Winter Wonderland

The pictures of snow that I posted about 2 weeks ago was the first snow that we had. So I thought that I would post some more pictures of the rest of the snow. Notice the depth that we had on the top of the house and the garbage cans. Some lovely icicles overhanging our pond out front.

See our neighbors hedge? It was completely bent over our cars. We had planned on having a fire on Christmas morning but Jason would have had to climb on the roof and cut some of it down since the arbavida was bent over our chimney onto our roof.

The big branch of the willow tree. This branch used to be up pretty high in the air.

Now it shall be in the air no more. Due to the massive crack in the limb. We are very happy to have had the tree trimmed back last summer or else we could have ended up with a branch through the roof. Of course now we hope that having to get rid of this branch doesn't send the tree into shock and kill it.

This is what our cul-de-sac looked at evening. I'd forgotten how much I like late evening when there is snow. I love the colors in the sky that reflect up from the snow. It stays light a little later. If I hadn't had to go to work the whole time I would have wanted to play in the snow. Plenty of snow to go around. Since there isn't much traffic on our street, people with light little cars would easily get stuck. We made the decision to not drive our little Mazda Protege and just drive the Subaru Outback. We didn't have any problem getting around.

This picture gives a pretty good idea of how deep the snow was. Good thing we had a shovel! They were sold out in a lot of the stores.

A good picture of the pretty snow falling and our now ruined tree branch.

Most of the snow is gone now and we were some of the fortunate ones that didn't lose power for days on end. (I felt so bad for you Jocelyn!) We had a couple flickers and were without cable and internet for 3 days (turns out that totally sucks!) but for the most part escaped unscathed.

Christmas!

Well... Christmas was a big hit in our house this year. It was so nice that I didn't have to work Christmas eve or Christmas for once. Danica had been gearing up for days, just waiting to open her presents. We never did get her to see Santa this year. The bad roads just made it too iffy. I'm sure that lots of Santas didn't make it into work this year either. She did get to see the one that comes by on the fire truck though! No pictures however since I was sleeping and Jason had to carry her to see him through the snow.
This is Danica waiting ever so patiently Christmas morning to open her presents. We made her wait until we had breakfast. A hungry Danica is a cranky Danica and we were not about to deal with that!

She did very well with taking turns on opening presents. It was "Danica turn, Mommy turn, Daddy turn!!!!" She even helped pick out which ones we opened up next.

And she sometimes helped us open up our presents too!

She was very excited over every present. It didn't matter what it was, she was happy to have it. And of course wanted to play with each one right away.

Sometimes she wanted us to help unwrap with her. I think because she knew it would be faster. But we made her do most of it on her own.

She really liked this cook set that is shaped like a cupcake. She has spent the last couple of days cooking Jason and I cupcakes. (Thank you Tim and Monica!)

Sitting with Mommy by the tree. Would she look at the camera at all? Nope.

Sitting with Daddy by the tree. At this point she was starting to get squirrly with anticipation.

And of course Danica had to help clean up. She picked up after opening every present. I'm not sure if we even told her to do that or if she just did it on her own. (It would be nice if she would pick up her own room though!----Yes Mom I know, payback sucks!)

Here are some little clips of how Christmas morning went. Since we all couldn't be together...Next best thing!

Wow!

My coworker Kathy shared this website with me last night and I loved it so much that I wanted to pass it on. Make sure to watch both 2008 and 2007's clips.

www.holdman.com/christmas/

I'm hoping that the link works...if not just type it in and check it out!
Merry Christmas!

SNOW!

I know that for many of you snow is not a big deal at all, however.... we rarely get it here, let along get enough to stick around for more than 2 hours, so major event here. Sunday night it snowed a couple of inches and Danica could hardly wait to get to it. So by 9:00 Monday morning she could wait no more.

Here she is trudging through the snow. She didn't pick up her feet at all but kept shuffling them. Making little trails in the snow.

Just smiling away! She loved the snow and didn't seem to mind it being cold either!

She kept walking around making trails in the driveway. Almost all of the tracks you see are from her. You can make out the car tire tracks which she followed at first and then abandoned to make her own.

She got into the rose bushes and thought that seemed like a nice place to play. Fortunately I had trimmed a bunch down already so she didn't get snagged by the thorns.

She loved to pick up the snow and throw it down. If you look carefully you can see snow on her hat which is from her picking it up and trying to throw it up in the air and having it caught by the wind and thrown back in her face. It didn't seem to bother her though. I did notice she stopped throwing it up and was content to let it just fall to the ground after that.

This is just a cute shot with the sun coming from behind her.

Here are a couple videos of Danica enjoying the snow!

Making cookies

Last friday Danica and I went over to Kelli and Larissa's house to make Christmas cookies. We let the girls put sprinkles on the chocolate covered pretzels and chocolate covered oreos. They had a blast. Several times we had to take the sprinkles away so we could wipe off the chocolate that accumulated on them due to them being dunked in the melted chocolate. Danica liked adding sprinkles and then pinching them off with her fingers so she could lick them! Very carefully adding sprinkles to the pretzels. The colored dot ones worked the best since they came out the slowest. The colored sugar ones flowed pretty quick and would quickly become heaped on whatever they were sprinkled on.

