The things that Mom's do....

...to get dinner on the table. Here's a look at some of the tricks that this Mama uses to get dinner prepared. The kids are making 'Caribbean Stew' (this is what Aaron told me he was making - something we made at a cooking class at the Kids Table a few weeks ago). The recipe for this version of Caribbean Stew is simple- you take a pot (preferably the biggest one that you can get your Mom to give you), add all of the magnetic pieces from your Leap Frog fridge toys, stir with a spoon (also the biggest one that you can get your Mom to give to you)! Keep stirring until it smells like dinner is ready!

Our little dolly...

This little lady is as funny as she is darling!

Aaron & Maggie in the bath

Sharing a glimpse of Aaron & Maggie in the bathtub

Super Bowl Champs

Super bowl Sunday was an exciting day at our house! Aaron and Maggie are posing in their Packer gear while Aaron holds one of his new favorite toys- my frosting gun!







Packers score for the first time!

Packers score for the second time!

This was the third time that the Packers scored. Not sure why Aaron looks so angry?!
The kids had to go to bed and I didn't take pictures of Tim after this, but as you can imagine, Tim was (and is) over the moon!

Visit from Nanny & Papa

My parents came to Chicago to visit us a couple of weekends ago. We celebrated my dad's birthday and loved spending time with them!

Papa and Aaron built a tool box with 'Spinner'

Cheese!

Nanny & Papa with their grandkids

We made Papa a stepping stone for his birthday with the kids handprints on it.

Happy Birthday, Papa!

Splish splash they were takin' a bath!

Having a little bath time fun!


Clapping

Making waves!

What to do on a cold day inside....

Build a blanket fort while your sister is taking her morning nap. Be sure to take lots of toys inside and then let her join the fun when she wakes up!

Masks

Aaron is wearing his masks in a bit on an unconventional way!

Nudie cuties!

Toothy grin!

At 10 1/2 months, Maggie has 8 teeth that are getting bigger every day!

Maggie doing household chores at 10 months old?

I wish I could say that's what is going on here!

Choo choo

Aaron loves to play with his train!

Blizzard 2011

Here are some shots from our first adventure outside. We got really lucky that our next door neighbor was outside shoveling and cleared a path in front of our house. Tim said that he was going to head out and clear the steps, so I asked Aaron if he wanted to come outside to shovel and play in the snow with me. Tim doesn't even have snow boots, so I didn't want him to freeze! And besides, I like to shovel! So by the time we got outside, I just had to do the front stairs and the back of the house.

Aaron is excited about all of the snow. At this point, he didn't realize that it's so deep that he could hardly even move and just had to wait for me to shovel him a path!

Slowly but surely! The path is not coming as quickly as he would like! It is amazing that the snow was about the same height as Aaron!

It took a long time, but we finally got a path cleared from the the deck, down the stairs, across sidewalk, and up the stairs to the garage! Sort of discouraging to look back and see that we had gotten a couple more inches of snow by the time that I got that all done!

The view of our lower level stairs and door way. Won't be opening that any time soon!

Here is the sidewalk up the side of our house.
This process took about an hour and a half and then Aaron and I headed inside. The snow wasn't done falling yet, so we knew we'd be back out again in the afternoon!

Now this is not something that you get to see every day. There was a person cross country skiing down our street! It looked like a pretty efficient way to get around!!

Here are some photos after our second shoveling stint of the afternoon. We had gotten a few more inches and the continual local coverage of "Blizzard 2011" let us know that the snow should be done, so we headed back outside in the late afternoon.





The little girls that live next door made a cool little snow fort in the front!

Yep- there's a window hiding behind that snow!

This is the view after the big machine with the scoop on the front made a pass down the street.

Hmmm... still lots of work to be done before any of these cars are going anywhere!


I wish that I would have taken some pictures of the alley and all of the snow that was piled up against the garage. That is the part that has my back and shoulders aching a bit today! Not sure that I would say that I 'enjoyed' that shoveling so much!

This was really crazy storm and we actually got to experience something that I'd never even heard of before. On Tuesday night, we had what they called Thunder snow. This is like a snow storm that is accompanied by thunder and lightening! It was the strangest thing- when we went to bed that night, there was a ton of thunder and we saw huge bolts of lightening through the sky light above our bed. The thunder and lightening along with the huge wind gusts were shaking the bed as we were laying there trying to get to sleep! It felt like the entire third story of our house was going to blow off! It was really crazy and unlike anything we had ever experienced before!

It's going to be hard to find a place for all of this snow to sit while it waits to melt! But I'm thinking that we'll have the opportunity to get outside to play and go sledding this weekend!