Birthdays and Blizzards

Hello world! Yes, the Button family is alive and finally doing well. We had a sick house for most of January and some of February, not fun. Hopefully it's out of our systems though and we can get through the rest of winter sick-free.

Some fun things have happened since our last post. For one, Beckham is growing up so quickly. He now complains if we forget to give him silverware at a meal, and he actually uses them!


He has also learned to cuddle with his favorite stuffed animal of the day. He has been one of our most affectionate babies and I LOVE it.


While we've been in the sick-house we have really had to use our imaginations to keep the boredom away. Thank goodness for stuffed animals. . .

and the many ways to play with them. This is my giant moose that BJ got for me while I was at college and him, on his mission. It's also Eastons favorite friend, his own version of "my buddy."

When the stuffed animals don't cut it anymore we are left with desperate measures. Ryan and Easton take them in stride.

Last Sunday, when we were all better, we decided to make cookies for our neighbors. Every once in a while we like to make giant cookies, they are super fun. The kids all got to decorate six cookies with mini m&m's. Our neighbors loved them.

These ones actually turned out a little bigger then we had planned.

This last week we also started on making some valentines. I've never seen so many hearts or gone through so much paper!

It's was really fun getting into the spirit of valentines day early this year. February is a party month at our house and sometimes the actual holiday gets overlooked. Not this year, besides valentines day is Ryan and mine half year anniversary. On the 14th we will have been married for 8 1/2 years!!

(Don't ask about the bunny ears, they get worn year round at our house)

On the 4th we celebrated Eastons birthday, my little boy is 6! He couldn't decide what kind of cake he wanted and every time I asked him it would be something totally different. I just decided to make something cool and surprise him. I finally found a cake on-line that looked manageable, a dragon.

What I thought was manageable turned into a whole day thing. It was good that Ryan didn't have any school that day! Here are some of the stages.

The cutting and frosting took the longest, the decorating part was fun.

The wings and candles were the last thing to add. Then it was party time!

I picked up some $1 sunglasses at Target as a filler present and what do you think he loved more then the "cool" present we got him?

Easton also got some rockin' presents from grandparents this year. Grandma Button made him a super hero cape with a patch for "Super Easton" on one side and "Super Button" on the other. He wears it all the time but we had to draw the line at sleeping with it on.

Grandma Kim and Papa got him a glow station. I had to play around with it while reading the instructions to get how to use it and see all the things it can do and it was so much fun that finally Easton had to take the glow pen out of my hand and say, "mom, I get how to do it okay?"

As some of you may know, we got slammed with a snow storm this weekend. It started snowing Friday around 4pm and went all through the night. This was Pittsburgh's 4th biggest snow storm in recorded history, woohoo! We are so happy that we could be here when it happened. . . not!

The kids thought it would be fun to go out and play in it. Luckily they know that mommy doesn't play in snow so they didn't even pressure me this time.

This is Creed trying to climb his way back up our stairs. It didn't work very well. He lasted about 15 minutes outside.

Easton, sporting his new glasses, did pretty well. He lasted about 45 minutes. He said it wasn't so bad after he couldn't feel his hands any more.

This is Ryan rescuing Makay after about 5 minutes of being outside. She got cold and would have come in after two but she couldn't make it up the stairs. She said that it was bumpy so she couldn't walk and then she fell on the snow with her face, ouch. Do you see why I don't play in the snow?

Parker and our neighbor girl lasted the longest, almost a full hour.

This is a shot of our street. The power lines were so weighed down with snow that many of them broke. Luckily we didn't have our power go out but a lot of people did. The power company was having trouble moving around in the snow to repair them so some people went two days with out power. They actually set up "warming centers" for people with no power to go to. It was pretty crazy.

Yep, our poor car had a good two feet of snow on top of it. It took Ryan almost three hours to dig out around our car so we could move it.

So that's us, stranded in the house eating birthday cake. (Not me though mom and Kiki, promise!)