Birthday extravaganzas!

Well, as briefly touched on in the last post, Mary Ann is now 3. 3! Wow. We've had 2 birthday parties. The first was just the 4 of us on her actual b-day. We had cake before dinner, spaghetti for dinner, and presents too! She really loved all of her presents. Then, on Sat Feb 16th, we had some of her friends over. 7 kids, other than our 2. Yikes! But, Mary Ann had fun. First the kids played upstairs, then downstairs. They danced, they rocked on the rocking horse (turning it into a see-saw) and then had cupcakes. It's still Lent, so no chocolate for us.
This past Tuesday and Wednesday were spent at the Kalahari resort. It's one of the biggest indoor water parks in America. We had gone there last December for the Wisconsin Neurological Society's meeting. Mary Ann's been talking about it ever since, calling it the "elephant place" since that is the theme for Kalahari. Anyway, we got a special deal and went there for 1 night and 2 days. 2 very long days. We reserved a queen suite which was very nice. 2 queen beds in one room for the kids. Another room for us. There were 2 bathrooms, 3 TVs, and a real-sized coffee pot. It was pretty nice. The kids stayed up until 9:30, giggling, turning the lights on, turning the TV on, and Mary Ann getting into Rose's pack-and-play. We all had a great time in the water park. We also went to the outlet mall. Those idiots decided to make an outdoor mall, which obviously isn't very smart in the winter weather of Wisconsin. But, we got some good deals. We left the Dells at about 6:30pm and made it back for a good nights rest.
And, Obama and McCain won the primaries in Wisconsin. We'll see if they both win the nomination. We DID vote on the way out of town on Tuesday, even if we did vote for different people.

What to do in the Winter

Well, in honor of the 13 plus inches of snow that fell last week and the arctic blast we are supposed to have this weekend (wind chills of 35 below zero are possible) I thought I'd brainstorm some ideas of what we can do here in the winter. For those of you who read this to keep up on the family, I'll let you know that we are all doing well, Rose is jabbering more, Mary Ann had a marvelous birthday on the 5th, and while we are all experiencing symptoms of cabin fever, I don't think it will reach "The Shining" level of insanity.

Winter Activities:
1. Painting finger and toenails
2. Playing with Play-doh
3. Watching a lot of movies
4. Emptying all toys from bins onto the floor
5. Spreading toys from one end of the house to the other, on both floors
6. Staring out the window in disbelief that snow can come down that hard and that fast
7. Staring at the window in disbelief that ice can actually form inside the window
8. Taking naps
9. Reading silly novels
10. Play Ring-around-the-Rosie
11. Play London Bridges falling down
12. Build a bear cave
13. Turn the bear cave into London Bridge
14. Go to bed at 6:30
15. Mentally thank the inventor of the snow blower multiple times
16. Call your sisters many times
17. Google anything and everything
18. Watch "Happy, Hairy Monsters" on YouTube
19. Teach a 3 year old how to start videos herself on YouTube
20. Have a family jam session
21. Have a family dance session
22. Smear toothpaste all over the bathroom mirror
23. Unroll the roll of toilet paper, it's totally worth doing a timeout
24. Play with your mom's fingernail polish by yourself
25. Learn how to make yourself dizzy (Rose is really good at this)