Family Updates for January

So I haven't made a real blog posting in almost two months?!?!? What happened to the time? Okay, here's a really quick, picture filled update for each month.

I am not an artist in regards to cakes, seriously I suck at it. But, when Hunter requested a special snowman cake in January, I did my best to make him happy ...just don't look too closely. He got all bakugan things that we had gotten on clearance for over 7 or 8 months. I think when we added it up, it was closer to almost $200 worth of toys, instead of less than $50. :) He also got his favorite breakfast that day, chocolate chip pancakes and a special 7 shirt to wear.

We drove down that week to Las Vegas for his birthday too. My camera battery died, stupid camera. But, we loved it! The drive down, by myself was pretty intense ... but the warmth and the friends and seeing their grandparents definitely made it all worth it. Hunter kept commenting about how much he loves to hear the birds sing ... me too, Hunter. My parents threw him a fun/awesome/best birthday party ever at Bounce U which they all absolutely loved. We were so grateful to see everybody ... and that Ryan made the drive back ... thanks to the Bodily's and a massive oversized amount of Mountain Dew to make the drive. ;)

I spent a LOT of time bargain shopping for next year during January. I got the kids coats, gloves, and almost their entire wardrobe for next year. I also got a huge load of shoes 75% off at Target for the kids. This isn't even a fraction of how many shoes I picked up. And no, Savannah probably won't be wearing a size 2 shoe anytime soon (she's a 10 right now) ... but I have gotten her 5 sets of the same basic black church shoe in every size from 11 - 2. LOL. Each pair was $3.74 or less and it's already coming in handy.

The kids enjoyed limited amounts of time outside ... dang it's cold here.They are definitely going stir crazy with such a long winter. At least in Vegas you can enjoy the cool summer evenings ... here there is no break from the weather it seems.

The park right next to our home has become a kind of joke. It's a wonderful park, full of big swings and lots of room to run ... in bird poop that is. It seems to be a favorite with the geese whenever the snow melts away ... we've found another park not too far away that doesn't seem to have the same crappy problem ... and whenever the weather is over 40 degrees we go. Jax is not a fan of his coat still, so we've been creatively trying to keep him warm.

And then for a scary kind of story. Colton keeps trying to run out whenever he sees the front door is open. Case in point, Ryan had to chase him down two houses when he was leaving for work that day. And notice what Colton has on? Yeah, no snow boots there! One night I heard Colton crying. I thought he was in our room it was so loud & I was just waking up, so I called to him to come and tell me what was wrong. After another second or so, I realized he wasn't in the room and see what was going on. He was hanging on the front door, crying for me thinking we had left him! The poor little guy was so sleepy, he didn't realize that he was awake and wasn't left alone. BUT! The front door had gotten unlocked in his attempts to open it ... I shudder to think what would have happened if he had gotten outside ... especially since it was below zero that night. And he can't open the front door from the outside on his own. We've now invested in child proof door locks to prevent anything like that from ever happening again ...those dang things are so good that they even prevent the grown ups from being able to get out too!