Warm Weekend

I am exhausted! First it was swimming lessons, I don't think that was exhausting for me, since I sat on the benches. But, then there was the painting and the bike riding and well, I don't think we did anything else, I am exhausted. So, this is what I started this weekend...actually I think this is from Thursday, but I had the green done, and that is about it.This is where I was last night, being distracted by little children and climbing...
And this is where I am now!
And I also finished slinky's slink and did a little work on Rex.
And then of course, Eric started more drawing...
Can you see the HUGE princesses, of course Gwen says they are the perfect size for her, exactly what she wanted and I am just thinking, crap I just about finished buzz and the rest of them, still have to do touch-ups, but dang it, they were supposed to be smaller than Buzz!

Swim Lessons

We would like to thank Grandmom for sending the kids money for swim lessons for Christmas...the kids LOVE it! I mean seriously, Eric had a hard time getting them out of the pool; Nate especially wanted to stay. Since I couldn't find a weekday morning/afternoon time swim lesson, we decided to do Saturday...I am not ready to give up 5p twice a week yet, sorry. But this works out because as I have been used to doing the swim lessons, getting in the pool and stuff, I asked Eric if he wanted to take Nate in and he said yes. So, for once I got to be dry and take pictures, a win-win for all of us, because now you can enjoy a slide show of the swim lessons.

So, hopefully we will continue to have kids that love the water and hopefully my little girl will work up the courage to get that face in the water and blow some real bubbles!

Daddy's first tea party

I had to post Daddy having a tea party with the kids, since he was so against Gwen getting one. These are for you godfather! (they are actually having pink lemonade)Nate is giving me a big smile...
I tried to get a group shot, I didn't think this one worked out like I hoped,
so I tried again!
What was I doing during this tea party, that's right, I was painting! Good news, I am almost done...until Eric starts the next drawing!

Settling

Just when I thought we would be settling back into a routine with the kids, my husband goes and starts working late and not sleeping. Now to be fair, there are so many hours in a day and he's had a lot to do. He has turned in his grant proposal and we are glad he is done with that. He went to lunch yesterday with a couple of students and a guest lecturer. They discussed Eric's grant and how much work it is and the lecturer mentioned that his students work on them for 3 months, Eric has only been working on it for a month! This could explain his late working and sleepless nights. Sadly, this also throws off my schedule; I am tired also. Eric came home from work today, we had dinner and I sent him to bed...he pulled an all-nighter!
Last week we had a random warm day, I took advantage of it and took Batman and Gwen outside for some fresh air. They chose to ride their scooters...

Nate is getting really good at his scooter, he has the advantage that he can fit both feet on side by side. Gwen is still having some difficulty, but she is also getting better.
They chose to change scooters and I saw that Nate really does balance well on the scooter he had no problem on it and Gwen could use some practice.
It is back to being cold here this week, so I guess there will be no more scooter riding. Mom gets too cold standing out there watching, I guess I could move around or something...

Grandmom visit

Last week Grandmom came to visit, a quick visit; not much time to take pictures. But we got a few. Grandmom wanted to do some "Grandmom shopping" as she calls it. She wanted to spend a little time getting them some stuff while she was there so she could see the kids when they got the stuff. Hence the Batman boots and raincoat/cape Nate is wearing. He has been wearing it almost nonstop. Here is Grandma reading a book after the purchase.
Gwen was 'child of the week' while Grandmom was here, she got to bring in a "special snack" for her friends. She was line leader and able to pick a special friend to eat snacks with each day. We were able go into Gwen's class and meet all her classmates, introduce ourselves and read some stories to the class. Gwen picked out 2 special songs for her class to sing. I snapped this picture quickly before we left, only Eric apparently knew that I was going to snap the picture.
In the parking lot of Toys 'R Us, we went there also.
Grandmom took over some of our responsibilities-brushing teeth, reading books and combing hair!
We also took Grandmom to the Farmer's market. Sure it is winter, but they had "Okinawa sweet potatoes"-purple sweet potatoes. We didn't have a chance to try them while Grandmom was here, I found a recipe for them we are going to try possibly tomorrow? These turtles are in the park near the Farmer's Market.

Gwen and Nate climbing on Daddy as usual. Not a particularly a good picture, but you can see Gwen is wearing her child of the week crown.
Reading a book before Grandmom left.
It was a short trip, but I think we squeezed in some quality time and everything she wanted to door accomplish. A humorous story from Grandmom's trip, she noticed that Nate has Woody, Buzz and Hamm from Toy Story and is pretty obsessed with the everyone from Toy Story. She promised Nate she would get him Rex and she was pretty insistent we go somewhere so she could get him Rex, she didn't want to go back on her word, understandably. So, day 2 we go to Toys R Us and we wander around and find some potential new Rex's to take home. She asks Nate do you want this Rex and he says "No". HA! 2 year olds! After another 30 minutes we settled on the Slinky Dog for Nate and "naked baby" #2...aka naked baby's twin. That is kind of humorous also, while I was tasked to help Nate decide what get after the Rex fiasco, Grandmom went with Gwen to the pink section to look at a new baby. (maybe I should clarify a new doll baby). Grandmom tried to talk Gwen into a Barbie, but Gwen had her heart set on "naked baby" number 2. I came over and tried to talk her into something else and oh the sad face, I thought she was going to cry. So, Nate left with what he wanted and Gwen left with what she wanted. And Grandmom was surprised and will likely talk about how her Grandkids have minds of their own and can't be talked into something they don't want. But a funny memorable story to be sure!

