "Mom!" or "Mommy" probably 100 times a day.  He still does not like to let me leave his sight and is pretty attached.
He LOVES to dance!!!! Almost every night I put on music on my phone, he carries it around and just dances circles around the room until its time to go to bed.  He never sits still,  loves his duck and paci, goes crazy when he sees dogs, loves to take rides in his little push car, loves to bang on the ipad when Eli is trying to play on it, would play in the toilet if we let him (or course we dont, but have had too many incidents of toilet splashing), goes and finds his brothers loveys when they are crying to give to them, and has the sweetest demeanor ever!

Eli is 41 1/2 inches, 10% and weighs 35 pounds, 10%.  He is still on the smaller side but at least he has jumped up from the 5th to 10th percent, go Eli!!!

I am feeling very anti-birthday party this year and dont want to do anything big or stressful.  But since I have kids at the age where they actually have an opinion about what kind of party, who they want to be invited, what kind of cake they have, party favors, etc, I knew I had to do something for Eli.  I wanted to keep it at just family but friends were a must.
I decided he could have just as many friends as years he was, so 5 friends this year.  For days he kept telling me all these friends from school he wanted to invite and I know I am such a bad mom for doing this, but I just told him they couldnt come, and didnt invite them! I really in truly wanted such few people.  His party was pretty last minute to begin with, so we kept it to people we already knew.

He had very strict rules that no babies and no girls were allowed!
The morning of, I woke up bright and early, and met my friend Melanie for the 3M half marathon.

Around 3, my family started trickling in.

 Eli stood by the window anxiously waiting for his friends to arrive.

He wanted a pirate party and we were having a "treasure box" that was hidden in the backyard with everything they boys needed to transform into pirates.  Blaine made a treasure map puzzle that was hidden around the house and the boys had to find the pieces, put the puzzle together and it would tell them were the treasure was hidden.
When everyone got here, they were all running around the yard in circles, screaming, being crazy boys.

Eli was so, so, SO excited when he was telling Jonah about the treasure map!

And off they went to the backyard!

 Cash convinced himself that he was just one of the big boys!

It was the perfect weather and we were able to eat outside in the middle of January!

Cake time!!!

He had such a great time and so did I! I am so glad we kept it small and easy this year, I need to remember this for future parties.