The kids have learned the joys of slap jack!  Now Hayden is constantly begging to play games.  Derrick is a good daddy and obliges whenever he can.  The other day he even made time for the kids before he had to go into school.

 CHEESE!

These kids are sleeping in the same room now.  It all started with Halle and her refusal to sleep.  Oh, how I miss her crib.  Every night was a fight to get her to stay in her bed.  Finally, one night I asked her if she wanted to sleep in her bed or Hayden's bed.  She said Hayden's bed.  He sleeps in our old queen bed, so there is plenty of room for both of them.  She wanted to be there every night after that.  She just needed her big brother! I am really surprised sometimes at how close those two are.  It shows by how they play and how they fight.

One night soon after, Halle was a little scared.  She went over to Hayden's side of the bed to cuddle with him.  He was glad to hold her and I could hear him telling her stories.  He would say, "When you were a little baby I used to hold you and tickle you."  And Halle would just laugh and giggle.  It was so sweet!  (Even if it wasn't 5 minutes later I had to go and break up a fight!)

Well we decided if they were going to sleep in the same bed we should make better use of the space in our house.  We moved the queen bed and both dressers into Halle's room.  Hayden's old room became the office with all my craft supplies (formerly in my bedroom) and our computer desk (formerly in the upstairs living room).  All the toys found a new home in the upstairs living room (formerly spread all over the house).  My room is clean and pretty with only our bed, nightstands, my dresser, and the rocking chair.  I love it!  It feels so good in our house. It's easier to keep clean, and my room is so nice now. Our room has always been the room where the junk gets piled so no one sees it, so it's wonderful to have a space that feels so peaceful.  And I just realized I never posted before and after pictures of our house, so I'll have to get on that!

 Halle is such a character!  She fell asleep on the couch one day (on top of the pile of laundry to be folded) after refusing to lay in her bed for so long I gave up.  This was only 5-10 minutes later. Silly lady. She is constantly making us laugh with her silly facial expressions and copying of her big brother.  In other fabulous news, she is POTTY TRAINED!!!  Yahoo!  Well, ok, she's mostly potty trained.  But at one accident a day and no signs of going back to diapers I am calling it good.  And she just barely turned two.  I'm so excited.  With the exception of night time, I have no children in diapers right now.  I get a break until the next one comes! Next is to work on the binky.  Right now it's only ok at night and naptime.  I am not ready to deal with that just yet though.

 And here is the "crazy boy," as he likes to refer to himself lately.  As in, "I'm just a little bit of a crazy boy today, huh mommy?"  He certainly makes this place more lively!  He got all those cars for Christmas. He also got a little carrying case for them which I thought he would love. But he really just likes to line them all up on the train tracks.  And wouldn't you know, he has just enough to fill up every inch of those things?  He put them on the floor one day and was just so excited that he could make a really long train instead of small circles like on the train table.  It's still his favorite toy.

So would you believe I took away every single toy of my kids' today?  Way too many messes, and not enough being responsible.  So now they have the books, and if they can keep the books cleaned up then they can earn back a few things at a time.  We even had them sorted into bins for easy cleanup.  The rule was that they could play with one bin of toys at a time, and clean them up before they moved on to something else.  Instead, they just dumped out every bin onto the floor and complained when it was time to clean them up.  Sigh.  I'm tired just thinking about those messes!  Wish me luck, when tomorrow all they have to play with are books and me!  I think I see some earning toys back by doing lots of chores in their future. 

(insert evil mean mom laugh here!)

I'm sure you heard about the ice storms here in the midwest.  There were supposed to be some bad storms.  It looked really windy, but I have to admit I was expecting more of a big deal.  That is, until we tried to dig out our driveway. (I guess I should be fair and say when I watched Derrick try to dig out the driveway hehe.)

This stuff is no fun!  And see what happened a few days later?  The sun came out and melted the top of it. Then it froze again.  Look to the right of my house.  Do you see how it looks like a skating rink there??  So weird. (and yes, our Christmas lights are still up.  Can't we just leave them there until it's warm outside?)

 I had some girls coming over that night, so Derrick was kind enough to shovel the front sidewalk for them.  This is the crazy ice!  He kept getting huge chunks of it.

 Ok, so that was just for effect.  This is the real size. HA!  I saw someone build a snowman with ice chunks like these by just stacking a whole bunch of them on top of each other like a snowman shaped tower.

 And it just stood straight up there!  He was out there forever trying to dig through this yucky stuff. Yes, he is holding that shovel like a bat, and yes he did bust that thing up.

And playing around a little. :)  Always buttering me up.  Even if he did make me put on shoes and skate along the scary ice to get a picture of it.  I love how sweet he is anyway.  So here's your happy Valentine from us!