March fun...

We got an inch of snow a couple of weeks ago, and I finally downloaded the pictures of the kids playing in it. These were taken at about 6:30 AM (yes, I'm sure our neighbors loved hearing our kids screaming that early). But, considering the snow melted by about 8am, I'm glad we got out there early...



From snow to short sleeves...

We also had Avery's Ballet "recital" this past week. At this age, it's just that the parents are all invited to the last class of the season, but they did work on a bit of choreography. They performed "The Magic Toyshop"...

Avery's solo was doing Leaps. She was so proud!!

One of these princesses is not like the other...

Here is the class with Teacher Katie. Avery has been with her for 7 or 8 classes in a row now. But she is so popular, that when I tried to register for the spring term 6 minutes into the online registration period, all her classes were booked :( So, Avery will be starting a Hip Hop class in April instead. That should be awesome to watch! I'll bring the video camera to the "recital" for sure!! :)

Can't leave Collin out of this post. Although, when he's 16 he'll wish I did not take these pictures. Poor kid is surrounded by pink!! Avery's laptop...

Avery's slippers...

Collin update

For Valentine's day, Collin's teachers gave me a CD of his first few months in his class at school. I finally got around to uploading some of the pics. So cute!!! I love seeing how happy he is there. Up until a few weeks ago he was still crying every time I dropped him off. I always stood outside the doorway for a minute or two after I left to make sure he stopped crying and he always did. And the teachers always assured me he was so happy during the day. But it's good to see it in the pictures. The past couple of weeks have been so different at drop off though...he rushes in to hug his teacher and could not care less when I leave. He's already too busy playing. Such a better way to start my day!





https://picasaweb.google.com/robertahorne1/CollinAtSchoolSeptember2010ToFebruary2011?authkey=Gv1sRgCL60nc-m973IrwE&feat=directlink

Catching up...

It's been a busy couple of weeks, but we haven't been up to anything too big, so I just have a lot of random pictures.

For Valentine's Day, Jon and Avery went to a Daddy/Daughter Dinner Dance. It was so adorable. He even brought her a corsage. She was more than excited. He was too. I so wished I could have been a fly on the wall, just to see all that cuteness...a bunch of sweet little princesses with their daddy's!! Avery's highlights of the night were eating lots of candy hearts and dancing to the Chicken Dance!

Around the house, Avery and Collin have been playing together more often. Actually, Avery just plays and Collin follows her around. Or Avery just pushes him around....

It snowed the other day! A whole 1/4 inch!!! The kids were so excited! Avery and I made a 4 inch snowman, Collin tried to catch snowflakes on his tongue, and Avery made snow angels. Then the snow melted about 20 minutes later...

Avery called me into the family room screaming one day that she was stuck. I came in to find this! Avery and Collin love to wrestle around, but Avery has about 2 more minutes until he's really going to be stronger than her...she better watch out!!

One of my favorite things to see is how Collin gets lost in books already. He will go to the bookshelf, grab a book, take it back to his seat, and "read"...then repeat over and over. So cute!!

Avery has really been using her imagination non-stop lately. Every night we are either a family of penguins or we are teachers and students. Heaven forbid I call her Avery at any point in any day anymore...."I'm not Avery, I'm big sister penguin"... Today she was playing princess ponies, so she decided to build a family of ponies from giant leggos. She's holding baby sister pony...

Collin has been feeding himself really well. He can even drink from a cup without the sippy lid (not that I am that big of a risk taker at home, but that's the only type of cups they use at his school). Of course he still has days where face painting with yogurt is just so much more fun...

Although we've been super busy, I finally got around to putting Collin's 1st year frame together! 10 months cracks me up!!

Collin updates...

I hadn't planned to keep writing "Collin" posts past his first birthday, but this age is just crazy busy with all sorts of new things I have to write them down here or I will forget how amazing it is to see how quickly he is learning.

Jon and I travelled a lot during the month of January, and each time one of us came back from a trip we couldn't believe how much Collin had changed while we were away. He learned what a lot of the animals say (cow, sheep, chicken, duck, dog) and he even flips through his 'Moo, Baa, La La La' book and says the sounds for each page. He also says 'up', 'momma', 'daddy', and 'uh oh'. He can sign 'more', 'all done', and 'please'. He can point to his nose, belly, teeth, head, and toes. And he is starting to learn to jump! Well, he at least squats down then tries to jump up (while saying 'up!). So cute!!!

