SNOW!!

  The girls have been wishing for snow for a couple of months now.  Imagine their delight when I opened the windows this morning and the ground was covered!  Thanks to their Canadian cousins, they already had perfect winter gear to throw on.  

Ava is an awesome snowball maker and thrower!  She was pegging me all morning.

The snow was the perfect consistency to make a snowman.

Button eyes and nose and a pipe cleaner mouth.

Such fun!

Here's a picture of the snow we got last February:

Turning 4

These sweet girls turn 4 today!



Here are a few pictures from the day they came into this world:

Joel and the nurse trying to figure out if they were identical.  We didn't think they would be, but we didn't know for sure.

I was a tad bit drugged.

I remember Ava crying her little eyes out and Gracie being very calm.

Beautiful, perfect, and healthy.

Tiny.

Gorgeous.

Ava

Gracie

They are such blessings to me.  I am so, so thankful to have been blessed with twins.

Beginning Reading

The girls both made tremendous progress in the reading department last night!!  It had probably been a week since we'd worked on a BOB book and I couldn't believe how much easier it was for them.  When we first started, they could say each individual letter's sound but didn't quite grasp the idea of making the sounds flow together to form a word but they are definitely catching on.  I love it!

This book has been helping too.  I downloaded it from Confessions of a Homeschooler, printed it out and laminated it, and have just left it on the coffee table for the girls to play with whenever they want.

The first and last columns are just consonants and the middle is just vowels.  Sometimes they end up with combinations that aren't actual words but I still let them sound them out and we decide if its a real word or not.  I'm amazed at what you can make with a printer and a laminator!

Some Recent Pictures

Ava took our picture at the mall the other day.  My mom MADE this hat!

She cut up an old jean skirt of mine,

and even lined the inside. 

She also made this one: 

Amazing, right?!  I love them!

Gracie took this picture of Ava at the mall:

Beautiful produce!

We got a juicer and have been playing around with it.  I'm waiting on a particular recipe book to come out next week and then hopefully juice more regularly.  Joel's not fond of my 'experiments'.  LOL!  I have definitely consumed some things that I might not otherwise, such as beets and ginger root.  I've also been making fruit smoothies in the blender that have spinach in them.  The fruit covers up the taste of the spinach, something else I never eat.  My insides are happy!

I've started price-matching the produce at Wal-Mart.  They seem to have the best produce around but not the best prices.  I'm sold on price-matching though!

Both of the girls' hair is too fine/thin to hold a french braid, or even 2 french braids.  So last week I did 4 braids on top and braided them into 2 braids in the back and that held very well.  They loved them!

Ava was especially proud of her 'waves' the next day.  We enjoyed a picnic in the back yard and even though the wind kept blowing her hair in her face and food, she didn't want it pulled back.  And she is normally fanatical about not feeling hair on her face.  She kept hoping Kyndra, or anybody, would stop by and see her hair.  LOL!!!

They got new car seats for Christmas that they really love:

Apparently somebody needed something up high while I was in the kitchen one day:

Thankfully nobody got hurt!

Gracie's Imagination

Gracie can entertain herself for hours with pretty much anything.  She spent 45 minutes (I timed it) talking with these magnets on Wednesday.  Joel took this video on his phone about half way through.  It's 3 1/2 minutes long and she really did this for 45 minutes!  She was oblivious to everything else and only stopped because we went out back to play.

I love it!

Wordless Wednesday

An Update

As you may have noticed, this blog has been abandoned by user.  

So sorry!  

I do hope to get back into posting updates for everyone on a regular basis.  We shall see.  Here's how lazy I've gotten in the picture-taking department: when I uploaded the following pictures from my phone I noticed I don't even have a 2012 folder yet!!  

Let's see...today we played outside for 3 glorious hours!  The girls swung out back, then we played tag, marco-polo, red light green light, and duck duck goose.  Good exercise for all of us!  We took a lunch break and then they rode their trikes in the driveway for awhile.  

Don't you love Ava's outfit?! 

Then we played next door with Amarah and Alyssa.  They have a Barbie jeep and a much bigger swing set so the girls were VERY excited to go over there.  Here's Alyssa, who is 19-months-old, wearing an adorable 4T sundress:

So cute!

We've still been going to the Library Story Hour on Wednesday mornings.  They've had several play dates with their friend Lila.  We've had a lot of nice days in January so we've been to the park a couple of times.  They received 3 sets of the BOB books for Christmas and are doing really good with them.  Each book is probably 5-7 pages, with just a couple of words per page, and each word is no longer than 3 letters.  They're really starting to understand how to sound words out and 'read' them.  It's pretty awesome.

So, there's a tiny update!  More to come soon, hopefully.