Project day

On MLK day we got a little crazy, and decided to paint on the kids walls. And not just anything, Eric has some skills in the drawing department. He asked the kids to help and he gave them some paper and told them to draw them on the wall, so they took their papers put them on the wall and started coloring on the paper. So funny! Anyhoo, here are some pictures.
Hamm done, Rex in progress! (see the coloring on the paper Eric is holding up, colored by the kids)
Here is my part of the work, the painting.
Buzz and Hamm-done!
Rex, Mr. Potato Head and Slinky dog. I've started on Mr Potato Head.
I think Eric is pretty much done with drawing, now I have to get busy with the painting-it might take a couple weekends of work, if only we could get them to sleep somewhere else, I could get a lot done!

Videos

While my Mother is recovering from her surgery, I thought she'd like to view these videos I found while cleaning up the 2010 pictures.
Video 1-Nate chasing squirrel. I have talked about this before, here and I watched this video and still giggle just thinking about it. Just imagine this happening over and over with Nate running around the tree and Gwen not running off...hilarious!

Squirrel from Melanie Ubil on Vimeo.

Nate playing the guitar. He is our musical one...

Untitled from Melanie Ubil on Vimeo.

This is from our snow in the beginning of December, Eric took this video.

Untitled from Melanie Ubil on Vimeo.

This is the box, Eric called me over to see what Nate was doing, but the daughter was starved for attention apparently, because she jumped right in there, but picture Nate, doing this.

Untitled from Melanie Ubil on Vimeo.

For the first couple of days, Gwen would insist on putting the windows back in and Nate would punch them out, it made her so mad!
Hope you are feeling better Mom!

The box

While my Aunt was here she was kind enough to buy us a chest freezer. Of course it came in a large box, which translates to hours and days of fun, if you are 2 or 4...
Daddy cut holes in it and they have slept in it and played in it.

Here they are getting cozy in the box.
Nate was out cold, but Gwen asked Eric to get Nate out of the box so she could sleep in the box by herself. She felt like it was too crowded for her to sleep in there with Nate.
She has slept in the box several nights. We even "hid" in the box from Daddy. They have now turned the box over and it has new life, we might throw the box away sometime in February, we'll see how it goes.

Teaparty

As I mentioned before, Gwen did not have a tea set, but she really wanted one, so I enlisted the help of the Godfather to get her a tea set. Maybe I shouldn't say that, he asked what Gwen wanted, I told him what I thought she wanted. The amount of tea parties we have had does mean to me that she is very happy to receive this set and there aren't a lot of little pieces which was Eric's main gripe. She has set up our tea party.
Helping Nate understand
Silly boy
YUM!
Drinking some tea.
I realize that I mostly have good pictures of Nate and bad pictures of Gwen, I should not have sat next to Gwen I guess, the pictures aren't as nice as she usually photographs, I'll have to apologize to her later.

Final Christmas post for 2010

I have been quite busy and appear to have quite the backlog of pictures. We'll see now that I have a couple of calm days coming, if I can clear out the backlog. Starting on Tues though I will be starting back at the gym in the evenings, so fitting blogging in will be a bit of a challenge again. Such is life. We are done with visitors for a while, we had my Aunt and cousins and my MIL visiting. Both were short visits, but we packed fun into both I think. Sadly since they were short visits I didn't get much of a chance to take pictures. I guess I will get to that later.
I took pictures of the kids sleeping in their new beds but sadly didn't post the pictures for my Mom, sorry!
Gwen and her new Dora baby...
We went out after Christmas and took advantage of the post Christmas sales. We got some lawn ornamentation. I like it. Sadly Rudolph is about the dumbest thing I have seen, they make this outdoor lawn thing and then they make the plug a type that needs to not get wet! Seriously, the cord isn't very long either, so we are going to have to "rework our theme" for next year, not that that is really a surprise to us though.
And yes, that is my daughter with no coat and no shoes standing out in the cold, she is apparently hot blooded/warm-natured, I don't know, she often swears she is warm and walks around with no shirt on, even though I don't have the heat very high.
We have a lot of lights to fix and work out for next year, still no word on who won the contest. I saw our fiercest competitor 2 weeks ago and she said she hasn't heard anything either. She has been checking the website obsessively. We got the newsletter yesterday, but no news about the lights competition, how very disappointing! Oh well, we enjoy doing it, and that is all that matters!

Visiting

January is going to be a busy month for us. We had my Aunt and cousins visiting, they rented a little place off campus and they would come over and hang with us. They were here for New Year's Eve and they stayed until Wed. Here they are watching the Rose Bowl (we won't talk about it now though) I think the kids enjoyed playing with "uncle" Pete.
They definitely enjoyed "uncle" Pete's iPad and enjoyed "drawing" with "uncle" Jim.
We were able to go to the preschool and visit Gwen, she introduced her friends and we got to with her to the playground. Nate really enjoyed that.
He thinks he is a big kid!
Walking back to the car.
I didn't get a whole lot of pictures. Sadly I lent my battery to Jim so I got less pictures than I normally would have. We took the boys to a UNC basketball game, that was a lot of fun. Plus my cousins went to work and we cleaned out the attic and pulled down the inside Christmas stuff, I have most of the outside done. Now we just have to get the lights in boxes and the sorted toys, for toy rotation, into the attic. And then I just have to sneak the toys for donation into the trunk. Then we will be ready for our next visitor who arrives on Wednesday!