happy birthday zoe!

Zoe turned 3 years old on January 6th :)
We had a party at Space Aliens when we were in Minnesota and we celebrated on her birthday when we were back home in Montana.

(she is smelling the strawberry shortcake dolls)

here, they are playing :)

christmas in minnesota

We had a full two-week christmas vacation in Montana, so we drove back to Minnesota on the 18th with good weather and made good time (the way home was another story...interstate closed in ND extended our stay and when it re-opened it was a rough and icy ride taking over 20 hours, but we made it home safe!)

Sue and I made krumkake (pronounced kroom-kaka)

dad and Jamie made rosettes

mom dipped krumkake in chocolate

Ava acted silly

Zoe taste-tested the chocolate :)

Jamie was happy to catch his limit in crappies a couple times and Heather got to go ice fishing for the first time too

The only things on Zoe's list: dresses, skirts, leggins', and feety tights. She's 3. No toys. Just clothes. She got plenty of them too because, she is still in her "I don't like pants!" phase which started over a year ago. Now that she has enough dresses and skirts and leggings, and tights, no more arguing about getting dressed! Now, however, she does like to mix and match her own outfits which means I do have to cringe sometimes at the combinations she chooses, but I'm getting better about that. She definitely has her own ideas about what looks right (a little more extreme than Ava's one pink, one blue flip flop style), I just need to look at it as being creative, right?

here, the girls are sprinkling magic reindeer food, so the reindeer will find grama and grampa's house. (notice Zoe is not wearing pants even as pajamas or outside)

We read a silly book called Aliens Love Panta Claus...The aliens travel with Santa and deliver underpants to kids and put them on the christmas tree. When we woke up christmas morning, guess what was all over our tree? UNDERPANTS!!!!

Ava and Zoe couldn't get enough ERICA time!!!! Boy, do they miss her now! :(

oh, christmas tree

Since we left our big tree in MN due to storage space in our MT apartment, and since we would be going to MN for christmas and it wouldn't make sense to buy a real tree only to have it die while we were gone, we bought a teeny-tiny little tree for the girls to decorate in their room. Zoe love, love, loves her snowbaby snuggled-in-a-blankie ornament so much that she sneaked out of bed, took it off the tree and slept with it at night. :)

ice skating

Ava took a 6-week session of ice skating lessons

headstands and kickovers

Ava practiced her headstands and kick-overs in the hallway last November:

Daddy decided to give it a try too :)

happy halloween?

I haven't updated our blog in the past 4 months! I can't use the excuse that I'm still vacuuming pumpkin seeds and NERDS out of the carpet anymore...hmmm, I guess I just got lazy? I caught a little flack when we were home at christmas, and I thought I'd update while I was off on christmas break, but that didn't happen either! Oh, well, here is our halloween:









We had lots of opportunities for dress-up: school party (Ava got year 3 out of the Little Mermaid), Our daycare invited us to a party (Ava was the cheerleader & Zoe was Thumbelina), and Trick-or-Treating Ava was a witch and Zoe was the cheerleader (Total money spent this year...zero dollars!...that means we have quite the selection in our dress-up clothes!)

the dress

I took the annual pictures of the girls wearing my wedding dress when we were at the park a week ago...

my favorite of zoe...looks like its right out of a bridal magazine!

my favorite of ava...so dainty!