Silly Katie

This past week has been BUSY. Mark and I had our nanny come all day last Friday and we went Christmas shopping. Then Saturday we drove to West Virginia to meet my brother to buy a car from him. We have all been crammed in my Jeep Cherokee--which I love, but it doesn't hold 3 car seats very well. Joey was selling his Yukon so we bought it from him. We had no idea what we had been missing-there is so much space! The car seats don't even touch each other! But my favorite feature is the heated seats.

In the name of being silly, again. Katie decided to put on some of Marcus' clothes. I tried not to laugh, because I'm sure these clothes will never fit Marcus again but I had to take some pictures.

Other then being silly, Katie's other favorite characteristic is that she a good sister. Here are some moments we caught during this past week.

Marcus and Addy were in their little seats and Katie decided to have story time. They are both actually paying attention!

Katie was playing with her baby doll in our bed. We laid Addy in there and she let Addy play too. Addy was so happy to be included in Katie's world.

We made Christmas cookies this week. Katie was in heaven.

Step 1. Eat the batter

Step 2. Lick the frosting

Step 3. Take them to the neighbors

I told everyone to eat at their own risk.

Getting ready

Katie and I decorated for Christmas this week, she loves the tree and the lights. Every morning when she gets up she asks to turn on the lights.

This will be the first Christmas that we are spending at our home so we are working on starting some Christmas traditions, but aren't quite sure what we want to do. We need to start with a bigger tree but can't agree on fake or real. I grew up cutting down our own in our forest and dragging it home, and Mark grew up with a fake one that made no mess and had no pretty smell. Needless to say we both think the way we were raised was right. And since we can't agree we are going one more year with our fake, tiny, we-don't-spend-Christmas-here tree.

We also need to go Christmas shopping but can't find time for us both to get out--Mark is in the middle of finals--so we are going to be a typical American family and shop the Saturday before Christmas.

On another note-Katie is silly and she likes to remind me. She decided that Mr. Potato Head's mouth looked better in her own, then when I started taking pictures she wanted me to have one of my own.

We're back

Ok, so we took a long break from the whole blogging thing, but we are back.

Over the past month life got a little crazy.

First, in an effort to get the twins to sleep longer then 3 hours at a time we moved Marcus out of the same bed as Addison. Doing this we discovered that Addy is an angel and she sleeps right through the night--I mean until 7:30-8:00AM! After a little work Marcus is now only waking up around 5:30AM and then cries for a few mins and then is up around 7:00AM. You would think that we would be less tired with getting almost 8 hours of sleep but for some reason we are still exhausted. Oh well, someday.

We started using the bumbo seat, Marcus doesn't love it but Addy does

Also, because we are putting our house up for sale in this wonderful market we decided we better fix the kitchen, something we have been planning on since we moved in but haven't gotten around to. We replaced the cracking tile, repainted the cabinets (I did this), painted the walls a perfect green color and put in a dishwasher. The kitchen finally matches the rest of the house. I spent a work week upstairs with all 3 kids while it was being remodeled.

For those of you who knew what it looked like before here is the after--

the tile is a grey color

A couple weeks ago my little sister Bethany got her mission call to Rome, Italy!!!

During this past month, Marcus and Addison started smiling. They are so cute! Addy always smiles at me when I start to get mad at her for not eating. I really try not to smile back so she can tell I mean business but she is so cute.

Marcus was the first one to smile and coo

And lastly, we decided last minute to fly to Utah for Thanksgiving. Most of Mark's family hadn't met the twins (mine will meet them at Christmas) and this will probably be the last year we can travel for the holiday's so we did it. Katie was so excited for the plane ride, she talked about it for weeks ahead of time. Traveling with 3 kids under 2 was lots of fun. We were delayed in Pittsburgh and ended up missing our connecting flight by 10 mins and had to wait another couple hours. Luckily they gave us food vouchers and we sat in a restaurant during that time eating for free.

We had a lot of fun in Utah. Some of the highlights for Katie were watching Uncle Mike ride a bull, feeding horses with Uncle Mike (anything with Uncle Mike), playing with her cousin Nick, and playing with play dough with Grammy and Grandpa.

For Marcus and Addy it was Aunt Emily and Aunt Bethany (she came down from BYU-I to spend Thanksgiving with me!) holding them the whole time and getting lots of smiles out of them, cuddles with Aunt Kara and the flash from Aunt Rachel's camera (haha).

For me and Mark it was CAFE RIO!

Katie and Nick watching Mike ride the bull



Feeding the horses

Thanksgiving day

Nick and Rachel thaught her how to put olives on her fingers

My mom gave me the adorable outfits that the twins have on

Sunday

On the trip home our 8:10PM layover flight was delayed until 11:30PM. There was a 9:40PM flight that we tried to get on. They told us it was full, but Mark made our plea and they gave tickets 1A and B and 2B. We were thinking it must be a small plane, but no, when we got on the plane and saw our big seats...we realized we were in FIRST CLASS! I'm sure no one else up there was as excited about it as us, but hey!

November 13th--Happy Birthday Mark

Top 4 Reasons We Love Daddy

1. He is fun to "hold"

2. He gets up with us kids at night because Mommy sleeps through it

3. He likes to have dance parties with us

4. He got a good job so he can spoil all his girls

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARK DANIEL!

Our little Flower (and Pumpkin and Hotdog!)

Well the big day has come and gone. Katie had a blast. She was so excited to dress up in her costume. I had told her that I would paint a ladybug on her face last week so she was very excited to be a complete flower.

Addy is the pumpkin and Marcus is the hotdog.

