This week...

So about 5 minutes after I hit publish on that last post, I went to go check on her again and found a fairy sleeping in her bed!

 Her cute little thumbs-up for her first purposeful pee in the potty.  She's been doing quite well since this one!

It finally snowed here, and this is what Mike and the girls were able to scrape together for a snow man- he's about 9 inches tall, and lasted a day!

 Eating popcorn and watching a movie is a special treat that they love, and I loved these cute fishy faces watching Finding Nemo.

Do you notice how Kaelyn couldn't stop watching the movie long enough to look at the camera? Sometimes you gotta take what you can get!

My big girls!

Alexa had her second first day of preschool, and it seems to be going relatively well.  She definitely misses her old preschool and friends, and has had a hard time making new friends, but she's finally getting there.

 We tried out a new hair style for Alexa's Valentine's Day party at school.

 The girls were very excited to see that the park here had a dinosaur just like the park back in VA.

 Kaelyn is not a baby anymore! We've started working a bit on potty training, although she really isn't very interested, but we figured that to start potty training, it was time to take off the side of her crib.

The second night we went and got a baby gate to put on her door while she is in there for nap time/bed time.  She is loving the new found freedom, although a bit too much! She won't leave the door closed, obviously won't stay in bed, and wouldn't stay in her room at all.  The gate has helped a ton.  At least she's in there and can't get into anything she isn't supposed to (except the trash liners you see on the floor behind her).  And, she hasn't destroyed the bed like Alexa used to, so I call it a success!

 Of course the girls love Frozen, but this is their favorite part to act out- they love it even more than singing Let it Go!

Usually it's a little clearer, but they knew I was taping it, and so were a bit excited.

Road Trip!

It was a very long drive from Northern VA to UT.  Veeeery long.  We did it in 4 days, and totally lucked out in the weather department.  We were out of VA before the big storms and cold fronts hit, and took a more southern route than normal to avoid any bad weather near Chicago.  

We also lucked out with great kids that threw minimal fits.  Kaelyn could have watched movies the entire way and been happy, although we had to limit it to 2 movies a day thanks to the battery life. And yes, that is marker on her face. Those were exclusively for Alexa after that first day!

 There was A LOT of coloring, and stickering.  Oh, the stickers! They were everywhere, and it did not end when we got to our new place.  The girls took it upon themselves to sticker several boxes, and a month later, we are still finding them everywhere!

 We also hit the dollar store before we left and got old school things like Slinky's, silly putty and magna-doodles.  The girls were loving it!

 We did not do a lot of site seeing, but about an hour before we were going to drive through St. Louis, we figured, hey, we should go see the arch. So we drove by it, but because of construction and ticket times, we didn't bother going up it.

 Once we got to the western side of the country, Alexa started to really enjoy watching for frozen waterfalls.

 We had to stop on the second day to get sun shades because Kaelyn, out very white child, was getting sunburned through the window. I didn't even know that was possible.

The only thing that could have been better, was if the girls had actually slept in the car, but it did not happen, except for the 2 times Kaelyn fell asleep literally 5 minutes before getting to out hotel!

We got into our place the morning after we got in town, and we are loving it! Alexa started Preschool a few days later, and is doing it at the elementary school that she'll be going to next year, which, luckily, is close enough for us to walk pretty easily. The girls also have their own rooms now, which they LOVE.  They think it's pretty awesome, and I do, too! So much better in the mornings when Alexa wakes up before Kaelyn!

Job Search

So, the end of 2014 was interesting, to say the least.  As many people know, we had been job searching for several months, and then Mike got a job offer in UT! The same day he got the offer, he was asked to interview for a different (better) job in OR, so he went out to start working in UT, took a quick trip to OR for the interview, and all the while, the girls and I stayed in VA,  waiting to see where we were going to end up moving.  He had left Nov. 1st, and started that Monday, and had the interview within a few days, and then we just waited. and waited. and waited.

 Suddenly we found out that the UT job ended.  They didn't mention when hiring him that the project he was hired for was an experiment, and if it didn't generate enough income they were going to cut it.  So one day after he got off work, he got a call from his recruiter saying it was over. This was a couple days before Thanksgiving, so he went up to OR, since we still hadn't heard back from them and were still hoping for another interview.  Finally we heard back from them, and found out he wasn't experienced enough for them, so he FINALLY came back to VA.  The girls were pretty much on top of him for a week straight:

In January we lucked out and got a job at a company that Mike had been interested in for years.  Very quickly we had to find a place to love (from across the country), rent some kind of truck, pack up, and get driving!

Christmas

Ok, this time, I actually have a fairly good reason for being so behind on this thing, and the explanation will come in another post.  

The last few months I've been pretty bad at taking pictures, so here are pretty much all of my pictures from December!

Alexa's hair for her Christmas parties:

 And Christmas morning, they had a blast opening presents. It's so fun that both of them are old enough now to get so excited for everything, and old enough to get each other even more excited-they just feed off each other!

 I don't think there was a point besides meals, bedtimes, and school that they were not both wearing a princess dress.  Their dress up box is over flowing now, and they are loving it! It was a very princess-centered year!