4 growing girls: Winter Break

Feels like its been awhile since i've updated this. Since my last post, we've had Christmas and started a New year. Julia was off for about 2.5 weeks, and i got used to her being home. So its her first week back and i've kinda missed her :) Although i dont miss the two oldest bickering.

We had a real tree too! lol This was our finished wall tree..

Christmas was awesome. We missed our friends and family, but i have to admit it was pretty nice not having any expectations to be somewhere, and we could just hang out in our pj's watching football, while the kids played with their stuff all day. The kids loved everything they got! Which was great, cause both sides of the family sent gift cards since shipping costs are so much. So i picked stuff out using the gift cards, wrapped it and put who it was from on it. My sister sent actual stuff in the mail and the girls loved that too! Packages are always fun!! We hung low and didnt do much for New Years. The girls wanted to stay up, but made it to about 9, if we were still in OR, that would have been midnight by east coast time, so that worked for us. When we did live in Oregon, we always went by east coast time and watched the ball drop at 9, our time, and then off to bed for the kids. Not like i made it much longer than that. Ever since having Julia, almost 7 years ago, i havent really gone anywhere for New Years. My husband was usually working, and nights at the time, so i stayed home. Plus, even if he wasnt working, i didnt want to be on the roads with drunk drivers so i just stayed home. Now i celebrate like a grown up in my own home after ALL my kids are asleep in bed. :) This year including skyping with one of my best friends while we enjoyed an adult cocktail.

A couple days after the 1st, we headed up to mountain to play in some snow. Yes, Arizona does have mountains, and does get snow, LOTS of snow in the winter! :) I didnt really know this either when i lived in Oregon, until my friends in-laws were visiting from Flagstaff and they told me that they get lots of snow every winter. Eye opener for me. I just thought all of Arizona was hot, all of the time. Lately, its been in the 30's when i walk Julia to school, but by the afternoon is sunny and in the 50-60s. Anyways, flagstaff is about a 2.5 hour drive from where we live. I packed our lunch and snacks and extra clothes and all our snow stuff and off we went! We didnt want to go to the actual ski resort, so about 2 hours after leaving the house, we just took an exit and were looking for a big field to go play in. We had the dog and wanted her to be able to run freely. Luckily, we had taken the perfect exit! Tons of people were doing the same thing and had all pulled over for this huge field to play in. We drove about another min. down the street and there was a country club with an acre or so of land out front that another family was playing in the snow as well. So thats where we got out and played for a couple hours. Im sure once the kids are all bigger there will much more time actually playing in the snow, but with such little ones, it ended quickly. Ella never slept on the way there, so she was tired, but did really well over all :)

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I cant believe that my little Aubrey is already 5 months old!! And in less than 2 months, i'll have a 7, 5, and 2 year old! Speaking of an almost 2 year old. Ella is almost fully potty trained! She wakes up dry from nap and has no pee accidents for over a week. I am just working on her using the potty for her #2. She likes to wait until nap time to do that, although she has gone in the potty for that a couple times now, but it still fighting that. Not sure why....

Here are some random pictures from the last few days...