Catch up - January

January was a month of laying low and getting better from colds.  We've all been sick a bunch this winter and it freaking sucks!  One Sunday, Jason was still sick so I stayed home from church with him and decided to assemble his Christmas present from Granny Sam & Grampa Paul while he was napping.  It was....not easy.  But once I got it all snapped together (finally) and got all the stickers on it, I think it looked awesome!  Of course, I set it all up with his many cars and had to take pictures before I could think about letting him near it.  It was pretty obvious that this was the best it would ever look.  Once you let an 18-month-old loose on the thin plastic, you can't expect it to stay the same.  Plus, you know, us parents may have needed a spin or two with the cars first.  ;-)  But Jason loved it!  

There was more photo taking fun.  Lately Jason has really started looking like Steve with his expressions.  See?

We also got new bedding!  Back in December some friends of ours had upgraded their bed and were giving away their old one.  It was a king size and immediately I offered to take it off their hands.  Steve and I have been sleeping on a double bed since we got married, almost 6 years, including 2 full pregnancies and co-sleeping with Jason for 4 months!  Needless to say, it went past cozy.  So since we had this new big, super comfortable bed (yay memory foam pad!), we needed new bedding.  We used some money we'd been given for Christmas to get beautiful new bedding.  It's so pretty!  We got the same sheets we'd previously had (jersey cotton from Target) but in the bigger size and new color.  So we're rocking red sheets and grey & black pillows and comforter.  It's like we're grown ups or something!

Jilly has been very into dress up lately and one day grabbed my boots off the floor.  She put them on and started walking around in them.  The juxtaposition of the (on her) thigh high hooker boots and Dora shirt are just too funny.  :-D

The end of January brought a big birthday party.  My step-dad Paul turned 50 and my cousin Bailey turned 25!  We had a big shindig at Mom & Paul's house to celebrate and I got to make the cake.  It was so much fun to hang out with everyone.

I made the cake and it turned out really good!  Paul specifically requested yellow cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting.  Score!  I decided to make it a 4 layer cake with LOTS of frosting.  It was simple, but looked really cool when we cut into it.

This was the highest cake I ever made and the layers turned out much better than I had ever done before.

Bailey got to cuddle her favorite boy lots, especially while wearing the birthday hat.  It's gotten use on quite a few birthdays now.  ;-)

And it wouldn't be a family gathering, if we didn't all sit around and watch the kids do funny things, especially while taking pictures of it.  ;-)

Jilly has also developed new getting-into-stuff skills.  She not only learned how to undo the child locks on the drawers, but also got strong enough to open the bottom drawer of their dresser.  That meant she now had access to a lot of little toys and books we had put away months/years ago.  This is what we found one evening after she went into her room to play.

She, of course, wanted others to join in with her and it was too silly and fun not to.

January also saw some big moments for us!  Jilly got her first haircut and we also found out that our Ducky is going to be a a little girl!  So while we laid kinda low, we had some very fun moments as well.