Blizzards/Storms Round Two

We've been hit with another winter storm here in the frozen tundra...and it's not supposed to stop until the day after Christmas. Luckily, we don't have far to drive this year, we are just a few minutes down the road from Grandpa and Grandma's house.

We've been busy playing inside...as usual...enjoying Gavin's new Christmas toys

Gavin's new house

The world almost ended when he fell
into his toy bin...

Until he realized that it gave him a step up
to the window sill...

We apparently need to do some work on Gavin's sharing skills. As his Great-Aunt Julie said last Sunday, we need to teach him the word, "psyche!"

Here Mommy...
want to share some food?!?

Psyche!
Just kidding, it's ALL mine!

Gavin has been having a blast playing with his big cousins while they are in town, and it's funny to watch him interact with them. If Grant has a ball (all three received their own) Gavin thinks he needs it, even if he already has one in hand. If the two kids are running circles around the living room, Gavin stares at them in amazement. If Grandpa tickles Grant's belly, Gavin watches very closely...wondering why his Grandpa is playing with that kid!

We hope that you all have a very Merry Christmas Eve! And for those of you having to travel in this bad weather, drive safely!

Christmas Magic

A quote from a five-year-old CFer whose mom I have gotten to know via facebook...

"Christmas time is just so magical, mom. Wouldn't it be great if the magic took my CF away?"

Just a reminder, this year's annual CF walk will be held May 1st. In the near future, I will be letting you know multiple ways you can help donate to our team, and help to make this magical wish come true for all our CFers.

Cousins!

Gav is absolutely LOVING having his cousins in town for the holidays. Tonight, I thought we would leave Gma and Gpa's early because he isn't feeling the best and is exhausted...but we ended up staying until 8 because he was so busy having fun that he nearly forgot to be crabby :)

Tonight, all three of them played the "drums" on Grandma's bowls, looked through the Christmas toy ads (pretty sure Morgan has "always wanted" about 1/2 of the toys in each catalog), played with trucks and giggled with each other.

Gav has definitely been watching Grant's walking skills closely. He's done his best to keep up, but it's hard to do on all fours! Several times tonight he stood for 10-15 seconds all alone...until he realized he was standing on his own and promptly sat down!

I'm sure that time will fly by much too quickly, and soon the Davis clan will have to head back home to Indiana...but we will enjoy the fun times while they are here!

Xmas at Grandma Oma's

This past weekend we celebrated Christmas with my mom, brother and grandma. Gavin got spoiled rotten...and he's not even close to being done with celebrations. I am debating on putting some away for a bit, so he gets a new toy every week, but his birthday isn't far away and it will happen all over again...so we'll see. What a lucky little guy :)

He got the Fischer-Price Laugh & Learn Learning Home Playset...I will have to post pictures of him playing with that later. It took awhile to put the darn thing together, by the time it was done it was past Gav's bedtime, but he loves it and has been crawling through it quite a bit at home.

As you can see...he got quite a few more presents...

Look how big his eyes are,

he was SO excited to get this jumbo stuffed puppy!

We attempted to get him to look at his cards
but he didn't care too much about them :)

Kisses from Grandma Oma

Casey and my brother in their matching
MN Gopher coats

Testing out his new car from Grandma

Even Louie loved Gavin's new stuffed animal

Hanging out with Great-Gramma Heise

Gavin and Grandma Oma

We were very thankful to have our "new to us" mini van to take everything home...we literally had a car full.

Today, we spent some time over at Casey's grandma's home celebrating Christmas with the Brown Family...pics of that to come!

New CF family blog

A new CF family has joined the blog world. Please head over to Kristine's blog and show her some love!

Her son Tyler James was born in August, and like my family...his diagnosis came as a huge shock.

One more beautiful face to remind you....

WE NEED A CURE!

Santa and Presents...

...all before 8 am! Yikes!

While we're always up for the day long before then, we are rarely out of our pjs...I think Casey had to tell me to get out of bed about 5 times :)

Casey's dad is involved in Sertoma in Rochester and each year they invite the member's children/grandchildren for a Christmas breakfast. (His dad had shoulder surgery, hence the sling)

Three generations of Groettum's

Santa came to visit!

Gav looks unsure here, but he wasn't worried about Santa,

he was wondering why everyone was looking at him :)

Trying to pull of Santa's beard...

He got his first ever Christmas present!

He had never unwrapped a present before...

But obviously caught on quickly!

What could it be?!?

Ohhh! A new Vtech toy!

Funniest part is that Casey and Gav play with this
toy everytime we're in a toy aisle but
we never actually bought one

He loves it!

Little does he know that he has a lot more presents to open over the next week or so. This weekend we are heading to my mom's to celebrate, and then next weekend we celebrate with Casey's side of the family. Cousin's Morgan and Grant will be in town...Gav can't wait to see them!

Last Week's Storm

With my lack of a computer last week, I wasn't able to post the pics of our snowstorm. We went from having absolutely no snow to drifts 3-4 feet high....overnight. Welcome to Southern Minnesota :)

These drifts in the front ended up covering
half of the windows that look out over the front yard

Four foot drifts in the backyard

Living in the townhome has its pluses and minuses...but a huge plus for us was not having to shovel any of the snow! Wooohoo! Next winter when we're in a home of our own again I am sure we'll miss this aspect of it!

Here, the weather on the news is always interesting...people aren't joking when they say the weather here can change in five minutes. For those of you in California, you would probably freak out seeing more than one temperature/climate change in the five day forecast :)

So, when the weatherman said that winter storms were coming, many of us thought...we'll believe it when we see it! Quite often they'll warn of a storm and we'll end up with just an inch or two of snow...but obviously, this time they were right on.

This morning the windchill was -11...overnight it went down to nearly 30 below. I don't mind the cold, but a break every now and then would be nice! Casey and I would like to get out skiing and we'd love to be able to pull Gav around on the sled!

At least with the cold weather happening we got the tree completed last week. Notice the lack of ornaments on the bottom tier?!? Hmm..wonder why that is...


There is also a lack of presents under the tree...not because we haven't bought any, but because a certain little stinker already tried to open his! I also noticed this year, that the ornaments we have that aren't red/gold are all snowmen, funny thing is I didn't plan this and didn't notice it the last couple of years. Well, I guess I'll just have to start a collection :)