​I love listening to Emma play the saxophone.  She has become quite good since she started in August.  

​Abby decided on a S’mores valentine gift for her classmates this year.  Of course she waited until the last minute to put these together.  We all pitched in and helped her put together fun S’Mores kits.  They turned out so cute.

​Madeline loves looking at the family albums.  Andrew was so sweet to sit with her and look at the albums with her.  

​We all love yakisoba so much that we eat it at least every other week.

​It has been way too cold this month and it has not been uncommon to see the temperature fall into the single digits and even to 0.  

​Andrew and his swim club, The Rapids, held a swim-a-thon to earn money for their club team.  Andrew had donations by his parents, Grandma Anne and Grandpa Franz, Uncle Jeff, Aunt Stacey, and Uncle Brooks.  

​Madeline is my little office buddy.  Anytime I am on the computer getting work done she is usually content playing on the floor behind me.  It doesn’t take too long before she comes and taps me and says up because she just wants to see what I am doing.

​I finally broke down and got Madeline some new shoes in a smaller size.  Her other gold TOMS that I had bought for her fall off and so I ordered those and another pair in a size 3.  She loves them and they look so cute on her.

Madeline weighs 19lbs this month and continues to grow and change all the time.  Her hair is getting longer in the back and is slowly getting longer on the top. We were actually able to put her hair in pigtails this month. We love how cute her smile is and how infectious her laugh is.  When she laughs she tilts her head back and laughs out loud very dramatically.  It’s hilarious.  When she is concentrating or excited she sticks her tongue out to one side.
 
This month Madeline got her first boo boo.  She was bending down to pick up her blanket in front of the coffee table and she didn’t judge how close she was to the table and wacked her forehead on the edge of the table on the way down.  Luckily she didn’t break any skin.  She had a pretty nasty bruise there for about a week.  

Madeline has a few new words this month. She can say milk (mil), banana (nana), baby (ba ba) and Emma.   Madeline has new sounds as well.  She says be be be when she is pushing the buttons on her phone or saying the beep beep beep sound from the Wheels on the Bus song.  She is really good at saying all done (all duh) and puts her hands out after she eats when she is finished.  It is the cutest thing ever.  Madeline loves to say mum, mum until I acknowledge her and say yes.  Then she proceeds to talk to me in her baby talk. It is so funny.  
 
Madeline has started transitioning from two naps to one nap a day.  Sometimes I get lucky and she will take a morning and afternoon nap. She still sleeps on her tummy with her butt in the air and she loves to sleep with one of her favorite pink blankets. She still can’t say blanket but instead calls her blanket her bop.  When she is tired she sucks her thumb and then twirls the corner of her blanket around her other thumb.  

Madeline has tried a few new foods this month such as mini nilla wafers, ritz crackers, garlic chicken farfalle, yakisoba, and popsicles.  She liked all of them except for the popsicle, which was a bit too cold for her.  She didn’t care for it.  She still loves to eat yogurt, cheese, bananas, applesauce, sandwiches, scrambled eggs, and mini marshmallows.

Madeline just LOVES to watch The Little Einstein’s.  She really likes to watch it on our iPads but will happily watch it in the car or on the TV in the basement.  She will often dance with the music on the show and will even put her hands up and pat her legs when rocket is trying to lift off.  She still loves to listen to music on our Amazon Echo Dot.  She tries to say Alexa to turn it on but it comes out as Asa.  She loves to dance to Peanut Butter Jelly time and can get pretty crazy with her dance moves.  One time when she was dancing she tried to do the splits.  It was so funny.  When she is in the car she loves the music from the radio. When a song ends on the radio she does the sign for more and says more. She will also sway her head back and forth to the music.

