Lucy 4 3/4 years old

This might be my favorite recent picture of my beautiful little girl! :) We took these (and the ones of Sammy) on Valentine's Day.  The balloons were for a gift we made for Spencer but we had some fun with them first, taking some cute pictures with the kids.  Lucy is also wearing a new Valentine's Day skirt I made her. Cute, huh?

 

It's hard to believe this little one is getting so grown up.  She'll be 5 in just three months.  In fact, we registered her for kindergarten a couple of weeks ago.  We are both excited for her to go to the big school.  Maybe when it gets a little closer, I'll get more sentimental and weepy.

 

Lucy's been growing lately - a bunch of her clothes are starting to get a little short.  She's also acting more grown-up, more often.  She can be a really great helper around the house and with Sammy when she wants to.  She's learning more and more everyday - letter sounds, rhyming, that sort of thing.

 

She has quite the personality in that little body too - an opinionated, strong-willed one! I wonder where she gets that from? ;)

 

She likes to craft along with Mommy, play dress-up and barbies with friends, play choo-choos and turtles with Sammy, rough house, dance, and sing with Daddy, and read or color or draw by herself.

 

Sure love you Lucy!

Sammy 2 3/4 years old

 This little man is only 3 months away from being 3! I can't believe how much he's grown up.

 

He's definitely grown lately too and is in 3T clothes.  We started trying to potty train him at the beginning of January and he had a so-so interest.  Now he wants nothing to do with it. :( Hopefully soon!

 

 He has started to be able to reason lately and has turned into a little chatterbox - especially in the car.  I taught him the other day that we had to wait for a red light before we could go and that green means go, red means stop.  Now he's our backseat driver! He sleeps with a Thomas train he got for Christmas every night and asks for "Eyeball" too - though he seems to get misplaced pretty often.  Who's Eyeball? He's the horse from Toy Story - except his name is really Bullseye.  It just cracks me up that he calls him Eyeball though! He knows all his colors inside and out. He loves staying in his pajamas as long as possible.  And he's still obsessed with trains.

 

Sammy is still our little boy though.  He still takes naps wonderfully, sometimes even letting me know when he's ready for one.  He also always insists on snuggling with Mommy right after he wakes up.

 

He is a fun character to have in our family.

Snow Days, Sickness, and Lots of Inside Time

 I haven't blogged anything lately because, honestly, we haven't done much of anything lately! It's been a bit of a rough year so far at the Van Hoose household.  Here's a little glimpse of the past 6 weeks or so.

Every couple of weeks we've gotten a decent snowstorm - and an excuse to get out and make a snowman or two!

 We've also been quite sick.  Sammy wasn't feeling all that well during one of our snowman days and instead of coming out to play, stayed inside and pouted! Lucy is the only one that didn't get sick at all (knock on wood!). Spencer got the flu and missed a bunch of school. Sammy had a double ear infection and was sick off and on for three weeks, and I got a stomach bug and a cold. Combine that with truly frigid temperatures (the high one day in January was 13. 13!!), and it was a miserable month. Good riddance January!

 Back to the fun - we always had to get a picture of our finished creations. Do you like Lucy's pose? :)

 Sammy was up for this excursion.  Isn't he handsome?

 They were throwing snowballs at each other during this picture.

 Funny how all the snowman making happened after Daddy got home from work. I can't imagine why that would be. ;)

 Love this one!

 We've also had lots and lots and lots and lots of time to play inside. One day we got this giant box on our doorstep - an order from Amazon of toilet paper.  The kids had so much fun playing with it! They were pretending it was the bathtub in this picture.

We also did a bit of crafting together.  I had missed a GNO craft night while I was sick and enlisted the kids to help me work on the projects I missed - some cute valentine's wood decorations from Wood Connection.

 

I thought Sammy could handle the kiss. He did about half of it before he got bored.

 

 Lucy was much more into things though and helped a ton.  It was a nice afternoon activity for me and the kids.

 

Also in January, we had our big ultrasound for the new baby.  This is the best picture we got of the little one as he/she wasn't really wanting to cooperate.  Everything looked healthy and on track and no, we didn't find out the gender.  Wait for that reveal sometime at the end of May/beginning of June! :)