Museum just for me

We were able to make a couple of fun trips to the Children's Musuem during the yucky winter months.  We have such a wonderful museum, and Kayla really loves going.  Kayla is saving her money so we can go again!  I think Maren has already become a fan too.  The great thing about her is that when she gets exhausted, she'll just snooze in the stroller.  It makes life so much simpler.

Our first trip was at the very end of the holiday season, since the yule slide is always so much fun.  Here you can see Kayla racing down the slide, leaving Mamaw in her dust (if you look closely at the top right-hand corner of the picture).  Then you get the up-close shot of Mamaw and Maren.  And yes, she looks VERY frightened...and I'm not referring to Maren (sorry, Mom!)

While we were in the winter wonderland area, a "referee" decided to bust out a snowball fight.  Kayla was one of her participants as she described all of the rules.  She threw one of the puffy balls at Kayla to prove they were soft, and asked Kayla if it hurt.  To which Kayla said, "yes!"  I was cracking up.  Talk about your all-time backfires!

Even Maren joined the fray.

The next trip to the museum included the girls, Aaron, and me.  Here are a few pictures of Kayla at the Bob the Builder exhibit, which she was extremely excited to see (which I have to say was a little surprising!).

This picture starts a long string of pictures with Maren, not smiling.  Good luck catching this girl on film with a smile.  She actually is a very happy child, though these shots would make you think we were forcing her to play with all these fun things.

A "nice" attempt at a smile.

To balance out Bob the Builder, the museum has a Barbie exhibit.  Since I grew up LOVING to play with Barbies, this exhibit was near and dear to my heart.  Not only did I have my own Barbies, but I had a nice collection of my sisters old ones.  Ken in a navy blue jumpsuit was so awesome, and they had one on display!

Here is Maren was working the runway.  They had a little DJ mixing station where you could play several different songs, alter the volume, and mix them.  Kayla liked this part the best, while Maren enjoyed prancing around with her boa.  There were also cameras lined up along one side of the runway so kids could pretend to be photographers.  It was a lot of fun.

This is just one of those future blackmail pictures, that is unrelated to the Children's museum, but must have been taken a couple days after we went.  The curse of curly hair!

Snow Days

Since the girls aren't in school yet, we don't really have snow days, but we've been fortunate (or unfortunate) to have a lot of snow this winter, so the weekends were lots of fun. Aaron did an amazing job getting my dad's old 1978 Polaris snowmobile in great working condition. This made for a very fun winter.

Kayla tries to hide from the snowball fight, but daddy's just too quick.

This was Maren's first chance to really get out into the snow, and she loved it.  She threw a fit everytime Kayla and Aaron went out on the snowmobile without her.

Kayla makes a nice dive into the snow. Maren would have loved to chase after her, but her boots are about two times to big, and the snow was as deep as her legs are long!

Kayla had a fun time making snow angels.  One evening, Kayla was playing in the backyard while I was getting dinner ready.  As I looked out the window to check on her, I waved and could see her yelling something out to me.  While I don't have a picture of it, she had laid in a big snow drift to make an angel and got herself stuck!  I quickly pulled on my boots and dashed out in shorts and a t-shirt.  She was cracking up; I begged her not to do it again because I was frozen!