now THAT was a birthday!

Had tons of fun this past week celebrating my 33rd birthday. We went out to my favorite place in Anchorage, the Moose's Tooth for some socializing and refreshments. I didn't count but think about 12 or so people showed up. The Tooth hooked us up with a big table in the back so we had lots of room and nobody was in a rush to leave. Lisa had to leave early to head home and send the girls to bed. A little later, a few of us went out for cocktails at the local sports bar down the street. All in all, a FANTASTIC evening! Thanks for all the birthday wishes everyone...I can't remember a birthday I received so much attention.

It's been a tough week otherwise. The girls have been slow to get past the cold I brought back from Kansas. We have definitely past the worst of it...we haven't had a fever in almost a week now but the runny/stuffy noses are annoying everyone. Their poor noses have had it too.

These pictures are from the first day that the girls, especially Alyssa, woke up not feeling good. Cold or no cold, it wasn't going to stop them from enjoying their new table. They LOVE their new table. We have only had a few instances so far where they tried to climb on top. Okay, we've caught them 3 or 4 times standing on top of the table reaching for the mirror. You can't take your eyes off these girls!


You can kinda tell how miserable Alyssa is in this picture. Her nose was so stopped up, she had to walk around with her mouth open to breath.

Just another fun twin activity...overturning a basket full of clean clothes, climbing on top, and sharing germs.







Hard to tell but I think that's Katy displaying the proper technique of climbing onto something tall.

The girls have been working on their smiles. They are getting really good. Here are several attempts at getting one on film. Not bad for our first try.






2 random pictures of Lisa playing with the girls. None of us have been feeling good this week...kudo's to Lisa for her endless energy.


This is the same lake that we went ice fishing. We went back to show the girls the bald eagles but they were gone. Still a beautiful place so I couldn't resist getting out on the ice and taking a few pictures.


For those of you who have not seen it, this is a view of the back of my office looking toward the mountains. This was taken a couple of days ago after we had a couple inches of snow and things cleared out a little. I try to take a walk up to this spot at least once a shift...you can see why. It's a great view and a nice reminder of how lucky I am.

A Fart-astic Birthday Present

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CELEBRATION!!!!

Birthdays are great! I love January 27th so much! I'm having an awesome 33rd birthday and still have 7 hours to go. Off to the Moose's Tooth to celebrate!

This is my co-worker, Todd. I heard he does a great birthday dance/song on your birthday. I was not let down.

Back to normal...well, kinda

Root canal...complete.
Carpet...installed.
Dishwasher...repaired.
Trip to Kansas...over.
New TV...GLORIOUS!

So like I said last time, life around here has been hectic. Last week we were juggling night shifts and babies while trying to get the house ready to be re carpeted. It all went pretty good considering the circumstances.

The root canal was surprisingly not nearly as painful as I was expecting. The procedure itself went by pretty fast and the following days were helped along with some strong pain killers. I'm almost back to feeling normal...still the occasional pain when I bite down.

The new carpet looks GREAT! Well worth it. This was something we've been wanting to do since we moved in. When we bought the house, we put every bit of extra cash we had into the down payment and didn't want to put 5K on a credit card for new carpet. Well finally after a little help from Governor Palin and the girls PFD checks, we decided it was finally time to treat our feet to some new carpet. I won't go into the whole story, but the guys from Lowes (while very entertaining and very good at what they did) were painfully slow to arrive both Friday and Saturday. Initially, it was going to be done by Saturday afternoon. Since they didn't show up until almost 2pm on Friday, they backed that estimate back to MONDAY!! After I pleaded my case about our situation with the babes, they agreed to come early Saturday and finish the job. They were again late by 2 hours on Saturday but stayed until it was done...almost 9pm!! Lisa and the girls stayed next door so besides being exhausted, they did great.

What few things still remained upstairs piled in the living room while they worked on the bedrooms.

Here's George ripping up our old carpet padding.

The 'after' pictures in a minute.

We had quite the change of weather last week. From bitter cold to record breaking warm. If you're wondering how warm it has to get in mid January to be break records...the answer is mid to upper 40s. Yep...we even reach 50 degrees one day. That's ABSURD!! These next few pictures were taken during the warm up. We had lots of rain which in the middle of a cold Anchorage winter will result in very slippery roads. They actually cancelled school for 3 days last week because of the warm weather. It's funny to think that the kids here have to pray for rain to get out of school but it's true.

I tried to take a picture of the orange rainbow but missed it. You can barely see what's left of it on the left. It was so cool...there was so much orange coming from the sunset that you couldn't even see the colors of the rainbow. It all looked orange.

Here's a shot of how bad the roads were in the neighborhood.

How bout some cute baby pictures?! These are shirts that my M&D got the girls for Christmas. They are hilarious! You'll have to click on one of them to read what they say.

Oh...and that's Alyssa's attempt at a smile.



Finally...the new toys!! In addition to the carpet, we decided to upgrade our entertainment center. The Samsung arrived before I left so one of the first things I did when I got home was hook that bad boy up. It is GORGEOUS! Here's a picture of the new carpet and the new tv.

