Happy 2nd Birthday Twins!!

M & M just had their 2nd birthday and are officially 2, even though they have been acting like it for a while. We had a birthday party with most of our family to celebrate. As usual, it was CRAZY!!!
My family room started out clean and is now just as messy as before, but now we have more toys to get out. The hit of the party is a train table that we got them that is a lot bigger than I thought. It now takes up half our family room. I can't wait for the excitement to wear off so it can go downstairs.


Nate and I are kind of dumb because we got them cool presents, but we should have realized that they don't really care and that their favorite thing that they still play with from Christmas is this box. The best game is "3 kids in a box."

Here is M & M with their cupcakes. We didn't put all the cupcakes out because the blowing out of the candles tends to be really "spitty."
Overall, it was a great party with lots of fun. Again, the offer still stands if you want to come hang out with a 3 year old and two 2 year olds. It is FUN!!


I also wanted to add another funny picture of the kids right after a bath. Aren't they cute?

Natalie, I feel your pain!!

This post is for my friend Natalie who is 38 weeks pregnant. This picture was of me the day before I was induced at 38 1/2 weeks pregnant with twins who weighed 6 lbs 8 oz and 6 lbs 7 oz.

Natalie, hang in there. Your almost through!!

More Random and Hilarious Pictures

I don't really have anything specific to write about, but we have some recent hilarious pictures.

Below is Maisey with her first hair-do. Poor girl is almost 2 years old and barely has enough hair to fit in a tiny "pony tail".

Below are pictures of Maisey and McKay. They found our headlamps and loved chasing each around in the dark. They were amazed by the light.


Here is Elias, Maisey and McKay after a trip to King's in which I bribed them to be good all day. Elias and McKay have the same monster trucks so they can't fight over them, I thought so I thought, but it backfired on me because now they both want them all. Maisey is wearing her princess tiara, earrings and carrying her wand, which all got broken in the first 5 minutes. At least the bribing worked a little bit and they were good for the first part of the day.



The final picture is of Maisey getting ready to go outside. Notice her boots. She has one pink cowboy boot and one black irrigating boot. She also is still in her PJs. She really has as much fashion sense as her mom.

Why living in a 100 year old house sometimes isn't that great

I usually love living in our old house, but sometimes it isn't that great. Nathan had the week between Christmas and New Year's off so I decided it was time we finish the remodeling of the upstairs bathroom we started last spring. Nathan was starting school on the 5th so I figured it was now or never. I started to rip the wallpaper down last spring and the walls underneath were a mess. We needed to replaster most spots were the wallpaper took off the wall and left big holes. That took 3 different mudding and sanding tries to get it right. Then the window casing was the next project. There was thick white glossy paint on it that was chipping in lots of places. We knew that there was lead paint at least one time on there, so comes our problem. If you research on the internet, lead paint is very bad and so is removing it. To sand it, you are not supposed to have kids in the house and are supposed to pay a professional lots of money which we don't have. That left us with chemical strippers. It took Nate 3 days and 3 different applications of stripper to get it off. See below for the intermediate phase.

See below for the final phase before we gave up and get ready to repaint it. We didn't leave the wood color because it wouldn't have matched the rest of the new trim in the room. It is beautiful wood though.



So we finally finished stripping it and are in the process of repainting it WHITE, the same color it was before we started!!! At least you can see the detail and we didn't have to sand the chipped spots and cause brain damaged children.

We still didn't finish the bathroom! It is primed and the trim painted. I will post finished pictures when we get it finished (in another year.) If anyone has a miracle stripper for lead paint, please let us know.

Christmas Morning

It's official, we made it through Christmas with no major accidents. We had a great time, ate too much food and got too much stuff. Elias keeps telling us we should give our old toys away. I need to listen to him and not think of how much money the toys cost us so we can't just give them away.

