Happy Birthday!

Today our house closes and we move tomorrow! Can't wait to have our own place again. We haven't had a lot to do, but now things will get really busy! All the lighting has been purchased and we've gathered samples from three different tile places for our backsplash. I think the girls are pretty much done looking at tiles for awhile!

It has been really cold here so we have mostly been staying inside. We took the girls to Chuck E. Cheese on Wednesday.

Yesterday we stopped by Burger King in the afternoon for some exercise. This is Anna's idea of exercise.

Today is Dan's birthday! Yesterday we celebrated and went to Joe's Crab Shack for crab legs and sausage. The girls love crab legs. And their Daddy!

Happy Birthday to my best friend!

Merry Christmas

Yesterday after church Bill, Dawn, Wade and Nicole came over for dinner. We all fit in the condo, but it was tight!

Wade was a good sport to let Mia style is hair!

Everyone left pretty early as it was snowing and they wanted to be safe. We woke up today to a White Christmas. It was an itty bitty Christmas without the older kids or our house.

Mia loves her Woody doll and is sleeping with it right now.

We watched Elf and Home Alone today and played a little bit in the snow. Merry Christmas!

Cars and Snow

Today we didn't do too much. We hit the car wash with two of the cars. A little snow on the ground makes the cars really really dirty really really fast. It is IMPOSSIBLE to keep your car clean here in the winter!

Right now we have three cars. Two are not practical for the kids. The mini is a cute fun car but...Mia no longer has room for her legs in the back and it just doesn't feel that safe for the kids. We don't put them in it that often, just when my car is being worked on. But we are going to start looking for something that would work a little better as an extra car. We may even just give up the third car altogether, but it is really nice to have around when there are visitors or the big car is in the shop. We just keep a set of car seats in it so there is no moving those crazy things around!

But anyway, after the car wash it was the grocery store and then naps so they would be reasonably well behaved for a Christmas party. They both had fun even though there were no other kids their age. Mia spent a lot of the time pretending this marionette was Santa Claus.

Anna...well, Anna did what she does well. She ate.

And yes, this is the third time they have worn these Christmas dresses! They will wear them once more for Christmas Eve and then they'll be retired. But you will probably see Mia's on Anna in the next year or two!

It Was the Weekend Before Christmas

We have had our usual inch or so of snow and several days of sunshine pattern for the last few weeks. It makes it nice to be able to take the girls outside even in the winter.

It's nice to have Daddy home for two full weeks!

This morning we went to Breakfast with Santa at the Wildlife Experience.

The food was pretty tasty. The girls got chocolate milk which is a rare occasion around here! We grownup-types got mimosas! We sat with a very nice family and had a great conversation.

Mia made reindeer dust that she can sprinkle on the lawn Christmas Eve to help Santa find his way to our condo.

Mr. Snowman, I want to touch you so much but I'm such a chicken nice girl. You might explode or something if I do!

Santa was great! Mia is really enjoying the whole Santa Claus thing. And we are not beyond reminding her of the naughty list!!

He encouraged us to get a picture of Anna on his lap even though she was vehemently shaking her head no! But you know what, she calmed down for about 30 seconds as he whispered in her ear.

Santa told Mia she could not have a real puppy for Christmas. Thank you, Santa! You rock!

Still Waiting

We are still just waiting. Our closing date is next Friday and we are seriously wondering how they will be able to finish it on time. Today Dan went to meet with a home inspector we hired. They go to the house only to find that the wood floors were getting their last finish. Really? Right when we were scheduled to do the inspection? Hopefully it's just a coincidence. They were only able to inspect the basement.

We are in negotiations about this:

This is a giant chip out of the bathtub. The main bathtub. It won't be used much as a bathtub, but it will be the bathroom used by guests. They have since reglazed the tub, but that will not last as long as an original finish. And it's a new house, shouldn't we have a new tub? But to replace the tub would require the removal of quite a bit of tile and reset tile might not look right or match up. Ugh....decisions and no time!!

