Visit to Chicago

A couple of weeks ago, we hopped on a plane to Chicago so that I could participate in a twin study with Heidi, and we could all visit Uncle Matt.  Since I was separated from the family for the first day of the trip, the only pictures we have are from our trip the Navy Pier.

While in Chicago, we met up with our good friends the Newmans, who are Wisconsinites.  This is their daughter Karis riding the pier's ferris wheel with Micah.

Daddy and Aunt Heidi (not pictured) also braved the cold temps to make the ride.

A view of downtown.  If memory serves, this is the Hancock tower.

Chicago's water in winter...

...Clearwater's water in winter.  You know, just for comparison.

Taking a ride on Thomas at the Navy Pier. 

Liam hangs with Uncle Matt.

Karis, Micah, Liam, and Timothy, who was named after Tim.  This was the best one of all four of them.  At least in this one they're all sort of looking in the same directions and no one has their entire body on the table!

Me and the boys. See, I was there!

Aunt Heidi was every kid's best friend on the trip because she had her iPad wherever we went.  Sorry, Newmans, but I think that might now be on Karis's birthday wish list!

Wordless Wednesday

Construction begins

Something I'll have to post later is pictures of the groundbreaking on the construction at First Pres.  It was the blog entry I was working on when I ran into the space issue.  But for now, here is the trackhoe (as Micah tells me it's called and believe me - he knows his trucks!) tearing down Campbell Hall and starting the demolition so we can start the construction!

Tim took Micah to school early that day so he could watch a little bit.

Our boy with the big eyes couldn't get enough of all the fun demolition.

Somewhere in there was a Super Bowl

Somewhere in the time I lost not blogging, there was a Super Bowl.  And our beloved black and gold made it to the big game!  We hosted a little get-together to celebrate.  Micah and Liam practiced their best football moves - Micah puts Liam in a headlock, Liam goes to gouge out Micah's eyes.  It's all very steel curtain.

They came together to motion for a touchdown!

We were ready outside the house...

...and inside the house.

Micah was celebrating with some giant yellow feet.

Liam celebrated with a pig nose at the door.

And all of the Steeler fans in our house came together for a group shot.  Yeah, this was the best one out of the bunch we took.  At least you know where our loyalties are!!

P.S. I dedicate this post to my good friend Barbara, who remains a die-hard Cleveland fan, although no one knows why and even her children have defected to being fans of better teams.  Barbara, you can live vicariously through us so that, sometime in your lifetime, you will know what it's like to be fans of a great franchise.  With six Super Bowl rings. I'm just saying. Are we still on for coffee? :)

Totally in sync?

For all of the times they disagree on whose turn it is with a certain toy or who gets to go with which parent or whether or not it's okay to say, "night-night" in the morning, sometimes they really are in sync.  I didn't notice the parallels until Tim pointed them out.  Pretty funny though.

What we've been doing...

After hours of sorting pictures and deleting posts and then trying to delete only the pictures that went with the posts, I discovered this afternoon that with one click of the mouse and a mere $5 a year, I could get an additional 20GB of storage.  I went from having used 97% of my storage (again, that was after hours of deleting) to using 4.64% of my storage.  Totally worth the $5.  Now I can get back to blogging!!
So what have we been doing during the time away from the web?  Well, we've been having fun with our new blocks, using them to make "special seats", among other things.  Thanks, Aunt Laraine and Uncle Bill!

 

Perfect for watching football.

Micah has been practicing writing his name...

...and getting pretty good at it, as you can see!

We've discovered the joys of Jello sugar-free pudding as our "special snack" for evenings of days that they have been good.

We've discovered new ways to sleep.  Yes, Liam is under there, and yes, his room is pitch black at night with the exception of that teeny night-light which is all of a watt and a half, I think.  It only looks bright because of the flash, but maybe even that night-light is too much for him!

We got haircuts because we probably shouldn't be able to do this in the bathtub.

Mum-Mum and Pop-Pop gave the family an iPad for Christmas.  It was a wonderful surprise, and the boys think it is their toy.  At 21 months, Liam has already mastered it.  Scary, huh?

We've fallen asleep in the car while eating goldfish, even clutching several in our hands.

We have played with bubbles.  Seriously, how fantastic is this picture?!?!

Oh, and we did it all looking super-cute!

I am really really really happy to be back.  Liam's first year book turned out so much better than I had even dreamed, and all of you bloggers out there should definitely consider using Blurb.com (an unpaid endorsement!) to publish your entries in book form.  Super easy to use, extremely well-priced, and a beautiful book to keep forever.
We have lots more that we did - that was just a taste.  There's much more to come so stay tuned!!

Frustrations continue

Grrr. So I spent a good chunk of my free time the last few weeks getting Liam's book done so I could blog again.  I spent time this week, after the book was ordered, going through old posts and beginning to delete them from the blog.  I uploaded new pictures and diligently shrank all the ones that I want to put on our blog and put them in their own separate folder.  I was practically giddy tonight to post a new blog entry.  Foiled again.
Listen up, Blogspoters: it turns out that Google stores all your photos in this Picasa Web Albums online storage program.  Who knew?  And deleting your posts isn't enough to erase the pictures from your account.  You have to go into Picasa Web Albums and delete them there too, which can take up to 24 hours to remove them from your blog.  The worst part?  There is literally no rhyme or reason as to how my photographs are organized.  So I'm constantly going back to my blog to try to figure out which picture is in which post and since I deleted 20 posts last night, I have no idea what pictures were in them. 
Bottom line?  No new post tonight.  I just don't have any more energy for this on a Thursday night.  Hopefully this weekend.  It is the big game after all and we need a family picture in our Steelers gear!  And I'm going CRAZY not blogging!!!

We're ba-ack

Liam's book is FINALLY done!  Now I can erase entries and blog freely again!!!  I'm so excited to be back. I found that I really missed the exercise of recording our lives on a regular basis.  It's therapeutic for me, and helps me to process all the little moments before they recess to the dark corners of my mind.

We did lots of things while we were absent from the blogging world, and you'll see pics of those in the next post.  Until then, know that Liam's book looks beautiful - thank you, Blurb!  I can't wait to get it back from the printer!

By the way, I'm updating the blog background and header monthly.  Forgive the overly feminine February - it's really the only time I can get away with so much girly color in a house full of boys!