Snow

We got some snow last night and Charles' last class of the day was cancelled, so we went out and played in the snow today.

Making a snowman.

Snow Angels.

Snowball fights.

Morrill Hall...take 2

We went to visit Morrill Hall today...you know, the elephant museum. Sydney was super excited to go. When we pulled up to the museum, she took one look at the giant mammoth statue outside and knew that we were there. We took the time to go through the museum today and had a lot of fun.



I was super excited to see this room with the giant DNA strand. The best part was hearing Sydney explain to Charles that DNA is "what makes me, me!"





These rock were pretty cool, especially under the black light as you can see.



Being a woodpecker/flicker.



Under a giant turtle.




Smelling things is actually an activity she really enjoys.



Building a tree...



...and knocking it down.



Digging for dinosaur fossils.





Butterflies are her new favorite thing...here she is telling us about them.






Checking out the shells.

Mexican Bean

This kid loves Mexican food. Seriously, call the meal a taco of any kind, and she'll eat it.

*Funny story about that title. When Sydney was born, Charles worked at a call center and we would bring him dinner every night. One night, one of the callers heard him call her "bean" and asked him why he was calling her a racist name. We just laugh about it.

Bunnies.

Sydney has an imaginary friend...or maybe it is a pet. Recently, she has been "carrying" around a bunny. She takes her with us everywhere. Like today, while we were running errands, we kept having to wait for the bunny to hop up to us. Or this afternoon, when the bunny watched Sydney eat her lunch. Or when we went to pick up Charles from school and the bunny was in her pocket or buckled up in her car seat with her. And, when we tucked Sydney into bed, the bunny was laying down next to her on her pillow, waiting to be tucked in as well. We think it came around when we checked this book out from the library.

A girl and her water bottle.

Once upon a time, there was a girl. She had a water bottle, which she loved. It was relatively spill proof and kid proof and she would take it every where. It looked something like this...

One day, while at a doctor's appointment, the water bottle was lost. And then, the girl moved to Nebraska and knew she would never see her water bottle again. She was very sad and mourned the loss of her bottle for many months.

Then, one day, a handsome prince decided to prove his love to the girl. He went on a search and found a new bottle that was similar to the bottle...like this one.
but in every other way, exactly like the first bottle. And the girl was very happy once again.

There was also a little girl, who went shopping with the prince to get the new water bottle. She fell in love with a water bottle of her own. Of course, the prince was a softie, and he bought it for her. The little girl was very excited and carried it around all evening, telling everyone about her water bottle that is just for her. It was pretty cute.

Welcome to 2010

So, I'm a bit behind...we were visiting family and then we got back and have been sick ever since. Let me tell you, two and a half weeks of bronchitis is not fun. Hopefully we'll all be better soon. I am working on going through pictures from Christmas and such and you can expect a bunch of backdating soon.

I do have one quick cute Sydney story. We've been reading scriptures as a family recently and Sydney loves it. She loves to read with us especially. So today we gave her her own Book of Mormon to save my scriptures from her loving hands to use. She loves it! And hopefully, she'll love them even more when she sees how I covered it for her to make it more "Sydney Friendly"! I'll post a picture later, but I got the idea from here. Anyway, she has been walking around all day reading them and "helping" us read them too. Usually, the verses are "It came to pass...that he said...that Jesus told his disciples..." or something like that, but it's cute!

Family Movie Night...Chamberlin Style

THIS is how you do movie night...Root Beer in fancy glasses (thank you Brooke!)...



...M&M's (ABC's to Sydney) in the popcorn...



...and Mommy and Papa's bed in the living room! Lots of space to lounge and lay out!

Budding Artist

Sydney enjoys coloring. She colors about once a day, at least. Today, she drew some lovely pictures.



She did this one first. Note the use of colors and the upside down happy face halfway up the page.



This is one of my favorites. Not sure what it is? Let me explain a little.



Notice the eyebrows on a few of them? She's obsessed with eyebrows recently. Don't ask me why.



And here she is coloring on her fingernails. Good thing we use washable markers. Although, she had marker smudges on her face when my visiting teachers came over today. They looked like bruises. Go me.

Ward Christmas Party

I was asked to sing "O Holy Night." Charles insists we don't have enough pictures of me, so he made sure to take some of me singing.



Sydney didn't want anything to do with Santa...until she saw that Santa was giving out candy. Then, she marched right up to him and got her candy cane, thanked him and went to walk away. We had to beg her to stand by him to get a picture of their faces.



And we were very excited that my mom and Talia came up for the two hours to hear me sing. I should have taken a picture of them there, but I forgot. Oh well.

What a Great Papa We Have!

Digging our car out of the snow so we could get out of the house for thirty minutes!

Why Charles had no school for two days

The view out our living room window.


Our car




Sydney was very concerned for the squirrels. She kept calling them to come inside our apartment.

Dancing

Excuse the messy apartment and blurry images, but here are some pictures of Sydney and Damon dancing at our house.

Oh, the weather outside is (going to be) frightful...

We are getting ready for our first Nebraska winter storm (not my first one, but still). It's predicted we will get up to twelve inches of snow tomorrow, not including the three inches we got on Sunday and the one to two inches we got tonight. Schools across the state have already declared themselves closed for the day tomorrow. Hopefully, UNL isn't going to be one of them, as Charles has his first final tomorrow and we don't want it to be rescheduled.

Dedication

This kid cracks me up! She loves this little chair we got her for free off of Craigslist. Last week, Charles was feeling sick and was having a hard time with the cold medications we had him on (apparently antihistamines don't react well with his body...something I will NEVER understand how he can survive without them) and I needed to get some things done around the house. So, I asked Sydney to "take care" of him. You know, kisses and such. She made me bring the chair out of her room and sit it right in front of the couch, right in front of Charles' head, facing him. Every time I tried to move her so they could watch tv or something, it was always, "No, Mommy, I take care of Papa."

What Ails Us?

This morning, Sydney came into our room after she woke up and was snuggling with us before we all got up for the day. She looked at me and asked me to open my mouth. Then she asked me what I had in my mouth. I figured she was talking about my permanent retainer until she tells me that I had a frog in my mouth and it goes ribbit, ribbit. So, I asked her what she had in her mouth. She said that she had a piggy in her mouth and that it goes oink, oink (which is an improvement...her pigs used to say la, la, la). Then, she told Charles to open his mouth. She then told him he had a cow in his mouth and that the cow goes mooo. Wonder how we cure this? ;)