On the 23rd, we had our annual Nalder party with a guest appearance by Santa himself. Elias was amazed that Santa already knew that he wanted a Mr Potatohead. McKay went right up to him, but kept looking at him like Santa was crazy. Maisey was last and had been crying ever since he came in. When I set her on his lap, she jumped off like a scared cat while screaming "Mommy, Mommy." I'm sure that she is now tramatized for life and will never see a Santa without crying, but what would Christmas with out that.



Christmas morning was so fun. I think it's much more fun with kids and seeing their amazement that Santa brought them toys for no real reason. Elias is just beginning to figure it out. I am going to miss being able to threaten to call Santa if he's not good. Anyway, as soon as they looked at their toys, they were trying to take someone else's toys and so the fighting began. It still hasn't really stopped yet. They may play together for a minute, but then World War III breaks out. I find this amazing since we now have doubled our toy count. Why must everyone want the same toy at the same time. After they found the gifts from Santa, it was time to open presents. McKay especially could care less. He was too busy playing with the old toys. Nate and I ended up opening a lot of the presents ourselves. Can you say too many presents? It was still so much fun and I can't wait to do it again next year.



Below is a list of the best/worst toys of Christmas 2008. It is more for my future benefit than yours. The favorite toys seem to be:

Cars Scooter
Grocery cart with plastic food that we all have to pretend eat
Toy garage
Toy car and tractors
Pink Cowboy Boots -For Maisey, which she absolutely loves
Dolls
Lightning McQueen Remote Control Car
Microphone


Things they could care less about:

Matching frog backpacks
Clothes
Gloves
Fireman jackets
Books
Gloves
Balls
Chocolate
Kid sized bread pans
Coats

Random Thoughts with Really Cute Pictures

I just downloaded some pictures onto my computer and thought they were so cute that they needed to be on the blog.

Isn't this the cutest little girl. She just looks so peaceful. I also love it because she is asleep and quiet.
















This is a picture of Elias in our giant pile of leaves. Isn't he the picture of happiness. I sometimes wish I was this carefree.





















This is a picture of the kids playing on our bed. They love to play hide under the covers over and over. It least they are all happy and playing together.















They really are friends. People ask me all the time if this stage of life is easier than when they were little babies. I think that it is way more fun, but also more difficult. They now have opinions and have tantrums when they don't get what they want.

When I looked at these pictures I think that they know Santa is coming soon and are on their best behavior. They are so cute and innocent. It also could be that in the heat of a tantrum or fight I don't have time to find a camera. Sorry for the bragging, but I couldn't help it.

Park City Adventure

Well, we finally did it. We took all 3 kids for an overnight stay at a condo in Park City. Normally, we would not do this because we can't leave the kids overnight, but the allure of a free condo and $50 convinced us. All we had to do was go on a short tour. Elias could go to the kids club and the twins could come with us and would be fine. Elias loved the club. The twins didn't love it so much but saved us from having to hear too much how a condo would be great for us and we could leave it to them when we die. I think the salesperson was actually scared of the condo being ruined if we actually stayed for a week, so he didn't push too hard. It also could have been that Maisey had a stinky diaper and he couldn't take it anymore.

Anyway, we made it out with our life savings still intact and our $50. We were now 2nd class citizens because we didn't buy, but we still had a great time. We stayed in a very small one bedroom condo with lots of doors that were slammed many, many times while we were there. We swam in the pool and jumped on the bed with no accidents. We may even be up to actually going on a vacation now.

After we checked out, we went geocaching which is one of our favorite activities. Check it out at
www.geocaching.com
It is like a treasure hunt for everyone in the whole family.

We then headed for home with tired kids and a new sense of appreciation for our own home where we can be as loud as we want without neighbors 2 feet away.

Like everyone else, we are getting excited for Christmas, but still don't have a tree up. We are not sure what to do because it would only be minutes before the twins pulled on their heads. If anyone has suggestions, please let us know. We may have to only have the Fisher Price nativity set as our only decoration this year and our standard Santa on the chimney.

Merry Christmas!!