Madeline’s latest favorite thing to do when she is in the family room is looking at all the family albums.  She will go to the coffee table and grab the books and bring them to me so we can look at them together.  If I am busy doing something else she will just sit on the floor and flip through the pages herself.  She loves pointing to everyone and saying their names.  She can say everyone except for Peter.  We usually only get a “pe” out of her for his name. When she is not looking at the family albums she loves to play with her toys.  She loves her baby doll, her bunny ears, all her pretend phones, necklaces, and purses.  Madeline loves to read books.  Her favorite book this month is, “My Truck is Stuck.”  She still loves to read: Goodnight Moon, Little Bo Peep Can’t Get to Sleep, Goldilocks has Chickenpox, Brown Bear Brown Bear, and Polar Bear Polar Bear.  

​We drove up to Copper Mountain with the kids so that we could ski together and enjoy skiing with some of our friends.  We had planned on meeting both the McDowell’s and the Jesters there.  We were fortunate enough to leave early and missed a few accidents that the McDowell’s got stuck behind.  They didn’t make it up to Copper until after 11:00am.  We skied with the Jesters for most of the morning.  We took them on American Flyer and then over to the Rendezvous and Sierra lifts.  After skiing one run off each of those lifts we decided to ski all the way down the mountain so that we could eat lunch with Mike and Madeline.  After lunch Madeline and I walked around Center Village while Mike and the girls skied together.  The boys went off with some of their friends.  Jen finally got a hold of me and we met in the village to hang out so she could decompress from her stressful morning drive.  After an hour of chatting I got a call from the boys who were waiting at the car because they were done skiing.  I dropped Madeline off to them and went up the American Eagle lift with Jen so that she could actually get some time on the snow.  We did a few runs before meeting up with Mike and her son Cody.  We did a few more runs and then headed to the car to go eat dinner at Silverthorne.  We all ate at the Damn Brewery and actually only had to wait 10 minutes for all of us to be seated.  By the time we were done eating the traffic had cleared and it was a relatively easy drive home after the section on I-70 where it was hard to see. 

​Mike and I were able to leave Madeline at home with Candace so that we could head up to Copper to go skiing together today.  We met our friends the Egberts there and skied the morning with them.  We skied some runs off of the Excelerator lift and then headed over to the American Flyer lift to go down American Flyer. They didn’t seem too impressed with runs that didn’t involve moguls so Mike and I ended up skiing by ourselves down American Flyer and Windsong and had a great time.  We all ate lunch together at the T-Rex Grill and then went our separate ways.  Mike and I did American Flyer a few more times before heading over to the Rendezvous lift so that we could check out the Copper Bowl.  We skied down the blue Otobahn run with was basically a cat trail down to the bottom.  We checked out the short black runs along the way and determined that with more snow they would be fun to ski down.  We headed back up to the top of the Excelerator lift and then decided to head down the mountain.   

​We were all a little too excited that it finally snowed more than an inch.  The kids woke up to about 8-10 inches of snow.  It didn’t take too long for the kids to coordinate with friends to go sledding. Before meeting friends, Mike took Peter, Emma, and Abby out in his truck so that Peter could go tubing while being pulled by the Forerunner.  Emma held the rope from the back of the truck and Peter had a blast while the snow sprayed him in the face.  It was hilarious to watch.  Then the kids went sledding with their friends over on the hill by the John Venezia Park. There wasn’t a whole lot of snow on that hill but they still had a great time.  The kids spent that afternoon playing in the snow with Madeline in the backyard.  Madeline LOVED being pulled by the sled and playing in the snow.  

For her friend birthday this year we agreed to let Emma have a sleepover with a few of her closest friends.  She invited Natalie Asay, Ava Seaquist, Mikayla Jester and Maddie Gebski.  We recycled our movie theme from a previous birthday and went to town decorating.  We had fun personalizing some fun gold water bottles and had a slew of movie treats for the girls to eat downstairs while they watched movies.  We ate cupcakes and opened presents before the girls headed down to the basement for some much needed girl time.  They all got in their pajamas and enjoyed watching a few movies while eating junk food. They stayed up until 1:30am and then were up by @ 8:30am.  I had made cinnamon rolls the night before at Emma’s request so that they could have them for breakfast.  The girls ate those and then headed outside to jump on the trampoline.  They all had so much fun together and there really wasn’t any drama the entire time.  Emma had so much fun with her friends and loved the experience of having a sleepover for her party this year.