Here are some picture of our little cutie. He LOVES smoothies. Avery and I make them a few times a week with Strawberry, Banana, and Kale! Yummmm...



He also FINALLY fell asleep in his high chair. Avery did this all the time....



One more food related Collin-ism.... He is such a sneaky little guy. He goes right into the pantry, finds a box of cereal, and sits down to help himself!



This is semi old news - Collin has been climbing stairs since November, but I can't remember taking any other pictures of it. Since we don't have stairs to practice on, he is still not so good at the coming down part though.....

Winter fun...

We went sledding! Well, for me it was a totally new experience. "Sledding" on Mt Hood involves going to a ski park, paying a crazy amount of money to rent a tube for an hour, and going down pre-grooved runs in a tube. For me this seems so odd! I remember walking over to the old sledding hill a few blocks from our house growing up, and dodging other kids on the hill while you went down in a plastic circle sled....for FREE! Of course we also walked to and from school 5 miles uphill both ways back in my day...

Back to our sledding trip....

Avery was SOOOOO excited to see the snow!! We haven't had any this year in Portland. Here she is in her (mercedes) tube...


Collin was less interested in the snow than I expected. He was crabby and hungry, and while he did eat some snow, he was just bummed that it didn't taste like hamburgers...

We made the trip up to the mountain with our friends Grant and Darcy and their 2 girls. Hazel and Avery were both super brave sledders. I was a little worried that they would be scared. But they both had so much fun!

Collin also got the chance to go down once. It was a pretty fast hill, so I was a little nervous, but Jon said he had fun too...

Here's a picture of Avery and Jon going down the hill. Jon had to go down with her to slow down the tube by dragging his feet behind. Even with him dragging, it was really fast. They would hit bumps and fly up in the air a bit. Avery could have done this for days...but it took longer to get up to the mountain than we expected, so we quit after 6 or 7 times down the hill and went to have a nice lunch with our friends.

A family picture by the mountain...

After all that cold weather fun, we needed a summer dinner. We had burgers and fries for dinner...followed by Ice Cream Cones! Collin was so excited!

One of the few perks of being the 2nd child.... I'm pretty sure Avery's first ice cream cone was sometime after turning 2!

Chirstmas fun!

We had a great Christmas here. Although we missed our families a lot, we had a great time with the 4 of us, and were able to see some friends.

Our Christmas Eve was pretty mellow as Jon worked a half day. While I got dinner ready, Collin and Avery watched a show. Collin loves her SOOOO much. He always wants to snuggle up with his big sis!

After lounging most of the day, we got dressed for a 4:00 candlelight church service. The kids were so well behaved! Collin kept pretty quiet, but just wanted to climb the stairs over and over. Here we are all dressed up....

Also a picture of our tree with all the gifts PRE-Santa!!! Our friends and family were so generous to our kids. I hadn't been putting things out as they arrived because I knew Collin would get into them, but I did this on Thursday, and once Avery got over the excitement of seeing these gifts, she got very concerned that Santa wasn't going to come because there was no room under the tree. We had to do a little rearranging so she would sleep Christmas Eve!!

Although Avery spent much of the past few weeks on the naughty list (probably due to all the Christmas cookies we've been baking and eating), Santa did indeed come to our house. He even left this letter to Avery telling her how he is happy when she's nice to her brother and shares her toys!

He also stuffed Avery's stocking full of princess and hello kitty socks and other necessities...

Collin was amazed by the cat piano he got from Santa. It actually plays notes in "meow's". Awesome!!!

He also had fun playing with his new ball popper. Sadly I did not take too many pictures after they got through Santa's stuff. It was chaos between Collin's fussing then finally napping and Avery asking 2000 times if she could open just one more before Collin woke up.

Later, we went to dinner at our friends Beau and Sarah's house. We were there 2 years ago as well and have a similar picture of Avery and Rory in this chair. This time Collin joined in to watch a movie while Sarah prepared a huge dinner.

She also set a beautiful table...

The kids even had sparkling juice...

Dempsey the dog picked the perfect spot right below Collin. Although he did not drop much for the dog. I'm pretty sure Collin actually ate more than me.....

After dinner, the kids burned off some extra energy playing chase and tackle...

Collin even got in on the chasing. He was so loving having a boy to play with!!!

Looks like Avery was loving having a boy around too :)

After all the cookies and the big Christmas feast, we all needed a hike that next morning. Even though it was raining, it was good to get out for a quick walk. And Collin looked adorable in his new hat...