A girl and her dog :-)

I know a little girl who loves her puppy...and a puppy who loves a little girl!

Need to clean the windows!

The kids had a snow day the other day...ice/sleet day is more like it. For a dog who loves eating ice...it was heaven!

Gage loved playing outside. He and the neighbor had ice ball fights, and he built an igloo out of sleet. It was small. Very small. We had about 1/4 inch of sleet.

Pepper also have him window kisses

This salsa debate

Gage...the boy who hates vegetables.

This salsa was unacceptable because it had yucky vegetables.

A quick spin through the food processor, however, "removed" the yucky vegetables, and Made it yummy. 

Same salsa. With chunks = yucky. Without chunks = yummy.  

Makes sense to me?

Big puppy!

She weighs as much as Savannah.  44lbs! She is beautiful...and most of the time, she is a sweet girl. But...

She is also a monster.A devil in disguise. She has a special affinity for my plants. Oh yes..they are so tasty...she can't resist. Please mama...don't be mad...these tender leaves are irresistible.

They are so good, I snap off big pieces of the plant to eat when no one's looking. Oh shucks...someone is looking.

Mm..maybe if I hide under the dining room table where it's hard for mom to reach me because I keep moving away from her...

Mm... Maybe I should eat my bed instead...it's like eating a cloud. I don't swallow it..I just pull the tiny clouds out and decorate the floor with them.

Pepper came out to the mail is with me. I made the mistake of dropping a piece of mail. She snatched it and ran off. Apparently she wants to go to the beach ;-)

Oh pepper...life is much more interesting with you around!

No more sickies!!!

Last week we saw the doc for the flu...this week it was for Savannah's 8 year old healthy check up!

She is just shy of 4 feet tall and weighs in at 44 lbs. her brother weighs in a 46.5, so he has passed her out! She started out as a tiny peanut in the 5th percentile for weight and is still on the same 5% curve (slightly under that)! Crazy to think that 96% of 8 year olds weigh more than she does!

She had a great checkup and is feeling all better! She loved wearing this gown and got excited when the doc said she could take it off "unless she wanted to wear it to school". Crazy girl thought that was her green light to take it home!

Dr Seuss

On honor of Dr. Seuss's birthday, the kids' school hosts a green eggs and ham breakfast.

As we stood in line, Savannah asked me with big puppy dog eyes if she could skip breakfast and go to her classroom. She misses her teacher and her friends (since she was sick last week) and didn't want to eat green eggs anyway.  She is just growing up too fast....

But, Gage stayed for breakfast. As we went through the lunchroom line, he took one look at the very very green eggs, he said "I'm going to be nice and not take any green eggs so other people can have them". Ha! What a gentlemanly way of passing on yucky looking eggs. So,  he doubled up on ham and toast with jelly, and all was good.

Take a look at the green eggs on my plate - I think he was smart to pass on them ;-)

Snow night!

School has been delayed 2 hours twice a week from the last 2 weeks for possible icy conditions that were never icy! Yesterday they cancelled school entirely for an impending "major snow event" that forecast 2-4 inches for us.  It rained all day...until it finally turned to snow at 6:45!!! 

We flew outside yelling "it's snowing it's snowing" - and it was. Big huge fluffy nickel sized snow flakes. Gage went crazy!!  Before bed last night he told me that it was the best day of his life :-)

Snowball fights...

And perfecting his snow ball making skills were the name of the game.

What a fun night!! We ended up with an inch or less, and it started melting that night. It's all gone now,  But..he had another 2 hour delay today, so he played outside today until I dragged him in to get dressed for school. 

His poor sister was in bed nursing a fever of 102 since last night  :-( Apparently there is a "fever big" going around (who has heard of such a thing??). But, that's what she seems to be down with. Just a fever, feeling tired, and a headache that comes and goes. She is suppose to have a sleepover party here tomorrow, but that may have to be cancelled. We'll cross our fingers that she wakes up at 100% tomorrow!

EZ bake? I think not

We decided to break out the ez bake oven today. I was instantly reminded how there is nothing easy about it! I like to think of it as the "big pain in the ass oven".