Katie and Carson

Aunt Heather, Aunt Flossie and Cousin Carson came up to go trick-or-treating with us. Katie had a blast hanging out with him for the weekend.

One happy family!

It took Katie about 2 houses to figure out how this whole thing works. She was not shy at all about walking up and and taking the candy. We had Marcus in a stroller and I carried Addy in this fabulous sling that I made. We live in the best neighborhood for trick-or-treating. We only made it through a few blocks before we had too much candy.


Katie and her bowl of candy that Dad & Mom will end up eating

Here are some other random shots from this weekend.

Katie and Mark playing ball outside .

They are so cool in their hats!

Church today.

We just thought that Addy looked so cute in this headband.

Shout out to Bethany!

This is the dress she brought home for Katie from China.

Daily life

Well, I think that we are settled into a pattern, it doesn't make us any less tired but... at least we know what to expect. Marcus did give us a little scare with some stomach problems on Tuesday and had to go back to the the doctor. They changed his milk and he is fine now, but they weighed him again, last Fri he was 7lbs 15oz and Tuesday he was 8lbs 6oz!
(And no, they have not started sleeping longer at night, but we love them anyway.)

Here are some highlights from the week.

Marcus and Addy passed out when they should be doing tummy time.

The amazing big sister!
Addy was crying so Katie held her on her belly and Addy calmed down right away.

Katie reading a bedtime story to Addy and Marcus

This weekend was filled with some fun fall activities for Katie. While none of these are a first for her, this is the first time she will actually be able to remember having done it, or at least be able to talk about it for the next few months.

Thursday

Katie and I went outside and raked the backyard and played in the leaves. Katie made a bed for us to sleep in and even made some covers so we were toasty warm.

Saturday

During the day Katie went with Mark to the Zooboo at the Pittsburgh Zoo, the zoo is less than a mile from our house. She dressed up and got to trick-or-treat with the animals. We are not posting pictures of her awesome costume because we don't want to ruin the surprise of the big day coming up on Friday.

In the evening some of our law school friends came over and we had our annual pumpkin carving party. Katie got to stay up a little later and was in heaven helping everyone with all the sticky pumpkin guts.

Staying out of the way of the knife

Helping clean out one of the pumpkins

The final result!

Sunday
Marcus and Addison's first Sunday at church. Luckily we don't have church until 1 pm so I had all day to get everything together. We actaully made it on time and everyone, including Katie, were angels for the first meeting. Wow, I can't believe we have three kids!

We didn't get to take pictures until after church, I promise Mark doesn't wear t-shirts to church

(Ok so church wasn't a memorable fall activity for Katie but she did hear music coming "out of the sky" when she left sacrement meeting to use the bathroom and learned what a speaker was. She hasn't stopped pointing them out since. )

...

We have officially watched all 4 seasons of Grey's Anatomy in the past month. I feel like I have a new set of friends. Katie is asking us right now to watch more. (I promise that she just knows the name and that she doesn't really watch the show.) We are now started on Lost... The point is that we spend a lot of time sitting on the floor feeding babies and we are watching TV shows that we never watched before. We also got DVR so that we can record shows, so that at midnight and 5am we have something to do other then fall asleep sitting up. If you want to know what shows are good and which aren't, just ask us, we know! I am so sick of TV. I can't wait to not have time to watch anything again.



We went to the doctor on Friday. It was a good visit. Everything is great. Addison was 8 lbs 2 oz and 20 1/2 ins long; and Marcus was 7 lbs 15 oz and 21 ins long.

We're tired

Well, the twins will be four weeks on Tues, but are still eating every three hours...all night long. We are so tired! We are hoping that this will be the magic week that they start sleeping just a little bit more.

This week was fun because my parents and my little sister Gabby came to visit. Mark and I took advantage and got out of the house. Thursday we went to do some shopping and even went to a movie--we figured it will be the last one for a really long time.

Katie is sitting in her baby doll pack n' play while "her mommy" was feeding her

Katie was in heaven because she had someone her age to play with for four straight days. Every morning she woke up and asked when Gabby was coming over. She ignored us most of the time.

Friday we went to the zoo, of course in the craziness of getting 3 kids ready I forgot the camera so when my mom emails me her pictures I will add them. Marcus and Addy were little angels the whole time.

The weather the last half of this week has been a little reminder of summer so we have been trying to get out as much as possible. We took Marcus and Addy out with us tonight, they didn't like it as much as the rest of us did.

Pluggin along

Well, we survived our first week home, and Mark and I even survived being with all 3 kids for the last few days. Luckily, 3rd year of Law School isn't to bad (that and Mark has a job, so the pressure isn't there--did I mention that he accepted at Dechert in Charlotte where he worked this summer!) so he is home quite a bit and doing half of everything. Our plan of attack includes me going to bed at 9-10 pm (yeah, lots of fun) and he puts them down around midnight and then does the 3 am feeding. I get up with them around 5-6am and am up for the morning, and Mark sleeps until 10ish. It isn't tons of fun but at least we are both able to get more 2 1/2 hrs of sleep at a time. Someday they will sleep longer then 3 hours at a time.

We took them to a two-week weight check, while we had Eileen to stay here with Katie. Addy was 6lbs 14oz and Marcus was 6lbs 8oz and taller then her.

They keep each other awake by hitting each other with their flailing arms

Marcus is trying to suck on Addy's arm here

Katie is officially the best big sister ever. She doesn't seem to be jealous, she just loves her brother and sister. She always gives them hugs and kisses and wants to hold them. I am so proud of her. It is really nice having someone around who wants to get the diapers and wipes or the blanket or whatever.

Katie insisted on feeding Marcus. It didn't last long though because she
kept letting the bottle drop so that he was sucking air