Our life in pictures over the past month or so

A beginning of the year trip to the Boonshoft

Linden pulling Olivia on her sled through icy Paw Paw Camp

Enjoying a walk on an unseasonably warm winter day

Gross but funny head-in-a-toilet-seat picture :)

Playing with homemade playdough

Taking a picture of her baby...naked. What can I say? She likes to be free. :)

Playing with bunnies at her friend Linden's house

Poor baby had a nasty cold and fell asleep in my arms

Speaking of tired, this picture is cute and sad all at the same time. After a
particularly difficult naptime in which we resorted to closing Olivia in her room,
she finally gave in and fell asleep like this.

Cutie patooties

I'm making dinner and I hear
"Look Mommy, I'm wearing a book!"

Homemade birdfeeders

Finally, after many days of checking to see if birds had come to our feeders with
no success, we found a pair of cardinals munching on them! So exciting!

Olivia playing ring-around-the-rosie with some
 big girls (3-year-olds)

Showing off some "oobleck" me made.
Very fun, albeit messy experiment!

Cutie pies at breakfast :)

Our Family is Growing by Two Feet!

In case the picture didn't give it away, we are expecting Baby #2 in August. We gave a framed copy of the picture above to our parents for Christmas. It was a fun way to share the news. Of course, they were excited!

The first trimester was fairly uneventful with the exception of being severely exhausted and feeling a little more "icky" than I remember feeling when I was pregnant with Olivia. As of today, I'm 16 weeks and feeling pretty good. I still haven't really popped out too much and can't really feel the baby moving yet, although sometimes I think I feel a little something here or there. The good thing about a second pregnancy is that you already have a child to focus your time, energy, and attention on and therefore, don't obsess about every aspect of your pregnancy. It also makes time go by faster.

This baby is already trying to get our attention. I've had two little issues with some bleeding, but the baby is fine and I've been told there's nothing to worry about. The upside to these two little episodes is that I've gotten to have ultrasounds and see our baby, an opportunity I wouldn't have otherwise had. I'm hoping the rest of the pregnancy remains uneventful. :)

Once I get the ultrasound picture scanned, I'll post that. Coming up on March 28th, we'll have our 20 week ultrasound and get to find out whether we're having a boy or a girl. I'm excited to find out and after we do, we can start painting/decorating the nursery and re-decorating Olivia's room as a big girl room.

It SNOWED!!!

It's been about two months now since I last blogged and there's A LOT to catch up on. First up...this draft I just discovered that I never published!

We were disappointed when didn't get any significant snowfall last year, so we were pretty excited when, the day after Christmas we got almost half a foot of snow. We went out and bought some sleds, bundled up, and sledded down my parent's driveway. Olivia was tentative at first about sledding, but decided to be brave and had a lot of fun. Their driveway is the perfect sized hill - steep enough to get a good ride, but not too steep to be scary and a short enough distance to not get exhausted running back to the top. Afterwards, Olivia enjoyed some hot cocoa prepared by Maga. :) Here are a few pictures of the fun.

Here are a few more pictures of the snow from a walk in the woods we took a few days later.

Winter Fun

Here's a random collection of some of the things we've been doing this winter. Olivia got to decorate Christmas Tree sugar cookies from Panera at the library storytime.

A few weekends ago, we went to the Festival of Lights at the Cincinnati Zoo. We made a mini-vacation out of it. We stopped at the outlet mall on the way down, then met Carl for dinner. Carl came with us to the zoo. Olivia had a blast seeing the zoo lights. We got to see some of the animals too, which was exciting. Unfortunately, it's hard to really capture how cool the lights looked. Below is one picture I took that night. We spent the night in Cincinnati and after a nice breakfast at the hotel, hit up Ikea before heading back home.

That same weekend, we went to Olivia's friend Linden's 2nd birthday party. See picture below. :)

Since Olivia enjoyed the zoo lights so much, we decided to also check out Woodland Lights. It's only about 15 minutes from our house (much closer than the zoo) and is 1/2 mile wooded loop with lots of fun Christmas lights and decorations, as well as some carnival rides. You can even see Santa there, but we decided to pass because of the long line. Here's a picture of Olivia and Yusaku at Woodland Lights.

And lastly, just a funny picture of our little goofball wearing Mr. Potato Head's glasses.

Christmas

We had a great Christmas season. Earlier in December, we decorated our tree and made a trip to see Santa. The first attempt to see Santa resulted in Olivia running screaming from the room (although prior to going, she had talked about how excited she was to see him). We were going to just go home, but Olivia decided she wanted to try again. She decided to sit on my lap next to Santa and told him that she wanted blocks and jingle bells. Here are some pictures of the Christmas tree decorating and Santa visit.

Sarah got home late on the 21st, so first thing on the 22nd, we got started on our annual cookie-baking-day. This year, Olivia could be a more active participant in the baking/decorating process. (Here's last year's Christmas post if you want to check it out for fun). She helped pour ingredients into bowls, put red hots on the "wreaths", sprinkle chocolate chips on the magic cookie bars, and ice some sugar cookies. She also got her first taste of sweetened condensed milk, which she thoroughly enjoyed (see pics below).

On Christmas Eve, we went to Mass with my family as usual, followed by dinner at their house. Here's a picture of all of us on Christmas Eve.

After dinner at my parents' house, we came home to hang our stockings and leave cookies out for Santa. Olivia also got to open up some new Christmas pajamas and after bathtime, we read Twas the Night Before Christmas together.

On Christmas morning, we opened presents at our house and then headed to my parents' house for more presents and brunch. Somehow, I don't have any pictures from either of those. After naptime and before dinner, we headed to Yusaku's parents' house to open presents with them.

My parents and sister joined us for dinner at the Kawai's, which was very nice.

I like this picture better than the one below except for the fact that
my mom isn't in it and Olivia looks a little drunk

Everyone except Takashi and not flattering of me, but oh well. :)

 All in all, it was a very nice Christmas. Here's one last picture to finish things off.