While I was sleeping ...

Here is a somewhat quick round-up of the first 2-1/2 months of 2010. [When I took my little bloggy break.]

{okay ... now that I have finished this post, it's really not quick at all. Please bear with me.}

We celebrated my niece's 4th birthday with a super-fun snowman party, complete with scarf and mitten making, manicures and a showing of the movie "Happy Feet".

Happy Birthday Evie!

(On a side note, I made Evie's snowman shirt and gave it to her for Christmas. I appliqued it on my regular sewing machine. Maybe I will post a tutorial soon.)

We also celebrated Claire's friend Baker's birthday (his parents are close friends of ours) at Bounce U, which is always a good time.

David had a blast on the inflatables. He kept Will very busy.

Baker & Claire.

Our friends Spencer and Max.

Happy Birthday Baker!

And, we celebrated RiRi (Will's mom, Rita) turning the big 6-0, with a family party at her house. It was fun to get all the little cousins together for the first time in a long time (maybe ever?).

My sis-in-law Brandi ... she made this lovely cake.

Chef Mark and Chef Joe ... cooking up the birthday meat fest.

The birthday girl opening her gifts.

All the little cousins.

Our family with Aunt Sissy and cousin Val in the rear.

RiRi and DiDi with all their grandkids.

We also went to many other birthday parties of Claire's classmates (who all have birthdays between February and April). I'm now officially broke from buying birthday presents, although I did run into a great deal on age-appropriate games at Target one day ($7/each) and bought up the rest of the little boys' gifts. I'm glad when Claire starts real school, her classmates' birthdays will be more spread out through the year and not concentrated in a three month period of time.

We also celebrated Valentine's Day. I felt horrible on this day and actually stayed on the couch most of the day. Thank you to Will for picking up a little gift for the kids and picking up some ice cream cookie sandwiches from Cold Stone Creamery for me.

(A sewing tip ... when you pick out an old machine applique to put a new applique on a shirt, make sure the new applique completely covers the old applique or you end up being able to see all the little needle holes. This dress had a large Christmas tree on it and you can still see where the bottom of the tree and trunk were sewn. Claire did not wear this outfit out of the house.)

Oh yeah, and somebody found his sister's slippers and refused to take them off!

Don't forget about the snow ... we got a lot of snow this year. Three different snows in fact (but we only played in two). I think I am going to petition for a refund from my kids' preschool for the month of January we had so many snow days. (Just kidding of course, that refund would never happen.)

This snow barely covered the ground, but it was enough to do a little sledding on the grass. David was not a fan!

Claire clearly enjoyed herself.

The next day ... see, not much to get excited about.

More sledding.

After playing in the snow, we enjoyed hot chocolate and made paper snowflakes. David will drink anything out of a straw.

The next snow at the end of January was much more substantial. I think we got around 6 inches (?) topped with a nice layer of ice, which made sledding fun.

Our next door neighbors.

Lots of sledding that day.

David preferred body sledding and with that nice layer of ice, it worked pretty well for him.

Our family.

Our house.

Sledding with daddy.

We dug up some snow from underneath the ice and made a snowman.

In the beginning of March, it finally warmed up enough for the kids to get outside and play. Claire finally got to ride her bike that Santa brought for Christmas and David has become quite good at riding Claire's scooter. [He is getting his own blue scooter for his birthday this month, which will hopefully prevent any future fights over the pink scooter.]

I think that brings you up to speed on our family so far this year.