what lurks under the oven drawer...not for the weak stomach!

this is SO embarrassing and disgusting, but i had to share this with all of you in order to raise awareness for the necessary task of cleaning out underneath of the oven drawer. just in case you can't tell what everything is, because of the massive amount of dustballs and dirt, here is an accurate account of what we found under the oven drawer this morning:

1. weston's flip flop

2. a centrum vitamin

3. a video game

4. a pencil

5. an eraser

6. 3 letter magnets

7. a plate from ella's tea party set

8. 2 books

9. a ninja ring

10. a pen

11. a rose from ella's tea party set

12. $.26

13. a fake gold coin

14. a suction bullet from one of weston's nerf guns

15. a clapper

16. a barbie fake cereal box

17. a straw

18. a cup top

19. a sorry game piece

20. and a piece of pink chalk

seriously, if this post can save lives, then i have done my job!:o)

this has got to stop!

seriously, i can't take it anymore!! it looks like a blizzard is coming down at our house right now, the kids are home from school---AGAIN---and the roads are too bad to go anywhere!! someone with a snowmobile, please come rescue me! and bring a babysitter because 2 straight weeks in the house with my kids is starting to drain me. the novelty and the fun of the snow has worn off and now i just want to get back to a normal schedule and life without snow and ice. does anyone else feel this way???

Snow Storm---->take 4!

last weekend we encountered another snow storm that kept the kids out of school all week except thursday. friday school was cancelled when the next round of snow moved in. this is what it looked like early on in the day today. it looks much worse now with another foot of snow on the ground (last week we had a foot of snow too!). my mom got finley and donovan last night, so my kids spent the majority of the day over there yesterday and today everyone headed across the street to my house to hit the slopes! we had so much fun sledding, making a snow fort, and sipping hot chocolate! we only wish avey could've been here:o(

there's nothing better than sled races during a blizzard!

mom is getting ready to go down for the first time.

weston and granny came zooming down the hill!

we all worked hard building this awesome snow fort that could fit all of us, but finley and dono stayed and helped me finish the fort after everyone else had gone inside. we were the "dedicated" few:o)

i let them decorate the snow fort with squeeze bottles full of water that i colored with food coloring. i love squeeze bottles!

all huddled up in the snow fort with some corn pops:o)

not sure why they all look so crazy eyed in this picture...all i said was "smile!"

Isn't he getting big??

this dog is growing at a freakishly fast rate!! i was not expecting him to get so big so fast! is it too late to return him?

if you look closely at this picture you can see the hole where weston lost on of his front teeth. it's so cute! the other one will probably fall out today. it is so wiggly!

The Kids First Attempt at Skiing 1/23/09

A few saturdays ago we decided to take the kids skiing since we never got to go on our vacation. So, we packed up the kids and headed to Massanutten which is only a little more than 2 hours from our house. We ate lunch on the way and got there around 2pm and signed up for the 4 hour ski. The kids took to it really well! By the end of the day, weston was skiing solo on the bunny slopes and ella was skiing in between chad's legs. She got a little whiny towards the end of the 4 hours because she didn't eat lunch when we stopped, so she was really hungry. A hungry ella makes for a really grouchy ella! We all had a great time and can't wait to head to the slopes again! ella and west heading up the conveyor belt to ski down the practice slopes again.

first time by herself!

skiing with dad...

i love this picture! such concentration:o)

weston skiing down the "big" practice slope. unfortunately, i didn't get any pics on the bunny slopes because i had to focus all of my attention on staying with weston and making sure he didn't get run over!

Letting our legs take a little break while we watch weston ski...