We had a Target that was closing.  I wasn't planning on buying 8 pairs of shoes, but I paid between $3.50 and $5 (Clark's were more expensive) per pair.  You can't find shoes any cheaper than that!  Now I just need Madison to leave them alone until they fit!

This was the time Tyler went to church meetings and my kids wouldn't go to bed.  After two hours I gave up on them staying in their room, locked the stair gate, told the kids they could go play, sent Tyler a text that he could deal with them when he got home, and went and ate some cheese and crackers.  Tyler had them in bed in 5 minutes (it was 10 pm) with tears from both of them.

10 lbs of flour.  It only took me 4 hours to clean, which included mopping my floor on my hands and knees.

Madison took this picture of Clark with his Valentine from grammy.

An afternoon trip to the Museum of Art in D.C.

The polar bear was out at the zoo.  Clark is very fascinated with bears these days.

Naturally the kids had to pull all my clothes out right after I organized it.

Madison finally lost her first tooth.  She was so excited.  Tyler kept saying we should just wait for it to fall out.  I yanked it out fast.

Painting on a cold day.

Winter Storm

This past Friday we woke up to it snowing!  We have had a pretty big storm hit us.  It only snowed for a few minutes, but the wind blew like crazy!  It was howling all night long.  I had to leave for my ultrasound quickly, so we left Tyler at home to do school work while I took the kids with me for the day.  I dropped my kids off at a friends house and headed to the hospital.  All looks good and I guess we will find out in 6 months what we are having.  We are predicting a boy.  Upon picking up my kids, my friend informed me that Clark had a blow out!  I felt so horrible...there is nothing worse than having to change a poopie diaper of a kid that doesn't belong to you....oh wait, yes there is--when that poop is smeared all over the back.  Surprisingly Clark fits some size 4 clothes pretty well that we borrowed.  (He just went on a growth spurt--that kid can eat on growth spurts!)  The kids and I couldn't return back to our house just yet because Tyler wouldn't get anything done.  We decided to run errands.  Remember that wind?  We got to Target and I told the kids to let me open the door for them because the wind was swinging the doors wide open.  Madison chose to ignore my advice and started to open the door and the wind blew it right into the car next to us.  Yep, we put a nice black dent into a white car.  We didn't leave a note.  We didn't need to as the person was sitting in her car.  She was so very kind and said it was okay, although I am not sure she realized the damage that was done.  We also hit up Staples (recycled an old printer), Costco, Aldi, the library and Joanns.  There were some massive trees that were blown down and we even watched a street lamp go down while waiting at an intersection.  We even got to drive under a fallen tree.  When we got back we parked our car a block away just so it wasn't by any trees or lights.  Maybe we shouldn't have gone out... I'm pretty pleased to say that we stayed out of the house from 9 until after 5 for Tyler's sake.  We are pretty lucky as many of our friends haven't had electricity for a few days and their houses are currently freezing.  We had some friends over yesterday to get them out of their house.  They helped us clean our basement before we had a late lunch and then played a 3 hour game (in which time the kids destroyed the house).  The game ended late, so they stayed for dinner also.  We ate dinner at 8.  Another set of friends came over for dinner and ended up staying the night so their baby wouldn't freeze.  Our house was warm, but we found out the next day their air mattress deflated, which was really too bad since we have a fairly nice one they could have used. 

My kids thought it was fun to drive under this tree.

The Big Boy Bed

It was time to put Clark into a toddler bed.  Madison has taught him how to climb out of his crib, so at this point it didn't seem to make a difference whether he was in a crib or bed.  It has been difficult recenlty getting him to stay in bed at night.  Plus he has been coming into our room every night recently!  BOO!!  Last summer we bought a ton of walnut for super cheap...like, cheaper than pine 2x4's at Home Depot.  We put Tyler, with Madison's help, to work to build Clark a bed for about $5.  It took a few weeks for him to complete, but now Clark has his own little bed.  Currently the big thing is trying to keep him in his bed.  I've started to bribe him with two tic tacs in the morning if he will sleep in his bed during the night.  It's still a little iffy.  He still tries to come into our bedroom at night.  Depending on how tired we are we might let him in and then take him back to his bed.  First thing Clark demands are tic tacs in the morning if Clark wakes up in his bed, regardless of whether he actually slept in it all night.  Baby steps I guess.  We should take that crib down now...

Winter Time

I was trying to take pictures of Clark playing with his trains, but Madison wanted to be the main attraction.  I do love this picture of her.

Building a snowman with Tyler.  Not sure where I was--probably sleeping or making dinner.  The olives or raisins or whatever was making the face were gone in the morning.

Christmas Eve new pajama picture.  Madison is right outside the picture frame throwing a huge tantrum (I can't remember what it was about).  Remember that growth spurt I mentioned earlier?  These pajamas are already too small (2T).  I had to buy him some new ones from Target in a size 3.

A little while after she calmed down she came back downstairs and begged for a bed time story.

The Grinch Who Stole Christmas was a favorite of Madison's this Christmas season.

Christmas morning.

Hiding under the computer desk, which is a popular spot for these two.

Farm to Table

This morning we went off to a farm just across the Pennsylvania border that lets people pick apples from their orchard.  Every variety (except honeycrisp) is $0.70/lb, which is great for our area of the country, where $0.99 for is the cheapest that the cheaper varities sell for on a good day.  We loaded up mostly on Jonagold and Staman apples.  The Jonagold variety was extremely juicy, though not as full of flavor as we were hoping--but still not bad, only average.  I had never tried a Staman apple before, but I really like them!  A little more tart, a little less juicy, but still sweet.  Almost like candy.

 So this is actually a pretty interesting lesson in setting the white balance on your camera.  The picture above is the first picture I took.  It looked a lot more blue than what I was seeing in real life.  I checked the white balance on my camera, and yep, it was set to "tungsten light".  I changed it to "cloudy" and got the picture below.  Same apples, same lighting conditions, taken only seconds apart.

 This picture below of Clark has another fun story.  He was trying to pull the apple off the branch.  When I decided to push down on the button to take the picture I thought I would get a picture of him pulling the apple.  But just as I snapped the picture the apple came free and he went wheeling backward.  A split second later he was out of the picture frame, sitting flat on his bottom.  I had the shutter speed set to shoot at 1/1000th of a second, which is fast enough to shoot movement.  You can actually see the movement in the photo if you look--the droplets of water are suspended in air.

 These guys had some MUDDY shoes after everything was said and done.  In fact, lots of that mud on their shoes transferred to our pants and shirts from lifting them up.

 All of the above apples were Jonagold, and we got some really massive apples.  The apples below are all Staman.