Our Favorite "Things"

Thing Two and Thing One!

They ran up!

They ran down!

Then those Things ran about

With big bumps, jumps and kicks 

And with hops and big thumps

And all kinds of bad tricks.

And I had them!  At last!

Those two Things had to stop.

Various things

Sunday morning, before anyone else was even awake, Jillian took it upon herself to prepare the dining room table for breakfast.  She set out placemats and used our plastic "outside dishes" because the "real ones" were in high cabinets out of her reach.  Upon Mommy and Daddy waking, she promptly requested Daddy make us waffles, which he happily did.

Fun in the snow on Monday night!

Here's our big girl showing off her first pull up!

Natalie's been doing very well on the potty at home, telling us she needs to go and being dry a lot of the time.  (Mommy can't even remember the last poopy diaper she changed!)  

So we thought she might be ready to try a pull up in the evenings.  She was elated to be a big girl!  

and 2 hours in, so far so good...

A very Princessey cake

Here's Mommy's latest cake creation, made for her friend Kim's daughter, Cailin.  She's turning 4 and wanted a princess cake.  And what a princess wants, she shall have!

PA Farm Show

This Friday, Mommy took off work and went with Jilly and Pappy to the Farm Show in Harrisburg.  It was lots of fun!  We saw a chicken laying an egg, sat in a replica dugout canoe, contemplated how one structurally goes about crafting a cow out of butter, ate some yummy food, and saw tractors square dancing.  Does it get any better than that???

Checking out the cow judging.

The dugout canoe at the Historical Association's booth.

Petting the guinea pig.  

We spent a good 15 minutes or so hanging out with this little guy.  Jill wants one for our house.

No farm show is complete without getting your picture taken with a tractor wheel bigger than you!

Other bits of recent past...

Other "found" photos:

Baby Ben being all cute on the quilt Aunt Sherry made.  :)

The entire Blauch family (except for Chris).  This was taken in June.

Christmas... the missing pictures

We finally got some pictures from our time this Christmas with the Blauch side of the family. We're always too busy playing to remember to take pictures, so we rely on Aunt Kristen and Pappy with their big fancy SLRs to provide us with pictures... and sometimes that takes a while! 

Jilly being a goofy head at Kole's birthday party

Merry First Christmas to Baby Ben!

The grandkids.

Natalie still feeling a bit overwhelmed by the craziness that is Christmas.

Best. Present. Ever.

Hanging with Uncle Mike.

Purple Potatoes

At Market on Saturday, we bought purple potatoes. They were on special and the lady said they were just like regular potatoes. We were like George (i.e. very curious) and bought some. We discussed what to do with them, fries? mash? bake?, when Jillian piped up and said she wanted to make "thanksgiving potatoes" with them. So we peeled, boiled (they turned the water a bluey-purple!) and mashed them. They came out a pretty lavender color. Mommy and Daddy can't remember eating something this color and not having it taste like a grape! The kids thought it was so cool and ate them all up.

And here's a bit of Jillian art work. Its a painting from her new easel.

You can probably make out her, a flower, the sun... But what is the red and yellow thing?

Why, that's a geocache she found under the flower, of course!
(Mommy and Daddy aren't the only ones obsessed it seems.)

Of socks and kitchen adventures

This morning Natalie took it upon herself to put on her shoes and socks.  She was so proud of herself and was positively beaming behind that binky as she came out to show Mommy.

That's a pair of Jill's socks, put on backwards (note the blue heel in front), with one pant leg tucked in and her shoes on the wrong feet.  Mommy didn't have the heart to tell her they needed fixed, so off to day care she went just as she was!

But, hey, at least the shoes were a matching pair!

Tonight was a girls' night in, as Daddy had basketball game, open lab and another basketball game.  Mommy enlisted the girls' help in making dinner.  And of course we had to wear our aprons!

Natalie supervised the carrot cutting and took care of pressing the button on the food processor to make the homemade hummus.

Meanwhile, our big girl Jillian, was put in charge of making the quiche.  Being an expert at measuring both dry and wet goods, she's helped make this a few times before, but tonight she did it on her own for the first time.  Mommy just told her which measurer and which ingredient (and handled the oven) and she did the rest!  She snipped the green onions, dumped it into the pie plate perfectly without a spill, and even carefully scraped the bowl to get all the good stuff out.  We're so proud of her!

And the best part???  Everything was soooo yummy!

Christmas Projects

Finally, here's a photo of Mommy's Christmas sewing project... matching aprons for the family. (Daddy has one too, but he wore it and got it messy so it is currently in the laundry.  But, it is just like Mommy's, only in a manly brown with a Super Dad "D" on it!)

Also, it came to our attention that you needed to have an account to leave a comment on our blog.  We changed that setting to allow anyone to comment, so comments are now officially welcome! 

Saturday and Sunday

So as we were leaving the Hands On House, we found a note on our car door.  It was the Sensenigs!  

As fate would have it, they had come out on this cold winter morning to find the very same caches we had just been to.   The reverse side of the note, challenged us to find them, and find them we did!  They happened to be picking up another cache on our way home, so we stopped and joined them for one in a nearby park.

Kind of hard to see, but Jill, Chris, Will and Mike trekked up the side of this pretty steep hill to find this one!  The mommies stayed back with the little ones.

Here's our resident Dr. Seuss fan standing in front of the closest thing we have ever seen to a Brickle Bush from the Sneetches book.

We ventured out again on Sunday for some geocaching.  (Yes, we are looking for a 12 step program, as we just *may* be addicted.)  We bundled up really good in our hats, gloves and snowpants and headed to Brownstown and Akron.

The girls checking out the loot.  

In the bigger boxes there are little toys for trading.  They love these!

A cold Saturday in January

It was a cold weekend, but unfortunately, the weatherman led us astray once more, as we didn't get any snow. :(  But never fear, the Millers got of the house!  We went to market, grocery shopping and then to the Hands On House, picking up a couple geocaches on the way!

Natalie's got the GPS and is ready to go caching!

Pretty picture on the walking path at Landis Valley.

Natalie and Mommy celebrating our cache (or are they huddling together to stay warm?)

Dress up time at HOH.

And of course, Jillian's favorite part of the museum... face painting!

videos... and more videos...

Mommy finally made some time to get the backlog of cute kid videos packaged and uploaded to YouTube.  There are six new ones, including this one, "An Ode to Playdoh".

  

Weekend wrap up

Saturday night Mommy made some yummy chicken parmesan for dinner. The girls however, were much more excited about the spaghetti noodles.

Jill tied hers into knots.

Natalie gave herself a mustache.

And of course, there was some geocaching!
Here's a happy Jillian with one in New Holland.

Here are the girls relaxing in downtown Lancaster.
We never did find this cache :(
Never fear we will be back to try again this Saturday on our way to Market!