I vaguely remember commenting to Addie's pediatrician at her 2 year old check up (or sometime in there) how banged up and bruised her little shins and arms and head stayed! her pediatrician's response: she worries far more about the kids with no bruises than the ones with them (within reason of course!) because she knows they are actually outside playing!!!

but when its multiplied by two, it seems at bit more extreme!

there is climbing and running and tripping and falling. there are collisions and intentions and accidents and on-purpose-ohs!

i think i could pad every corner, every piece of furniture, every hard surface, and these girls would still find a way to bruise their sweet little heads and faces and eyes and lips!

audrey kate climbed on the sit-and-spin and fell off only to have her eye land on a wooden toy. mere hours later, she caught her shoe on the soft floor at chick-fil-a and her poor forehead collided with a bench!
last night as i was attempting to fold laundry, the girls were dancing and playing only feet away from me. i hear a thud and realize poor anne perry's head has landed on the edge of the living room chair.
it has not been a good week for our black and blue littles! i'm counting on this week to be much less active!

I don't think we could have any more unpredictable weather right now. It was 34 degrees last wednesday and yesterday it was 74! Crazy.

But with all of this cold random weather, we've been talking a lot about snow around here. Which led us to a few activities we've been doing. The focus? The arctic/antarctic/polar regions of course!

And if Addie doesn't ask me once, she asks me at least a dozen times a day...what can we do?

We made animal tracks with white paint and miniature animals and talked about predators and prey. The little girls had fun, but Addie loved it; and hers actually looked like animal prints! ;)
We made polar bears with torn paper.
A little more challenging across the board than I imagined. Addie wanted to tear the paper into itsy bitsy teeny weeny pieces and the little girls wanted to glue stick e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g! But we managed quite well.
And after the little girls went down for naps, Addie and I did a little experiment. We filled our deep sink up with cold water, ice and some salt. The temperature? Cold. (like my scientific estimation there?). Then we talked about what we knew: the water was cold. polar bears have to find food in cold water. therefore they must have something to keep them warm. What we wanted to find out? What keeps them warm and how!
What would that be? Why crisco blubber of course! It was a bit hard to explain, the whole concept of fat and all, but i think she grasped it to some degree.

So we stuck our bare hands in the cold water. Cold! Freezing!
Then we stuck our bare hands in a single plastic bag. Just as cold (freezing!)!
And then we used the blubber bag (crisco in between two ziplock bags taped together at the top).
Surprisingly not cold!
In fact, it was a bit toasty in there initially! I had some serious doubts about this experiment; but it worked, and Addie loved it!

Since we probably won't be seeing snow around here anytime soon, i'm going to order some of this Snow! Addie's most recent request was to learn about clouds. Snow. Clouds. Perfect segue to weather! Love learning with this girl!

It's been entirely too long since I did an I Heart Faces Challenge; but when I realized the theme was By the Book, there were several pictures that came to mind.

Each night, I put one of the twins in her crib while I read to the other one. Then we flip flop. It gives them each individual mommy time, but it also requires them to entertain themselves for a little while too.

On this particular night, Audrey Kate was reading an animal picture book, making sounds and saying a few animal names as she read while I read to Anne Perry. I quickly grabbed the camera to capture her laugh as she was reading!
As always, make sure to check out the wonderful entries at I Heart Faces!

our final christmas post isn't really a christmas post at all, but it happened during our augusta christmas week. it was a celebration of paul's mom's husband, albert, turning 70! it was supposed to a surprise, but apparently 60-70 year old individuals men (mainly fellow attorneys and judges!) couldn't keep the secret (not my observation! just the facts! ;) we didnt even tell addie until the day of to make sure she didn't tell!

surprise or not, it was a fabulous party! papa al was surrounded by family and friends young and old to celebrate his 70 years young!

i'll go ahead and apologize for the over abundance of pictures of dancing little girls! of the 370 pictures i took, i actually edited 145 of them, and i'm pretty sure half of those were of dancing little girls! not to worry, there were many others not posted here!