I couldn't hide my excitement when we got the tv. I was giddy. Real giddy. So Lisa took a picture to capture my giddiness.

...and now for the bad news. I brought back a cold from my trip to Kansas. I've been feeling terrible these last couple of days and even though I was as careful as I could be, it seems that I have spread my germs to Lisa and the babes. Alyssa is suffering the most right now and has already woken up once this evening. It could be a difficult couple of days while we all fight through this cold. Yuck.

More than a week??!!

Yeah it's been more than a week since my last update. It has been HECTIC around here. This week, we are getting ready for new carpet!! On top of that I'm working night shifts and have a root canal planned for Thursday morning. WEEEEEE!!!

Tons of stories to catch you up on. First, the girls graduated from PIC (Programs for Infants and Children). The speech and physical therapists came by last week and said they are caught up and don't need services anymore. In fact, they even had language skills of 22 to 23 month olds if you included their sign language. It seems like they are doing something new every day. During the therapists visit, Alyssa said "yes" for the first time. A day later, she said "no". I have to admit I wasn't as excited about the "no", but it was cute at the time. We asked if she wanted her blanket and she very calmly said "no". Lisa and I looked at each other like "who is this baby"??

Pictures...I have more stories but I know you just come for the pictures. Here are some new outfits...Lisa said they are Christmas jumpers from her mom.





These next series of photos are a result of being unable to keep up with the girls...or maybe it was cabin fever from all the cold weather. I had a headache and finally gave in and laid down on the couch. Lisa was cleaning up or doing something in the kitchen (did I mention our dishwasher broke last week...something we run EVERY DAY!!). The girls found a basket full of clean laundry and decided they needed to be in that basket and everything thing thas was in it needed to be out. The girls were victorious. All the while, you can see me laying on the couch beside them with a pillow over my head.





Cute pictures of the girls looking at the eagle pictures and video. They LOVE that video of the eagle and are always asking to see it again. In the first picture, Alyssa isn't sleepy...I just caught her mid blink. Click on the second one to see a bigger size...it's a GREAT picture of my girls (all 3 of them).


These last two pics were during bedtime. It was typical shenanigans...this time they wanted to wear their hats and mittens. Okay.


Now...if you EVER need a laugh, come back and watch this video. I don't know how you can watch this and not laugh at Katy shaking her arms. Lisa called me one evening at work frantic trying to figure out how to work the video on the new camera. Slightly annoyed because I was working and it sounded like she was having a great laugh with the girls, I walked her through it. I don't know that I ever admitted that to Lisa but I was in a bad mood and it made it worse to hear how much fun she was having. When I got home that night, the girls were already asleep and I was grabbing a bite to eat when Lisa reminded me that I needed to watch the video. Reluctantly I watched. You'll see that in the first 20 seconds that they just stand there. I had no idea what to expect and then BOOM!!! I laughed so hard I about woke the girls up. I had never seen them do anything remotely close to this dance...it just seems so random and funny.

So enjoy. This is one in a million. Oh, and if you go to the video on youtube, you can click on "watch in high quality" just below and to the right of the video. That way you can make it full screen and it not be so grainy.

catching up with some pictures from 2008

It is still cold. We're on our 7th day straight now of sub-zero temperatures. It is currently -14.8 at 10pm. We got down to -20 again this morning and will probably be in that same ballpark in the morning. BURRRRR!!!!!!

I need to catch up with about 2 weeks of photos before Christmas. I have a couple videos that I need to download too. I'll make that happen in the next couple of days now that I know how to download the D90 videos. Speaking of...if you actually go to youtube and watch the video, you can click on the button that says "watch in high quality" to see a better version. I think the one that is embedded is the lower quality version of the the eagle video.

So the story is...we bought a new plasma tv. It won't be here for another week but we didn't know that at the time. The first step was to move the top half of our beautiful entertainment center downstairs so that the bottom half could serve as the new tv stand. After the movers left (no way I was moving that myself), Lisa put the runner on top and then put a baby or two up there too. It looked like the perfect JC Penny setup so I grabbed the camera and started taking pictures. We got a kick out of it, obviously Katy was not as happy.







I accidentally loaded the full versions of those pictures so if you click on them, you'll see exactly how big the real photos are. Sorry bout that.

I'm not exactly sure of the story here...Lisa was feeding the girls and they decided that they wanted to hold hands so they REACHED over as far as they could. Lisa also said they had a "twin moment" the other day where Katy walked into the bedroom and looked at Alyssa...gave her a face then nodded...and Alyssa nodded back and then followed Katy out to the living room. She said it was pretty freaky.

I know in this one Alyssa is signing "chicken" so maybe they were trying to share their chicken with each other. I'll have Lisa fill in any gaps. Lisa here...actually the song "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" was playing on the CD player and Katy reached over for Alyssa's hand so they could dance. When the song talked about Old MacDonald having a chicken on the farm, Alyssa showed Katy the sign for chicken. It was TOO cute!



That's all I have for now. The full size photos took a lot longer than I wanted to. I think Lisa is making cookies so gotta go indulge. By the way, it's -15.4 degrees now.

:)