Finally...

I'm finally getting a moment to decompress and come back to share our last couple weeks. I feel like I've been running a marathon. The girls have been go go go for days and days. They haven't been sleeping well, getting up early and not wanting to fall asleep at night. It doesn't leave me much time for anything except crawling into bed and falling asleep the second my head hits the pillow.

We had a good Christmas. The girls got way more than they needed, but Adia's been playing with most of her toys nonstop. She spent quite a bit of time at DiDi's house, but hates that DiDi and I are back in school, but preschool doesn't start until Wednesday. I think she's been going stir crazy without preschool. At least I know for sure that she likes it. I've been trying to keep her busy with baking and gingerbread house building, but I guess it's not enough.










We spent Christmas Eve at our new house. DiDi came over and Daddy woke up early. He'd had a week off from work prior to Christmas Eve, but then had to work Christmas Eve and Christmas. Adia tore threw her presents, as did Mira, but Leia wasn't really interested. She kept trying to steal everyone's unwrapped gifts, but refused to rip her own paper. I thought that was strange considering the shreds everything else. By far, the twins' favorite gifts were their Dora backpacks and tent. They wanted to go to bed wearing their backpacks and there was much screaming when I took them off. It's pretty safe to say that the twins have a Dora the Explorer obsession.










Adia really loved all her My Little Pony stuff, but was shocked when she came out Christmas morning to discover the presents from Santa.






After eating breakfast and opening Santa presents, the girls, DiDi and I drove to Gramma and Papa's house. Adia couldn't wait to get there and open more presents and see all her favorite people. She was sad Daddy couldn't join us, but she had a good time anyway. Her favorite thing: her trunk of dress up clothes














DiDi's birthday was the day after Christmas. She requested an apple pie. I took her to dinner at her favorite Mexican restaurant and then we came back home for presents and apple pie. Mira and Leia thought the pie was pretty good, but as usual, Adia wouldn't even try it.





A few days later, it snowed! Adia tried to catch some snowflakes on her tongue, but quickly decided it was too cold. Sadly, it didn't stick at our house, but it was certainly neat to watch fall. Mira absolutely hated it, no surprise. She hates water of any kind on her head. I saw her have a panic attack outside last week because she got rained on. She went rigid, started hysterically screaming and I couldn't get her to move. Once I put her hood up and picked her up, she relaxed again. Leia, like Adia, is an Oregonian at heart. She loves rain and wind. She also loved the snow.





I've been trying to get a sweet, smiling picture of Adia for a few weeks now without any luck. She's either completely uncooperative or she makes the weirdest faces. Tonight wasn't much different, but I think I got at least 1 keeper. Amazingly, she also let me put her hair in a ponytail, which she kept in for a couple hours.




I call this her "teenage" look



Mira goes back and forth on whether she'll smile for the camera or not. Most of the time lately, she's been shaking her head and ducking. I think she's taking cues from her big sister.




Leia, my mischief maker, had her own ideas on what to do while I was taking her sisters' pictures. I found her in her favorite spot, as of late.




And yes, those are GLASS picture frames that have yet to be hung. I had planned to do that this weekend and it just didn't happen. I rearranged the living room instead.

Christmastime's a Comin'

We picked out our tree on the 11th. Adia's choice in trees has gotten smaller each year and that's perfectly ok with me. I'm sure she'll be trying to get huge ones soon enough. We came home and decorated it. I put the lights on and she did everything else. The majority of our ornaments are either plastic or cloth so I knew she couldn't break anything and the twins couldn't get hurt from them. Surprisingly enough, Adia's been the only real problem with the tree. Leia investigated it the first night and since then, she's left it alone.









Gramma and Papa had their Christmas Party last weekend too so we headed to the coast. Daddy was actually able to join us. Gramma had gluten free crackers and brownies and we made gluten free m&m cookies. Papa also made gluten free cinnamon raisin/craisin bread. The girls loved it, but Adia told him to leave the craisins out next time. Leia started picking them out and handing them to me even though she LOVES craisins. I guess she doesn't think they belong in bread either. The girls were great with all the people and Mira even started flirting with some of them. They were good about all the Christmas decorations. Mira quickly learned how to use one of the trains and Leia preferred the more complicated one. Once again, our biggest issue was Adia trying to play house with Gramma's Christmas villages.










The twins had fun pestering the cat. The cat actually seems to really like the attention, but accidentally scratched Adia and Leia. Adia had been trying to play with the cat with a cat toy and she got too close. She was hysterical, but Daddy calmed her and washed off the scratch. Leia got slightly scratched when the cat gently put her paw on Leia's shoulder and Leia pulled away. She was startled, but not really injured.








We had a few hilarious moments while we were there too. To keep the twins entertained since most of their toys had been put away for the party, Papa hooked bells on them. Mira thought it was the coolest thing ever and was dancing around the house, jingling. When Leia saw Mira, she wanted to do it too. He hooked the bells in the back of her pants like a tail and she started spinning in circles. It was hilarious. She so reminded us of a dog chasing its tail. It was just too funny. She would then dance around some more just to hear the jingling. When it was time to take the bells off, she started screaming.

The girls are still enjoying all their new room. They skate and play and slide around on the laminate floor. Adia pretends it's her skating rink.










On the rare occasion the twins aren't trapped in the playroom, they like taking my kitchen apart. They really like the kitchen cart. I only put stuff in it they can play with and not break so they like taking it all out and putting it back. They think the door on it is a lot of fun too.














Mostly the girls have just been playing and discovering toys they haven't seen in awhile.






Adia and I have made cookies quite a few times. We made chocolate chip last week and tonight we made gingerbread cookies. We're decorating tomorrow. She says she can't wait.






We're still working on the house too, but we had an unexpected problem pop up last week. I noticed some water in front of the dishwasher and when I wiped it up, it didn't just dry up. I pushed on the floor in front of the dishwasher and more water appeared. When I opened the dishwasher, there was a ton of standing water and I knew something was up. I left a towel on the floor that night because Gramma and Papa would be there in the morning and Papa said he'd look at it. Well, apparently our dishwasher had something really wrong with it and it had been leaking for quite a long time. It ruined 10 boards of laminate flooring! Papa had to carefully remove a big chunk that he had recently installed and figure out how to reinstall new flooring. It was horrible. They also bought us a new dishwasher for Christmas. So, while it's awesome to have a new dishwasher, it meant that he didn't get to finish the projects he had hoped to finish that day. Another bonus, the kitchen now smells even less like cat. Once we had the dishwasher outside, we discovered it smelled really really bad!

Wordless Wednesday