straight from heaven.

We've got less than three weeks until we meet this little one and find out if it's a HE or a SHE!!!!!!!

My mind is blown. My heart also melted a little bit when I had this convo in the car with Max today:

Me: Isn't it so amazing that our baby is coming straight from heaven?!

Max: Is heaven in your tummy?? :)

I love him so much and can't wait for another little piece of heaven to come to our home.    And while I've got babies on the brain...what do you think?? Are we getting a boy or a girl???

(Throwback to a mini Max & Ave! They were so tiny!!!)

max meets picaso

max has this "thing" where he wants to save & cling onto every single piece of paper/artwork that he has ever completed in his lifetime. it was cute at first...but after finding papers allllll over the house i knew something needed to be done. 

a few weeks ago we sat down and went through each one of those papers and took pictures of his favorites (which meant almost all of them!) and i promised to make a little book out of the photos we took. (i still need to do this! any suggestions?)

ever since that activity (which took all morning!) max likes to document all of his creations and i'll often find him with the camera strapped around his neck, snapping a picture of something he's done (legos, playdoh, wedgits, etc...) he's a funny one :)

i've got at least fifty more pictures, but these are some of my favorites. he really is such a little artist and loves any type of creative activity. 

a bear and his cave // the most colorful batman you've ever seen! i love how he uses such a variety of colors!

 

a bunch of guys playing every sport imaginable // one of the many robots that max has drawn...he went through a phase a few weeks ago :)

 

a very cute & colorful turkey from preschool // a centipede!! adorbs.

for christmas the kids got a sweet shoppe playdoh set, complete with itty-bitty molds to make all sorts of "chocolates & candies." it really is the cutest. the kids (and i!) have had a blast playing with it, and of course, our little documenter has caught all the action on camera:

 

before these pictures beautifully arranged on his plates, he took pictures of each individual item :) this method was slightly more effective!

 

he was particularly proud of these brown "suckers" he made!

we thought the garlic press would make a fun playdoh tool...we were right!! // avey is such a cheeseball :)

another favorite christmas gift: wedgits! (max requested these pictures :)

and lastly, a few more gems i just found on the camera from my budding artist:

 

pretzel letters! max was very proud of these letters he created out of his snack.

and i'll leave you with this last one. he's even got to document his playtime with dinos & dump trucks! i sure love that little guy:

no-shave december!

Since Danny needs to be clean-shaven for work, he took his Christmas break seriously & "grew out" his beard/mustache with his co-worker Logan. This was a good two weeks :) He may think he's less of a man, but I'm not a fan of facial hair so it works out great for us! Haha.

 

new year's eve

it's hard to believe that 2013 has already come and gone! we rang in the new year with my family and this year's party didn't disappoint. we had all the traditional foods (doritos, oreos, martinelli's, chocolates, you know...all the healthy stuff!) and played all the games we wanted! the highlight was when my dad miraculously won clue on the very first turn of the game! :) spot it with my parents was also incredibly entertaining! 

when the clock was about to strike midnight, we rushed outside to ring in the new year with lots of sparklers, fun pictures, and of course the mandatory new year's kiss :) enjoy!

attempt #1...dad was a little confused about the "p" :)

that's a little better!

let it snow!!

christmas vacation isn't complete without a sledding session. am i right?! 

i could actually do without it, and this year i got to use pregnancy as an excuse not to fly down the hill...but my goodness the kids had a blast!!! i thought they would last twenty minutes (tops!) but the frigid weather didn't stop them one bit. they couldn't get enough! it was pretty hilarious to watch. ave and max even took some runs all by themselves...and max hit a few jumps (and got hit!) and didn't shed a tear. i was the baby and ended up leaving about twenty minutes before them but my frozen feet wouldn't have lasted much longer. 

danny's such a trooper! that hill was not the smallest hill ever and he made the trek up more than once...with kids in tow!