January times

Warning this is very long!
We started our New Year off with a bang! Alex had been begging for a long time to be able to stay up until midnight on New Years Eve. So we decided to have a little family New Eve Years party. Jacob didn't get to join in all of the fun this year and went to bed at his regular time.

We made some goodies. Played lots of games, and then watched Home Alone 2. We thought for sure they would fall asleep before the movie ended but we were wrong. I guess it was too entertaining of a movie. So to our great Surprise they made it all the way to the New Year awake. We blew our horns, popped all of our fire works that shot out confetti and toasted to a good new year with some sparkling grape juice and sent them to bed. 3 hours later we were awakened by Alex with him throwing up. How fun. He now never wants to stay up until midnight again thinking that is what made him sick. I will say that ever since they have watched the home alone movie they think it is very fun to set "traps" up all over the house. I wish I would have taken some pictures of them, but I didn't.

One day this month they woke up very early and were being very grumpy so I sent them up to their room to take a nap which neither of them have done for years. It was so quite I thought that maybe a miracle had occurred and that they had actually fallen asleep. So I went to check on them. I looked in their beds and couldn't find them. I was starting to wonder if they ran away. And then I discovered them in their closet! They thought it would be fantastic to make a cozy bed in there, and no they never did take that nap!

We have started making the boys doing some before bedtime chores. One of them is vacuuming the living room since somehow we keep finding crumbs every night.

Jacob just wants to do everything he sees his brothers doing. It was so funny watching him try and Vacuum. He was only 14 months old in the picture. How many 14 month olds do you know that can vacuum???

Alex had a two hour delay one day from school and Mason had the day off already so we decided it would be a good day for all of us to play hookie. We hopped on the light rail to Baltimore.

Our 1st stop was the science center. My parents got us a year membership for our Christmas present this year. It is awesome, and you can use the membership at museums all over the USA. There is even 3 in Utah we can get into for free when we go for a visit.

Jacob loved the fossil dig. He cried when we took his tools away

All of the kids loved this and could watch it forever. If you look in the back of the picture you can see Alex and Mason fighting over who gets to turn the wheel. Very funny.

Jacob playing in the water.

Our next stop was the Baltimore aquarium.

During the winter months they have a Friday night special to get in for $8 instead of the whooping $25 that it normally costs.

The dolphin show was great, and was the kids favorite thing there.



The night we went they had special events planned and were filming for the show DC cupcakes on TLC. We got to sample the cupcakes and they were delicious. They had kimono dragon dancers and music it was fun.

This dragoon was made completely out of cupcakes.

We pretty sure that Mason will be on the show. He was the only one standing by the dragoon and about 5 camera men were zooming in on him as he stuck his finger in a cupcake licked it and said " he is yummy let's eat him!" It was very cute. So if anyone watches this show and sees it please let us know! We don't have TV.

Before we left we got to watch the hula dancers who were fabulous! We did of course also did enjoy seeing all of the fish and sea life.

We have had a ton of snow this month. Alex has already had a straight whole entire week off of school because of it.

Jacob not so fond of being out in the snow. I think he doesn't like all of the gear he has to wear and all he did was cry. So now I just stay inside with him and send the older ones out.

One day Alex and Mason actually spent an entire 3 hours out playing. I got quite a bit done that day.

We watched the movie Cool Runings and the boys thought they had to try ice skating. I need to stop letting my kids watch movies. They get all of these crazy ideas!

Getting all their gear on.

I thought as I was driving there that I was a crazy woman. I for sure thought it was going to be impossible to help both boys with just myself and I thought for sure Mason would be crying the majority of the time. I was wrong it actually worked out fine. Alex was tall enough to hold on to the edge, and Mason didn't cry once.

I did have to pick them up I am sure like 500 times. So to say the least my legs and arms were very sore the next day.

By the end they were very confident and did great but were pretty worn out. On the way home both of them said they never wanted to go ice skating again. The very next day the asked if we could go ice skating. ha!