Sicker, Sick, Sickest, Sicker

 Poor Babies! The stomach flu hit our house hard. Last week, on my last day with my Kindergartners, Leah woke up puking. I went back and forth between whether I should go to work or not, but really felt like I had to since it was my last day with my beloved class. Luckily Daddy was able to stay home with her. Leah was pretty sick and unable to keep anything down for almost 2 days. 2 days later, Juliet woke up puking. She was up most of the night getting sick, but woke up feeling fine the next morning, demanding to eat an English muffin with peanut butter and chocolate milk. I didn't want to give it to her, but she threw a huge fit and I figured if she had the energy for the fit, she just might be okay with the food. She needed a lot of extra sleep for a few  days (like 14 hours at night, along with 3-4 hour naps!), but didn't get sick again. 2 days later, I got sick. Way sicker than either of the girls. 2 days later, poor Daddy is sick, too. Luckily, his doesn't seem to be too bad. It's been like the worst timing ever with this illness. I was supposed to start my new position on Monday, and had to call off my first 2 days. Chris is working under a deadline, and was already behind due to working from home last Thursday and Monday to take care of his sick family. Our house is so unorganized and messy due to nobody having any energy or being too busy taking care of sick kids to do anything else. The TV has been on WWAAYY too much over the past week. Oh well. We are keeping our fingers crossed that we will all be better, soon, and able to stay healthy for our beach trip! 

Twinsies

These 2 were so excited to be dressed like each other! 

Hands On Fun

Juliet finally earned her Doctor's coat on this morning. She was so happy and proud of herself. She has been working on staying dry at night. She had to do it 7 times. Though it took her a while, she did it. She was ecstatic to earn her Doc McStuffins coat. She insisted on wearing it to the Hands On Museum. 

 Leah has been begging to go back to the Museum for months. We always put it off. A few weeks ago I interviewed for a Reading Intervention position, and was majorly preoccupied with it for over a week. When I wasn't looking at interviewing questions, or worrying about going back full time (turns out I don't have to), I was panic shopping. I burst out laughing a few Saturdays ago when we came back from Costco and there were so many packages in our mailbox that it wouldn't shut. I'm not usually that bad. So, we promised Leah we would go the weekend after the interview. She was thrilled. 

 Leah loved the water part. I feel like this section is new? Juliet didn't like it at all, proclaiming it "too loud". Leah was really happy when she got a ball to stay up in a stream of water. You can see it in the background. 

 Leah was most excited about the "Big Bubble". It wasn't working so well this visit, though. It seemed like it needed more bubble solution, which was weird because we were close to the first people in the room after the museum opened. 

 Of course Leah's real favorite part is always dusting cat littler off fake fossils. This girl loves to clean. One of her favorite activities is to ask for Windex and a paper towel or a magic eraser. She will go around and clean the entire house. She was in this room for well over 15 minutes. This was also the first time she gave the rock wall a try! 

 Juliet liked all the attention that wearing her Doctor's coat gave her. She wasn't really into posing for pictures, but she did a few times. She had fun, too! 

Round Here

January is such a slow month. At the end of every year, I make a book of my favorite family pictures month by month. There are some months that require 3 pages. However, January and March only usually have like 2-4 pictures each. The winter is rough! 

 Chris and I bought out Targets 70% off Christmas section. We got each girl a little Christmas tree for her room and a tree full of non-breakable whimsical ornaments. The girls love their trees. I catch Juliet changing around her ornaments often. Leah's favorite is the "turtle dove" just like from Home Alone 2. We said they could keep their trees up for the month of January. 

 Now that it is 2015, we had to watch Back to the Future 2. It is set in this year, you know. :) We are holding our breaths for flying cars and self lacing shoes (especially Leah. She is easy frustrated trying to learn to tie shoes).

 Leah got Caroline for Christmas from my mom. It seems to be one of her favorite presents! She is forever hauling that doll around and telling us what she needs. She loves to peruse the American Girl catalog and tell us all the accessories she needs. Today I spent about an hour watching You Tube videos on how to keep her hair looking like a rats nest. All the videos were done by 6-10 year olds. I was so shocked. We found a video that an adult actually did. We learned that to maintain Caroline's hair, you need to use a tooth brush to brush out each curl. Then you have to redo her curls using your fingers and a little twisting. She looks much better now! :) 

The girls have been on vacation time most of this week which means that they wake up between 8-9 am. Then we have lunch at 11. They don't each much, because they've just had breakfast a few hours before. They are starving when they get home from school and Susan's house!

Grandparents

Just a cute picture that I had to add. We had fun having Grandma and Grandpa stay with us for 2 weeks. The girls love playing with them, and I love having some built in help. See you on the beach soon, Grandma and Grandpa!

More Christmas

 More Christmas. We celebrated with my side of the family on the 26th. Juliet was so tired from all the partying during the previous days that she went down for a nap at 12:00 (3 hours after waking up for the day!). I love these family pictures because Chris always tries to hold them in a way what you can see their dresses. 

An extra large picture of our entire family. Nicole brought over her teenage neighbor to take the picture. There's getting to be a lot of us. :) 

  The three (four when Gigi woke up) little girls had fun playing together. 

 When it was present time Leah could hardly contain herself. We never let on that Grandma actually bought the American Girl she had been pining for. Leah kept trying to shyly tell my mom, and she would always just say, "OK...we will see!" She was pretty thrilled with the doll and has already started combing through catalogs to tell me all the other things that Caroline needs. 

 Juliet was pretty thrilled with this Minnie Mouse vaccum. She always tries to play with it when we go to Target, so she was pretty excited that she actually got her own. My mom keeps joking that she has the vacuuming gene, just like her. 

They are spoiled rotten with presents. 

 One of the biggest hits of the night was a karoke machine. All the little girls took turns singing. Leah sang "Let it Go" and Juliet really enjoyed singing "Jingle Bells". 

 We always need to take sister shots and sisters and mom shots.