I leave you with possibly the ugliest light fixture on the planet hanging in our stairwell. What is with the double candle clusters??? I'm not sure I'll even be able to give this away!

Waiting

I have not been into blogging to much lately. We have not been doing anything worth blogging about! Just waiting and waiting and waiting. The house is coming along great.

We took some pictures today. Here is our great room.

We are still undecided about moving the fireplace. If nothing else, we will make the windows on each side extend further down. We chose light color kitchen cabinets and granite since there is no window in the kitchen. This is the same as our last house and I didn't like having to turn on the lights every time I used the kitchen.

My favorite room in the house in the sunroom. It has the best views and the most light.

We don't know yet if we will be putting our kitchen table in there or sunroom type furniture. We have to see how the designated place for the kitchen table feels. We chose the basic lighting for the chandeliers since we didn't like any of their options and figured we would replace them all once we are in. We also didn't choose a backsplash because none of them looked right with our granite. So we still have lots to do once the house is officially ours. Last Monday our date night was appliance shopping. We bought our refrigerator, washer and dryer! How fun is that! Not.

Since the weather has turned we have gone from our everyday park outings to our usual indoor play spaces. This week we went to the Wildlife Experience. Our yearly membership runs out in February and I'll probably try something new then.

This is Mia's favorite thing to do at the museum. You put these balls into the top and when it is full you get an avalanche!

Last night we enjoyed dinner with the Feldes. They have three older beautiful daughters who played with our little girls the whole evening.

Yesterday Dan and I took the girls to the playground at Cherry Creek Mall and out to lunch afterwards. They will go to a babysitter tonight as we have the office Christmas party to go to.

Only twelve more days til we move! Then they can eat bananas on Daddy's lap on Sunday morning in our own home!

Lazy Day

We had a snow day today. We were lazy lazy lazy. After church the girls got donuts for their good behavior.

Then we stopped by the house to see that they were installing our granite! Sorry, I took no pictures! We love everything so far. Dan and I are debating whether to move the fireplace as it blocks our view from the great room. It would be an expensive endeavor. We have a sunroom right next door with a nice view so we may just leave things be. Since it's not a custom home, they wouldn't let us move the fireplace during construction.

The rest of the day we hung out at home and played, wrote Christmas cards and watched T.V. It is so nice that the girls play together now. And often they play side by side but not together. In the morning they played Christmas Trick or Treat. Seriously.

Mia was asleep in two minutes tonight!!

A Miracle

I have not been able to blog. I'm not saying who, but some little munchkin poured a glass of water on my computer. Again, I'm not naming names, but she is really really short. Just sayin. So I'm typing this on my new Christmas present. We have just been hanging out, doing a few Christmas things, and waiting for the house to be finished. I'll try to take some pictures tomorrow of what is done so far.

I can't recall a toy that Mia has played with as much as these magnetic construction pieces called Magformers. It's amazing really. Beth bought them for her on recommendation of a friend. The box says for six years and up. No way! They have sparked the imagination of this three year old like you wouldn't believe. She makes them into cages, jewelry, roads, whatever! And she is not a construction type kid. She pretty much ignores her Legos. These pictures were taken at various times during the day.

The other day, we made really simple Christmas cookies.

This park is a really short walk from the condo.

She Finally Gets It

The girls had so much fun at the Christmas party yesterday. There were lots of kids and really nice people that we met. Here they are with the gifts the got at the gift grab.

They were too excited to go right to sleep when we got home so they played for awhile. Our little studious one has her own way of playing.

A lightbulb when on in our heads and in Mia's the other day. She has been talking and crying about leaving our old house and how she doesn't want to move to the new house. We kept telling her she will have a play structure in the back yard and friends in the neighborhood but that didn't seem to convince her at all. Then the other day we went to look at the house and there were a few kitchen cabinets in place. Her face lit up! She got this big smile and said, "Mommy, I like our new house now!" It then dawned on me. She thought we would be moving into this:

Sometimes it's just not easy to think like a three year old!