Penn State Chics Dig Nerds

Amie turned 2 years old last week!  She is unofficially 2 ft 9 1/2 inches tall.  So if you follow the theory that she is not half of the height she will be as an adult, that means she will be 5 ft 7 inches tall. We celebrated her birthday last Friday evening with my mom and dad coming over for dinner. Amie did well blowing out her candles.  Brady in particular was extremely excited for Amie.  I let Natalee and Brady help her out with the candles.  Brady blew out one, buy Amie managed to blow strong enough to get the other one out. Upon looking at this picture, I realize the cake looks really lopsided.  However, in reality it was not lopsided at all!  Three layers of pumpkin cake with cream cheese icing.  Yum! The icing was finger licking good. Brady was so excited that he ate his big piece of cake in nano seconds.  Apparently, I need to remind him to slow down for his own upcoming birthday! I just thought this was a funny...

Here's Brady last night, obviously having fun outside :) We did a lot of snow jumping off of the side of the driveway last night.  It was snowing so much that the pictures didn't turn out very good. This morning, they spotted deep, undisturbed snow in the front yard, which became a great playground. Having snow like this makes me miss Meg.  She would have loved playing and romping in the snow. Amie obviously loved it. The kids are pretty much level with the top of our mailbox here.  Then, we did some snow jumping off of our back driveway.  Remember, this is normally a high drop off here, and we could walk right out onto the snow without a problem. The snow is just too deep for Amie.  She cannot walk in it, so I end up carrying her everywhere.  She wants to play in it, so she finds it frustrating.  I think if it wasn't for the ice underneath she may be better off. During Amie's nap, we chocolate dipped some strawberrie...

Since it snowed a lot more today, I let Amie open her birthday present from Aunt Bev a little early.  She was tickled with her sled-- it looks like Natalee's!  Although, there is one difference.  It has a made in USA sticker on it.  I tried looking for rope to tie onto the sled so that she could pull it up the hill herself.  I couldn't find any, so I tried to get her to switch with Natalee.  She would have NONE of that!  haha! She insisted that she was going to use her sled.  I finally pried the rope off of Brady's sled and attached it to Amie's sled.  So, all was well again! We went out to sled during the middle of this noreaster snowstorm.  When we were out there, we had 6 inches of new snow.  It's snowing heavier now, though.  It doesn't look like the storm has intentions of leaving up any time soon.  Do you notice who is missing?  Brady refused to come outside.  He was upset/insulted when Natalee sto...

Monday's snowstorm gave us a few more inches of snow.  This time, it was extremely wet snow.  Which meant it packed really well.  That's when I wished I still had my old metal bread pan to make snow bricks.  They still had a lot of fun building things with the snow.  Then they started sliding down both of the slides.  They discovered that when they have snowpants on and the slides have snow/water on them, they can go down really quickly.  Of course, we did some sledding, too.  And, we went down fairly well, although not as quickly as sometimes. Amie absolutely LOVES sledding.  I finally convinced her to use the rope and pull her own sled back up the hill.  Thank goodness! Currently, Amie doesn't have her own sled.  But, her big sister was really nice and let her sled down the hill at the same time. They went sledding down the hill together many times. The snow on Wednesday kind of ruined ...

 Two Saturdays ago, we took the kids to Trough Creek State Park.  I heard a report that Rainbow Falls had a lot of icicles.  Since it was finally out of single digit or below temps (although not much warmer), we took the kids out for short hike.  We should have worn our boots!  What were we thinking??? This is the lower portion of Rainbow Falls. All ice.  How cool is that?  After their mother made them stop for so many pictures, the kids started to complain of coldness. Brady looks cold!     Even the creek itself was partially frozen.  This is a fairly fast moving creek in some parts. It looked like it had frozen waves. It was fun and pretty.  But next time we need to be smarter and wear boots!

Amie "helped" her gram make ham pot pie last weekend by cutting noodles.

Through the generosity of a friend at church, Brady has a Wrinkles again! His imagination has been going strong since Wrinkles return. And just look at Brady's face- his eyes were shining with happiness after she dropped Wrinkles off. (FYI- Wrinkles is his beanie dog that has been missing SOMEWHERE since September. We've looked everywhere for him on a daily basis. Brady could hear him, but he wouldn't come out. We even celebrated his birthday multiple times since his disappearance.)