Snow Day!!

We had a snow day yesterday and we had so much fun! All of the kids that I watch have parents that are teachers, so they all were home and Adam got to be home with us too. So, here's all the stuff we did on our family fun snow day!

We started off our morning by coloring at the kitchen table. We all made some pretty cool pictures!

Then after Bella's nap we went outside an played in the snow. Here she is before I put all her snow gear on.

And then after. She's ready to go!

It was her first time playing in the snow and she loved it!

Of course she had to get a taste of it...

and another!

Then we came in and played a game that Adam's Mom got me for my birthday. It's called "In A Pickle" and it was a lot of fun! Thanks again Mom, I loved it!

We got out some educational toys for Bella to play with (as you can see on the floor) and all she wanted to do was lean on her toy box and chew on her baseball.

We got some junk mail with a fake credit card in it and we gave it to Bella to play with. Good thing she doesn't know what to do with it!

While Bella was taking her second nap, Adam and I played Yahtzee. He knows how I love playing games and he was so gracious to play two in one day with me!! After this game we watched "The Dark Night". Adam had seen it before and I really liked it too.

So that's our family fun snow day! We really enjoyed ourselves and it was a great day to be home.

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Here's some other random pictures from the last week:

Bella looking like she's ready to go to school, not yet babe!

Fun window time with Daddy!

And as promised, here's our sad little Christmas tree. We love it though!!

A Little Bit of Everything!

It has been over a month since I have posted anything, so I have a lot of pictures to share! So I'm going to keep the updating short. We had a visit from Ben, Laura, Oliver, and Eliot; it was so great to finally get to meet our new little niece, she's already a month old. It's also always nice when Bella gets to see Oliver because they have fun together too!

Bella is walking now. Still not confidently, but I'm sure by Christmas she'll be a pro-walker! It is still so different for us to see her walking across the house. It's crazy how quickly things change. She is also talking a little bit. She says, "Ma Ma" and "Daddy", "hi" and "bye bye", and she is beginning to copy us when we say things. A few words that we think she has tried to say are "red" and "sit". Probably a few others too, but that's what I can think of for now! She's getting so big.

We had a really nice Thanksgiving. We spent the morning volunteering at our local community dinner and then we drove to Tomah for the next few days. We had a nice relaxing time with LOTS of great food!! On Friday we went out and cut some Christmas trees and it was so fun! My mom had gotten permits so we could go to the Black River State Forest and cut down our own tree, so that's what we did. Little did we know that the trees would be so "Charlie Brown" looking! So, we all have our Charlie Brown Christmas trees this year. We have decided that this year, we did it for the experience and not for the perfect tree! When we got home yesterday we put ours up, and it's great! When I get those pictures I'll make another post about our tree cutting extravaganza!

On to all the pictures:

It's been so darn cold, that Bella has to get all bundled up everywhere we go. Luckily she has this great snow suit!

One morning I gave Bella her snack and sippy on the floor and a water drop landed on her leg and made the perfect shape of a heart. I thought it was a great little reminder of how much God loves us!

Bella and Eli are best friends and they just love each other. One morning when he came over to play (Mom was subbing), Bella just felt the need to hug and kiss him, she must have really missed him!

Bella loves to play and crawl into Joy's carseat when she's here. It's a great toy to keep her entertained!

When it was still pretty nice out, I let Bella go outside and play in the leaves. She really liked it.

Here's our little climber. She was trying to get to the ball on the other side of the toy box, but then I think she got distracted when she realized she could see out the window!

Rocking in the recliner, so proud of herself!

Here's my little Italian girl. She loves her pasta!

Mostly I took this picture because of the 80's outfit she has on. Tights and a long sweatshirt, so stylin'!

A couple of weeks ago after the kiddos left for the day, Adam and I took Bella to the Children's Museum downtown. It was so fun and we had a great time. We got a membership so that we can go any time we want all year long! It was a great deal! Here's all the things she got to do:

(this picture is a bit fuzzy, but I had to keep it because she looks so much like Adam when he was little)

And before we left we played with the board of pins that you can push and the shape shows up on the other side. My sweet husband went on the other side and the next thing I knew I saw the sign for "I love you", so I had to take a picture!

And here is when Ben, Laura, Oliver, and Eliot came to visit. We were so busy playing and visiting that we didn't take many pictures and the ones I did get aren't so great. The little ones move so fast now that it's hard to get a good picture of them playing together! Here's Oliver standing up in the tunnel and Bella looking on and laughing!

And then Bella discovered that I had the camera out and crawled right at it to grab it, so I had to put it away!

Here's our little peanut coloring. Sometimes we do this in the morning for a fun little activity! I still have to watch though, because sometimes they go in the mouth!

Bella loves to play peek-a-boo and she's so cute when she does it. This picture captures everything. She covers her face, but her fingers are wide open and she's looking at us with big eyes. Then if we say, "Where's Bella?" she'll take her fingers down and then we say, "There she is!!". Then she'll do it again! It's so cute!

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and a Merry Christmas season!

New Family Member (and other stuff)

Here are a bunch of pictures that we got from Adam's Mom from when we visited and of our brand new little neice!!! She is absolutely beautiful and we are so excited to get to meet her! So, here are the pictures:

Bella and I right when we got to Grandma's house on Thursday night. She was just so happy to be out of the car!

Playing with the wrapping paper with Uncle Ethan. Bella loved playing and walking with Uncle Ethan the whole time that we were there!

She would crawl right up to him and either want him to hold her or walk around with her. In this case, she wanted a bite of his apple!

Uncle Ethan's so nice sharing his apple with Bella!

Then she found some empty bottles in the kitchen and had fun playing in Grandma cupboards.

Here's Adam getting his birthday gifts. He is reading the book with all the notes from the people that contributed to the guitar. He was so thankful and surprised!

And this is the painting that I painted him. It portrays one of our favorite scenes from the book The Shack (see link in previous post).

And this is our beautiful little neice, Eliot Meer Zastrow!! Adam's brother Ben and his wife Laura now have Oliver and Eliot. So, here are some pictures that Grandma Kathy sent for us to see! We can't wait until we can get to Madison and visit her for ourselves!

And yesterday, Bella and I spent the day with Grandma Peggy and went to the Dells. We had a great time and had to get a picture of this cute sleeper/snowsuit that Grandma got her! Thanks again Grandma Peggy!