It takes 20 minutes to heat up. It takes 16 minutes to bake a cake. And 10 minutes to bake each batch of nickel sized cupcakes. We have used about 10 bowls, spoons, knives, etc to mix batter and frosting. I am not exaggerating.

All of that for a bite sized reward.This is the finished batch (yes, that's the whole batch) of chocolate truffles. 

And these are two bathes of red velvet cupcakes. Yep, they are nickel sized too. 

Luckily, savannah has a better attention span these days. When she first got this she would get bored before the oven even heated up!!

So, I dropped one batch and burned my hand trying to pick the pan up. And now I need to go run the dishwasher and hand-wash the pans because they are not dishwasher safe. Oh...ez bake oven...you are one of my least favorite "toys"!

Dress up!

Monster High clones.

Savannah got an eye mask at a sleepover party, and realized that she now has an outfit just like one of her monster high dolls. So, here she is posing all dressed up as Draculora!

Monday fun day

Monday was Presidents' Day, which means that the kids stayed home and we found something fun to do. Since there's nothing to do in Tuacaloosa,  we did the one thing we always do - go to the children's museum. 

Gage played bank teller...

We played a few mean rounds of hangman and tic tac toe.

We pretended it was a blizzard in the little closet that blows ping pong balls around them.

Savannah built an obstacle course

Mommy surrounded Gage by Velcro shapes

And then...Gage crawled into a kaleidoscope!

That's a lot of Gages!!

Crazy hair

No, it's not crazy hair day at school.  It's just Gage, who badly needs a haircut!

Luckily, we took care of this crazy hair the other day. His hair grows so fast it's unbelievable!

Birthday celebtation #1

We had an early birthday celebration last night because Adam left for a conference today and won't get home until late on Valentine's Day. So, here is celebration #1 (I think we have 4 celebrations - last night, tomorrow in her class at school, on her birthday, and at the end of this month for her sleepover party). How in the world is Savannah 8 years old already?!?!

 

 She opened a few presents last night, but the rest are being saved until her birthday :-)

party time!

Gage was super excited about an invitation to his friend Collin's birthday party, which was at an indoor playground. They spent almost 2 hours running around like maniacs, stopping only for cupcakes (well honestly, Gage just licked the frosting off and bolted back off to play) and to sing to the birthday boy.  Phew...was he tired when he got home!!!!

it's all fun and games until someone falls out of the truck :-(

The kids love to ride down the little hill in the backyard in one of Gage's dumptrucks.  I convinced them to ride down together last week. It was fun to start out with...

Still fun...

 This is where things went south.

Gage launched out of the truck. He hurt his hands. The truck smashed into him. Pepper jumped on top of the entire pile of them. Poor Gage :-(

Frozen frenzy

I promised Savannah I would buy a Frozen Elsa dress before her birthday party. They have big hola a for a play/singalong. She was so excited that the dress I picked up has a train. I mean really excited. Now...if only Pepper monster would stop trying to eat it :-/

Gotta go

Sometimes, when you pull the car into the garage...you've just gotta go. 

Grandparents' day #1

Today was 2nd grade grandparents' day. I had to stand in for the grands again, but savannah (aka snaggletooth) wished they were there with her. We enjoyed a special lunch, visited the book fair, and packed up the special gifts she made for her grandparents.  We bought Gage a book also and left it on his desk as a surprise with a note from us. 

Then, I signed her out early and we snuck out to get her nails done. She chose pink with yellow polka dots, so she looks like easter!

Old man Gage

For the 100th day of school, kindergarten had all kinds of special celebrations. I popped in to see his teacher and found this little gem on the wall outside their classroom. This is Gage, when he's 100 years old :-)

Puppy madness

This is just a typical morning. 

She tore some ribbons out of my rug

She also played with and barked at the door stopper for a while.

And..she made off with a roll of toilet paper. 

And that's just what I took photos of.  She got into plenty of other trouble in the 3 hours she had been awake!!! She keeps life interesting!