bye Tony

Our children's zoo is shipping their seal, Tony, off to Kentucky. The zoo was open for the day to say farewell. It was freezing, but hey it was a chance to get out of the house and the zoo is usually closed all winter.

Molly fell asleep in the car on the way to the zoo. She was pretty crabby the whole time we were there. It takes her a while to wake up.

Gabe was happy to be out with all the other people.

All About Miss Molly

This book is awfully sweet.

When I sing with Molly I point to the letters. She tries to do the same. She does pretty well until the middle.... I've been working with her on letters. She knows most of them now except for u,v, and q she consistently confuses those ones. I think it's funny that if you ask her what letter is this "w" she'll say double-x instead of double-u.

*Molly LOVES puzzles. She's really good at them too. We have a few 24 piece ones that she can do by herself. I'm sad there haven't been any in the Target $1 bins in a while.

*We play hide and seek A LOT. A couple days ago Molly counted to 11 all by herself. Usually her numbers are all over the place. Last night she was back to her usual 1.2.3.4.8.9.10.

*Molly's favorite color used to be yellow. Around Thanksgiving it changed to Pink. Here favorite book is Pinkalicous. Like the mom in the book all I hear is I want pink!pink! pink! all day long.

*Molly loves to sing. On Tuesday mornings we go to Music Makers. We've learned a lot of new songs that I get to hear all through out the day.

My 2nd Hockey Game

Eric scored us tickets to a hockey game. Eric's cousin, Kyle, is on the UNO (University of Nebraska-Omaha) hockey team. The players on the team get so many tickets a game for family and friends. The sad part of the night was that Drew and I had tickets at will call. So did Chantel and Phil, but Eric, Kyle's cousin, didn't... I'm not sure how that happened. UNO played Ohio State. It was similar to the game we went to last year. Nebraska was behind or tied for most of the game. Nebraska pulls ahead for a little bit and then it ends in a tie. In overtime it was still a tie. However in the shoot off we pulled ahead and won. Exciting and long. I felt bad leaving the kids for so long. Secretly I'm a little happy the UNL doesn't have a hockey team. I know that if we did Drew would have season tickets and would be gone even more than he already is.

Kyle started playing Hockey when he was 3. Drew asked me if I'm ready to sign Gabe up next year. smiling and shaking my head.

Chicago Trip Pictures Part 1

Two of my favorite people.

Here are a few of the people we spent time with on our trip...

Great Grandpa and Grandma Bragg.

Grandma and Grandpa Mickley.

Julie and Great Grandpa Mickley.

Dranny and all the Wilkerson cousins.

(This was my favorite picture of all the kids. Gabe was having a meltdown. I wish I could say that meltdowns are uncommon, but that would be a HUGE lie.)

Uncle Ben celebrating his 15th birthday.

*Side story*

Yesterday the phone rang. The caller id said University of N. I assumed it was Drew and let Gabe answer the phone. Well you know what they say about assuming things. It wasn't Drew and I was a little embarrassed.

hello bunk bed

Tonight is the 3rd night Molly and Gabe have slept on their bunk bed! We spent all morning at the children's museum yesterday so Gabe was already asleep when I laid him down for a nap. Today was a completely different story during nap time. Although, because he didn't actually take a nap he didn't get out of bed at all tonight. I'm not thrilled that Gabe can get out of bed now, but I'm ready to say goodbye to the crib. We did (by we I mean Drew) put two side rails up on the bottom to make it more "crib like". I feel a little silly having the bottom completely caged in and not the top, but Gabe's still exploring his new found freedom and Molly isn't. So far night time has been uneventful. Hopefully naps will go back to usual as well.

Molly calls the top bunk her new princess bed. She glows every time she climbs up there.

I think Gabe likes the freedom, but he's never protested his crib. He got out of bed a couple times last night, but he wasn't sneaky about it in anyway. He would either come out to me or he would open and shut the dresser drawers until I came for him. I think he was just bored because Molly had fallen asleep first. Today during nap was a little different. Molly kept encouraging him and he was getting out of bed to hand her things. I probably shouldn't have them napping in the same room. At least until Gabe gets used to his new bed. It's just so nice having them nap in the same section of the apartment....

my little chefs

Molly and Gabe love to cook. Molly likes to feed her babies. (You can see them all over the table) Gabe prefers to feed me I'm constantly hearing "momma try. mmmm" or "it's hot. blow". Today they were running around with little storage boxes on their heads. Some days I feel really lucky that these two are mine. I wasn't feeling very lucky when Gabe threw up on me in wal-mart on Wednesday, but today I'm feeling lucky.

Happy New Year

We're back from our Chicago/Minneapolis trip. It was fun getting to see family and friends, but I think this may have been our last winter trip. The drive home from Minneapolis should have taken us 6 to 7 hours instead it took us close to 11. Our average speed was 43. In hind sight we should have stayed one more day, but I was anxious to get home and wanted more than one day to unwind before "normal" life started again. I'm still in the process of putting away all of our Christmas decorations along with all of our trip stuff. Right now our Christmas decor is boxed up on the floor next to our TV. Hopefully some of our snow will melt this week so we can get into our outside storage closet. (Right now there's a snow drift blocking our back door.) The weather man said there's 18 inches of snow on the ground and should be in the high 30's by the end of the week, so I'm hopeful. Maybe I'll even make it outside to clean the van out. I hate it when everything is cluttered. So that's what we're up to. Cleaning. Unpacking. Organizing. Pictures to follow.