but onto the party! everyone got there early; and papa al might have been suspicious, but i think he was still pleasantly surprised!
gramma had a special kids table set up with crayons and coloring pages and stickers (oh my!) and cool cups! can we say life saver!?! it also proved to be a fun hiding place for all 4 of our girls!
one of very few pictures i got of baby john the whole week. he is so cute, and his little personality keeps coming out more and more! and anne perry is all about kissing things she loves, and her daddy is absolutely one of those!
the little girls were a bit hesitant of all the music and people, but they did get down a little and dance and play with the big girls (my left arm would disagree but here's the proof!)! and see addie dancing away in the background? that kid loves to dance!
and was there ever dancing!
addie and kira had a blast dancing with others...
...and with each other. and when they weren't dancing, they were crawling around all over the place (!?!) because that's what almost 3 and 4 year olds do!
addie had the most fun jumping...and being a pretend guitar!
if i heard when can we have cake once, i heard it a zillion times! love these two big girls, and they love their cake!
thankfully at some point grandpa saved my left arm (and right hand for that matter!) and audrey kate let him hold her; and after that, she let ms. gail feed her cake!
balloons anyone? :)
thank you for a great celebration and fabulous party gramma, and happy 70th birthday papa al!

Addie started ballet lessons last week. she loves it! she's taking with her sweet friend madeline and one of my friend's little girls that she didn't know beforehand. (i was super excited to get to spend the hour waiting with both moms!)

her ballet outfit finally arrived in time for last weeks class, shoes and all. problem is, she was in a rotten mode before we left, and a picture was not to had. well, a happy picture was not to be had. plus, it was raining.

but a few weeks ago, all three girls dressed up in addie's tutus and pretty dress-up dresses and danced.

and.i.got.pictures!

i'll work on getting ballet outfit pictures soon.

...with an explanation.

I'm always hesitant to pull out paint. i've grown braver as addie has gotten older, but i've never let the little girls paint.

until the other day.

how else can you make a snow scene or "drive" through a snowstorm without white paint?

so i put the table (we all love it, gramma!) in the foyer and carefully taped down the babies' papers. everyone got their own paper plate of paint, a q-tip and later a plateful of matchbox cars!
we made beautiful snow pictures with q-tips and then i poured paint on a new sheet of paper and they drove cars through it...creating a snow storm.

and had a blast!
i only had to clean paint out of one mouth. the table easily wiped clean. i think we managed to keep it all in one location. and we made 6 wonderful creations!

that is until i went to wash the cars off and realized i could hear audrey kate and addie in her room, but it was eerily quiet in the foyer.
yeah...i should NOT have left the 500 count q-tip box where Anne Perry could reach it.

but everybody helped clean up, some more willing than others!

and just in case you're wondering, we painted the next day (and the next) too ;-)

On Thursday, we all headed to Grandpa's house for another Christmas!

Kira got a balance bike for Christmas, and Uncle Jay wanted Addie to try it out.
And then Kira had a go at it. Super impressed with both of them!
Of course I had fun (attempting) to capture those smiles!
And there were plenty to go around!
John was down for a nap, but the little girls came out and everyone decided sitting on our trailer hitch would be fun! Poor Anne Perry couldn't make any other facial expression besides what you see because when i folded her hat up so she could see, it made it tighter than i thought! You can see Audrey Kate just took hers off!
And everyone came in and crashed before lunch and present time.
We opened the kids presents in a furry of paper and toys and fun in an effort to get everyone down for naps...all except Addie! So she played with Ms. Gail...
...and put a puzzle together with Aunt Laura.
While the big kids (us!) opened presents with Grandpa and Ms. Gail! (and drank coffee and posed for my new lens!)
But my favorite picture of the entire time we were there was of Grandpa. He gave me a new lens: 85mm f/1.8, and I had to try it out!
Thanks for a great time and wonderful Christmas Grandpa and Ms. Gail!

Our time was a little shorter that day because we had a big party that night...more to come!

I was ridiculously blessed this Christmas to get a few new lenses. And so in an effort to learn them, I pulled out the 85mm f/1.8 and 200mm f/2.8 and took Finn outside during nap/rest time.
While he's actually doing fairly well in his obedience training, Addie's ability to follow directions is still far superior to his! So I let her get up from her rest time a little early to play outside let me take pictures of her!

And did she ever put on a show!
It's rained here for almost 2 days straight. I mean rain like monsoon rained.
Rain boots on, she carefully walked through the puddles curiously investigating what they held.
Errrr...that is until I had the bright idea of what awesome pictures we could make if she JUMPED in the puddles!
And I think it's safe to say that we both had a blast!
And then she and finn got a real bath!