Grandma and Grandpa Visit

It's so fun to have visitors! Mom and Dad flew up on Thursday night to spend the weekend with us, and we had a great time. It was the perfect mixture of relaxing and enjoying busy activities. We shopped, had lots of coffee, had dinner with the girls, watched movies, ate big dinners, and spent lots of time with Michael, of course. It felt good to watch my parents enjoy him and all his new abilities since they hadn't seen him in two months. Michael now has two front bottom teeth and can crawl! I can barely sit down in a room before he's off to another place.

But the most fun thing we did this weekend was to visit the Children's Discovery Museum in uptown Normal. Sure, there are lots of activities for older kids, but Michael and his friend Miles found plenty to exhaust themselves. It was too cool!

The puppet theater was the perfect place for some family photos.

Now that we know how great that place is, we'll be back often! But for all the happiness they bring, family visits always make me miss my family even more.

Back On Track

I've been sick for 11 days now with a head cold. It has kept me from cleaning the house, doing school work, and most importantly, blogging. But so much has happened over the past few weeks; I barely remember the Snowpocalypse that I last blogged about! Let's see, I'll try to do a quick run-down and count on lots of pictures to tell the rest of the story.

First, Michael got his first haircut! This is what he used to look like:
And here's his new "big boy" look. He also got to hang out with his buddy Miles for a couple of play dates. It was so cute watching them try to hold hands and fight over toys!

For Valentine's Day, Danielle and I made lots of cookies. She had an owl cookie cutter, so we ended up with a whole passel of owls.

Michael, meanwhile, was busy hiding under the island.

Our friend Steve was really nice and watched Michael so that JD and I could go out for dinner on Valentine's. This weekend, we had a spike in temperatures (short-lived), so Beth, Danielle, and I took the opportunity to get outside. We had a little picnic and introduced Michael to playgrounds! He liked the swing but wasn't so sure about the slide.

We're really looking forward to Mom and Dad's visit this weekend, and Spring may really be just around the corner!

Snowpocalypse 2011

Well, I can't tell you how many inches of snow actually fell in the last 24 hours because all the wind caused areas of one foot to areas of over three feet. I can tell you that our driveway had twenty-seven inches of snow. I told JD that I could shovel it, and after five minutes I gave up. We hired a snow plow instead.