Super Kids, Super Bowl

We came together with good friends for our annual Super Bowl weekend-o-fun. This year the festivities were held at the House of Harms in Poplar. We carpooled with the Bansemars in their fancy new family-mobile and collectively tried to make the best of the trip. According to the experts at Google the drive is about 7 hours, but add a few little ones to the equation and it was about 8 hours each way. That is A LOT of carseat time for a busy toddler. We left Friday night and arrived shortly after midnight. Or maybe it was a little later? Hmm, hard to recall. In any case we tried not to wake the house full of sleeping babes...6 kids under 26 months among the four families!...and keep Genevieve and Alana as drowsy as possible so they would hopefully go right back to sleep. Alana is still wee so she needed a midnight snack but fortunately G passed right out after we laid her in bed.

We woke up Saturday morning to greet all of the Harms's, and the Kroenings who had arrived earlier on Friday. This included our first chance to meet the newest addition, Mr. Henry Kroening, who was born just 10 short days earlier! Robin was a brave woman to make the trek but we were so happy to meet this new little man.

hey munchkin

So now there are three big kids (Ethan, Miles, and G) and three little kids (Addie, Alana, and Henry). All of the kids did so well over the course of the weekend, and the three big kids were super well behaved. Obviously a reflection of their collectively marvelous parents. They played and shared and were generally adorable:

our kiddo collection


the big kids 2009 to 2010


hey miles!


hugs/wrestling


more hugs!


hello blackmail


the little girls, Addie and Alana


everyone loves story time


genevieve was a slidin' fool. if she went down once, she went down 100 times

At some point, Anna was recalling the days when their driveway was filled with sports cars instead of minivans and SUVs, and that it wasn't that long ago that we were eating out for every meal, sleeping in late, and spending long nights out on the town. Although we officially did not leave the house the entire weekend, we had a great time watching the tots play together. On Sunday, we sent the dads out with the big kids to get some fresh air and wear them out a bit. Although I'm pretty sure the dads were more wiped than the kids:

mush, daddy, mush!


winter wonderland


each of the boys took a turn hauling the princess around. surprisingly she didn't seem to show interest in doing any of the work.

And let me allay your fears that anyone left hungry. There were mountains of food throughout the weekend, especially at Game Time.

my newest specialty: 7-layer dip, with a mostly olive-free portion for our less enthusiastic Oleaceae fans

We hit the road mid-morning on Monday for the pilgrimage back home, finally pulling into our driveway at about 6:30 that night. We did a no-no and had G's carseat facing forward for the trip, but it was worth it for the freedom to let her see the DVD player, and the scenery going by. Overall she did marvelously in the car, and we were so glad to see all of our friends and their fabulous little munchkins.

Catching Up

I know, it's been a while. Even Matt chided me for not blogging more in January. But there just wasn't that much new and exciting. We got through the month just enjoying the typical antics of our squishable little tot and her furry sidekick and catching up on our DVRd shows while stuck inside due to the fact that it's January in Wisconsin. Ick.

For some of us, there was definitely a low point in January which was not the re-try of my 29th birthday but instead the Packers losing in the playoffs. I enjoy football but can't say that I support one team (Vikings) or the other (Packers) even though I could legitimately follow either. Matt is working as hard as he can to turn Genevieve into a born and bred Packer fan though, so they spent some quality time together during the last few games of the season.

Turns out a lot of people in this house take comfort in our buddy cheetah (or as G says, Tee-tah)


And also purple donkey


It's like the scene in Forrest Gump where he and little Forrest are fishing together...except in Wisconsin

But when the Green & Gold lost on a pretty crappy play, the tears welled up in Matt's eyes and he collapsed on the floor, consumed by sorrow. Like the little villain she is, here was Genevieve's reaction:

Life quickly returned back to normal after that, which these days means a very chatty little parrot of a girl running around. She's very into giving everything she likes hugs and kisses (and exclaiming 'huk!' 'kiss!'), and I mean everything including her stuffed animals, pages of a book, or her own reflection ("baby! mmmmwah!") . This particular night she was making sure we knew that she had all her body parts accounted for, then she gave some love to her guy Elmo. Except this particular Elmo was on her diaper. Which was clean. Thankfully. PS - naked baby alert!!

Pre-bath, pointing out her butt. Check out that full belly!!! Love it.

Toes (socks are scattered all over the house these days)


Knees (usually pretty surprised to see there are two of them)


"Kiss Emo"


"Huk Emo"

There will be lots more to come this month as we will be in Poplar next weekend for our annual SuperBowl weekend with all of our scattered friends (possibly to include new addition baby Henry, hooray for the Kroenings!!), followed by my trip to NYC for Westminster. Oh, we're also looking at buying a new house, but whatev. Stay tuned, followers!