Happy 31st Birthday, to me!

Thankfully, we celebrated my birthday last night with our friends while my parents watched all 4 of the kiddos!  The kids all had a blast...going out to eat, bouncing in bounce houses way past their bedtimes, eating snacks, and just having a great time with Grandma and Grandpa!

Us adults headed to Bloomington for a kid-free night!  Woohoo! We at at Upland Brewery...very yummy food!  Then, we headed to Hartzell's for ice cream. They didn't have my favorite though :( which is MAC (marshmallow, avocado, coconut). So, instead I tried Chocolate with Sweet Basil, which I actually enjoyed, but Bobby did not. Then we headed to The Comedy Attic for a show, which was something different that we don't usually do. The comedians were okay, but we all had a good time. It's always nice to be able to go out and have uninterrupted conversations with our friends.

The only plans we had for today (my actual birthday) was to go to church, go out to lunch, then my parents were heading home and no other plans. Good thing that was all that was planned because at church, we were called to go get Aubrey from her class because she had a couple diarrhea episodes in a short span and was crying because she hurt. Poor girl!  I had only brought 2 diapers with us, so they gave me an extra when I picked her up, but while I was in the Atrium with her, she managed to dirty that one too and I was left with having to put a maxi pad...yes, a maxi pad on her from the basket in the bathroom since I was out of diapers and more were in the car (I had to be resourceful!), but I didn't want to disrupt the sermon. So, as soon as the music started I headed back in with Aubrey to gather up my stuff as quickly as possible, but left my jacket which had the keys. At the same time, Bobby was trying to find me, but we missed each other so I was stuck still without a diaper since I had no keys. Luckily, my parents and Bobby all left church and came out to check on us and we left a little early to head home. Needless to say, we did not go out to eat, but ordered in and the guys (plus Natalie) went to get the food and Imodium for Aubrey. It seems to have worked because she isn't going every 10-20 minutes!  I felt so bad for her!

Grandma got her to take a short nap, we ate, then my parents headed back home. The girls today were extremely whiny and were constantly fighting with each other this afternoon because of whatever caused their diarrhea (Natalie had a tiny bit, too, but nothing compared to Aubrey)!  The girls have no other symptoms other than Aubrey throwing up last Saturday at Amanda and Matt's house.

Aubrey was so tired tonight, that she passed out on the floor at about 6:45...she has NEVER done that EVER!  Natalie was asleep by 7:10, but now as I type this, she is awake and sitting next to me.

Happy poop-filled birthday to me!!  I have to say though that I would rather it come from this end where it is contained by a diaper than her throwing up and you never know when it's going to happen and it's hard to contain!

Baking Cookies

The only cookies we made this year were sugar cookies. I found a great recipe on Pinterest.  They turned out great and made plenty of cookies. The girls enjoyed helping roll and cut them out. I kept the icing part for my parents for when they came down this weekend since I know my dad enjoys decorating the cookies and my mom loves doing anything she can with the girls (dad, too!)  I love that my parents were able to make it down this weekend to participate in some Christmas activities with us.

We also attended the Barnes and Noble Charlie Brown Christmas Party that was free!  The girls got to make a few crafts, decorate cookies, make reindeer food, and their favorite: play with green and red play-doh with glitter!  The girls seemed to really enjoy this event!

Clabber Girl Country Christmas

I won $15 worth of tickets for the Clabber Girl Country Christmas which motivated us to check it out last weekend. It's an annual tradition for those in Terre Haute, but we had never gone. They had a fabulous looking Santa, but I could not convince the girls to get their picture taken with him :(  Oh well!  Aubrey will observe Santa from far away, but get close to him and she SCREAMS!!!  It's quite humorous if you ask me.

The place was PACKED!  The girls were able to make an orange/clove ornament, make a snowflake ornament, frost a sugar cone and decorate with m&m's so it looked like a Christmas tree, then they each got a gingerbread cookie with their name on it, each got their face painted, listened to Mrs. Claus read a story for a bit, and ended with a 'cake' walk type of thing that you got a prize at the end, regardless. Aubrey picked a pencil, but then put it back for sucker; Natalie picked a pencil then threw an all out temper tantrum because she wanted to change her pencil for a sucker too after we had already left. It was definitely time to leave after that!

There was even more stuff to do, but with the crowds and using up all of our tickets, we were ready to head home and eat lunch. Overall the girls had fun, but it's so hard to enjoy doing fun things when they get so cranky at times!

This was a fun event, but I'm not sure we will go again or not, but I'm glad we experienced it at least once!

Ice Skating

A few businesses in Terre Haute put together an "ice skating" rink on top of the downtown parking garage this year.  There is no ice, it's actually on a special type of plexiglass called EZ Glide I believe. It is only open for 2 weeks, so we HAD to check it out. It is actually a fantastic idea that I think they can do a ton more with if they decide to continue this in the following years. It was busy, which is great! However, that leads to not having enough skates. Bobby couldn't skate because they didn't have his size the entire night. Even though I was the one who really wanted to go, I would have much preferred Bobby get a chance to skate because the skates HURT my ankles/feet so bad!!!  The girls LOVED it and Natalie went around by herself and with Cadence many times. Aubrey loved it too, and was really getting the hang of it!

I was never so glad to put my shoes on again in my life! Ouch!

Fowler Park Christmas Walk

I feel like we are always out of town when Fowler Park has their Pioneer Days or Christmas Walk in the park. This was really neat to walk through, as it is set-up like an old pioneer village at Christmas time and you are able to walk into the different buildings along the path and inside each place you can see how people lived back in the pioneer days, and everyone is dressed up. Natalie enjoyed it, but Aubrey didn't have a huge attention span. I think our girls are still young, but Kyle and Cadence loved being interactive with the characters that were dressed up and asked all kinds of questions. It's free and really educational, especially for the older kids. I hope we can get back to these when they have them again.