After making the cookies the girls decided to play dress up for a little bit. Larissa started out as Cinderella and Danica was Sleeping Beauty. That lasted for 5 minutes and then they decided to trade.

I managed to get video to actually upload so here is a little shot of the girls making their cookies!

Having fun

One of Danica's longtime favorite activities is reading and she found willing participants in Grandma and Papa. Her she is reading her favorite book with Papa.
And here she is all snuggled up with Grandma reading a princess book.So one of the coolest presents Danica got was a house from Kelli, Jay and Larissa. It's made out of clothe and fits over a card table so it can be easily taken down and put up. Danica loves it and calls it her "tent". Here she is playing with Daddy in her tent.

There is an apple tree on the side with apples that have velcro attached and Danica loves putting them on and taking them off.

Playing in the house with Papa.

All in all a most awesome gift that she will get countless hours of use out of. Thanks Kelli!!

Danica's birthday party

We had a little gathering on Sunday the 30th to celebrate Danica's birthday. We didn't want anything too big so we kept it pretty small but still had alot of fun. Here is Danica and her friend Larissa apparently hiding from each other while sitting on the couch! They had a ton of fun just running around. Kelli (Larissa's mom) and I have a rule of "either you're barefoot or you have shoes on" We've had a few wipeouts from feet with just socks on. As you can see, one with shoes off, one with shoes on!

Danica is blocking Larissa in this one but the other little girl in Ryann our neighbor's daughter. The girls all had a blast playing together and making a mess! It's nice though that at this age I can still get away with not having to plan games for them!

This is Danica and Larissa in anticipation of opening presents.

Larissa was very good with helping Danica open her presents. As she said "She doesn't know how to do it!" Danica was much slower on opening them. But she would get impatient with her own slowness and be happy for Larissa's help. It was cute.


We set up one of Danica's new games called Elefun. It is a really cute game and good idea but is definitely one that requires alot of adult interaction. The girls had fun catching the "butterflies"


Danica was so excited for her cake! She almost couldn't wait for the candles to be lit so she could blow them out!
She loved the frosting and barely ate any of the actual cake. I rarely let her have frosting when she does get cake, so of course she loves it! Case is point... Finger in frosting...
Frosted finger in mouth!


All in all I think that the party went rather well. We had good food (I love any excuse to cook for people!) and good company too. It was nice to be able to celebrate Danica's birthday with Don and Jeanine (Jason's parents).

Where has time gone?

You know how you can suddenly stop and wonder "How the heck did time go so fast?" Yeah, I'm at that point. Three years ago I looked like this!



And then after 26 hours of labor I got my best birthday present ever, my little baby girl. So in honor of that day let's have a little picture tour of what Danica looked like the last 3 years at this time.

Here she is voicing her displeasure at being unrapped. She was a fan of swaddling.

This is one of my favorite pictures of Danica from the early days. She was just all snuggled up and sleeping so cute.

And the first birthday arrived so fast!
At that time she didn't know what cake was so she wasn't impressed.

And then all too soon the 2nd birthday came around. She still didn't quite understand what cake was so she just kind of poked at it. That's what happens when you don't give your kid cake ever.

And this was about as messy as she got that day.

I still can't believe that Danica will be three tomorrow! We will be having a little birthday celebration for her on Sunday. Her Grandma and Papa Ryther will get here on Thanksgiving day to help celebrate that and birthdays. I have a feeling that the cake will be a much bigger hit this year since she definitely knows what is is now.

Trick or treat!

What started out as a rainy, cruddy day... ended up being a really nice evening for trick or treating. It didn't rain and was in the low 60s. Originally Danica was going to be a mouse for Halloween. However, she decided that she was scared of the costume so I had to return it and bought a Cinderella dress instead. That was a big hit with her. It is currently one of her favorite movies and she wanted to put the dress on as soon as we got home with it.

We went trunk or treating at our friends church like we did last year. This time though Jason was able to come with which was nice. Here they are walking over to the cars in the parking lot.We met up with Danica's friend Larissa (who was adorable as Sleeping Beauty!) and the girls armed with Disney flashlights and pumpkin candy holders set off.

Isn't is amazing how quickly kids catch on to the fact that if they say trick or treat they get candy? (yet they won't tell you went they have to go potty!)

Here's a shot of the little princesses taking a break from the action. The girls were excited to see each other since they haven't gotten to play together much over the last few weeks. Larissa is a big sister now to her new baby brother Liam and has been busy helping her mommy.
Here is Larissa's new brother Liam (along with mommy Kelli). He slept through the trick or treating but was still adorable in his lion costume. I had to get a picture of the "wild one" on the tushie.

And her is a picture of Jason and his little princess.

After the trick or treating we stopped by our friends Rachelle and Kevin's house so Danica could show them her costume. Apparently they live in the neighborhood for trick or treating. Cars and kids everywhere! Then you go to our neighborhood and there is no one.

All in all it was a good night and we will be eating candy for a while.