Just 'cuz they're cute

Emilia is enjoying the awesome new toys she picked out with the gift card that Nanny and Poppa gave her for Christmas. She got a new Eric Carle book, The Grumpy Ladybug, and she got these Color Wonder markers and a Toy Story 3 coloring pad.

She also got a new play-doh set with letter and number stamps. Her favorite part of the set is the play-doh knife!

This was the outfit she picked out by herself yesterday (except the shirt). She told me she wanted a skirt and chose this one. Then she told me she wanted black tights. What a diva!

Then I told her I wanted to send a picture to daddy and this is how she posed!

Every time Nate is playing on the floor she either lays her baby down or lays down herself...or both.

Nate is getting new skills everyday! He can sit in the Bumbo for a bit now...

...but it doesn't take long before he gets tired and starts to lose it a little. We do a little most days because he thinks he's a big boy sitting up!

He's playing more with his toys these days too. He bats at them and grabs onto them now!

Thunder Snow 2011!!! (said in a very intense manner)

This storm drove us nuts!! We don't like snow in the first place, but it certainly didn't do itself any favors with this storm (neither did the Maryland Department of Transportation). On Wednesday afternoon it began with a freezing rain/sleet mix with thunder and lightening. By about 4 pm it turned completely over to snow and started to accumulate. By about 8:30 pm we had about 7 inches on the ground!

Brian left work in Baltimore at about 4. At around 7pm he called to tell me that he was stopped in a "parking lot" on I-70. Apparently MDoT decided that plowing a major highway was not a top priority and the vehicles 1 1/2 miles ahead of Brian couldn't make it up a hill. He sat on I-70 for 5 hours!!! He was originally in the right lane but a large group of idiots decided that they would try to pass the traffic on the right shoulder and ended up just making another lane of traffic. Would have been just annoying, but it turned out to be quite dangerous. Each time Brian tried to move forward he slid sideways and was afraid that he would hit one of the cars on the right should since they had positioned themselves so close to him. Once the traffic finally started moving he let some of the congestion clear and then got a push from a good samaritan. He drove 1 1/2 miles on completely unplowed roads in this 2-wheel drive truck! The rest of the trip through Maryland was fairly smooth sailing. Once he crossed the bridge into Virginia it was a different story. 15 hadn't been touched by a plow! He got stuck in yet another traffic jam and sat for another 1 1/2 hours. He finally got home around 2 am Thursday morning! Thank God he got home safely...someone was watching over him that night!

While Brian was sitting in the cold on I-70 we were dealing with the cold (and dark) here in the house. We lost power at about 8:30 pm while Mimi was in the bathtub. Her response to the situation was "Mommy, turn yight on"...I wish I could have. Fortunately Nate was already in bed and we finished Mimi's bath by flashlight. Mimi went to bed and each of them got an extra blanket. It stayed quite reasonable in the house...it only got down to about 60 overnight. The power went on and off a couple of times on Thursday before it was finally on for good at about 1:40 pm. Brian hooked up the generator so that we could at least have a couple appliances plugged in for a while. 

The good that came out of the storm was that we had Brian home all day on Thursday! He was very excited to use his plow to do the driveway and some of the street in front of the house. He was very glad that he had the plow since the snow was SOOOOO wet and heavy. Mimi even took a ride on the quad with daddy! It was a good packing snow, though, and we all got the chance to spend some time playing outside and making a snowman!