Snow Play

Since we have had tons and tons and TONS of snow this year, we have had to find something to do with it to keep us from going crazy (although it's not really working for mommy...).  We had a lot of fun first experiences with the girls this year since our past two Ohio winters haven't had hardly any snow.  We took the girls sledding for the first time and I was shocked at how un-scared they were! 

 Kaylee kept begging to go down by herself (don't worry, we were at the bottom to catch her) and once McKenna saw Kaylee do it she wanted to as well!  Sorry McKenna, you're not that old yet!  

But that doesn't stop her from trying (and mostly succeeding) to do every single thing that her sister does.  It was a blast! I forgot how much fun sledding is, I haven't been for years.  

We also had a HUGE pile of snow in our parking lot, which gave the girls plenty of play time climbing up and it was so big we even were able to sled down it for a few days before it turned to ice. 

 One of our neighbors added a cute face to it and we lovingly called it our snow monster mountain. 

 I guess if you can't have the beautiful mountains of Utah at least we can create the next best thing! 

One morning when it snowed, the top layer froze but the snow underneath stayed fresh and powdery.  It made it a lot of fun to walk over and crunch through the ice to the snow underneath.  We could "cut" out huge chunks of ice and the girls loved carrying them around and then we would break them. 

This was also the day we had a lot of friends out to play with so that always makes it much more fun!

We also tried snow painting. I thought it was a fabulous idea but it was pretty cold and the girls had a hard time ime squeezing the bottles with their snow mittens on.

Kenna lasted 10 seconds before she went back inside to watch us from the window and Kaylee only lasted about 10 mins, most of which consisted of her asking me to draw in the snow for her.

 Despite our big failure, I still thought it was fun and will definitely try it again another time. 

Even with all of these fun activities, I am DEFINITELY done with the snow and don't know how much more cold I can handle.  Isn't it time for spring yet??

New Years Eve

This year I decided that it was sad that my kids never did anything for New Years Eve, since we are lame and make them go to bed at the same time as any other night.  And since they are sleeping and we usually don't do much either, we decided to host a kid's NYE party with 5 of the families we love to hang out with around here!  

We kept it pretty simple and just got pizza for everyone and asked all our families to bring a side dish.  After eating and letting the kids play for a while, we let the kids decorate their own party hats.  The kids liked this a ton and I was grateful to Kyla for bringing all the stuff to do it.

We then had a fake countdown and had a balloon for each of the kids to pop that had confetti and candy inside and passed out noisemakers.  Our neighbors brought over some sparklers and it was the perfect way to end our little party!  For being so last minute and short, it really was fun to do!  I might be tempted to do it again in the future...

Richard was in charge of the camera, which means the only picture we got the entire night was of the cake....

ha ha ha.  But luckily Becca had her camera and snapped a few so we have proof of the kiddos who were there.  I guess I'll have to do it again so this time I can take some good pictures!