Mom, What If There Were Twin Bellas???!!!

Sometimes that is a scary thought... two Arabellas could be a big handful!  Especially when they look like this!  Look at that mischievous grin!

 

Or like this! 

 Grandma showed Arabella the photo booth app on her iPad and they both had a great time morphing their faces into strange shapes and emailing them to me for a good laugh!  This app will provide all four year olds with a genuine good time!  And as Arabella found out, you can even make a two-headed Strongbow!

Homemade Ice Cream in Ziplocks

Went to Sioux City this weekend to visit my mom.  She found this great activity on Pinterest for us to do... it was super fun, very easy, and delicious so I decided to share it!  It's homemade ice cream in ziplock baggies! 

Ingredients You Will Need:

2 TBL sugar
1 cup half & half 

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

 Put all these ingredients in a quart sized ziplock baggie.  Squish it around until it's nicely mixed together.

Then you'll need:

1/2 cup coarse salt or table salt  (We used canning salt)
ice cubes

Put these materials in a gallon sized ziplock with the quart sized ziplock inside.  Then do lots of squishing until the ice cream is mostly-frozen.  (Arabella recommends wearing gloves because it makes your hands VERY cold!) It takes about 10-15 minutes of squishing.

It's a good idea to rinse the pint sized baggie when you're done because it'll be covered with salt.  You can eat it right away or pop it in the freezer to eat later.  We made it at about 10 in the morning, so we ate it later.  

It was delicious and so super easy!  We will definitely be doing this again!

Lego Land!!!

 We drove up to Minneapolis over winter break for a hockey tournament and met up with Dave's stepbrother and his family at the Mall of America for a day of fun between games.  Arabella got Legos for Christmas and Colton is always up for Lego fun, so we made our first stop at Lego Land.  We spent over an hour there and ended up getting some little lego guys to play with at home. 

The hockey rink Arabella and Daddy made at Lego Land... see the Zamboni?  That was ALL Bella!

Arabella, 'Woody', and Colton at Lego Land

Then Rhett and Colton took Arabella on about a million rides.  She's finally tall enough to go on some rides without a chaperone and the boys were able to be chaperones for most other rides!  She had so much fun.  

AB riding the Wonder Pets ride on her own... I think she rode this one at least six times!

Two happy boys and one terrified little girl... who claimed it was "the best ride, not scary at all!"

 We ate lunch at Bubba Gump's and enjoyed catching up with Tory and Michelle (who we really don't see often enough).  Needless to say after a really fun day at the MOA, we ALL slept great that night!

Arabella's Writing

It says, "You are my little love bug" and the heart says "AB" in it.

My sweet little girl is loving learning how to write!  She writes me little messages like this one that totally make my day.  They're starting to really make sense when I look at them.  I've saved most of them in a little box in my room so I can look at them years from now (when she is a snotty teenager that tells me she hates me) and remember what a sweet little girl she is. 

Baby Belly

"I have a baby in my belly just like you Mama!" 

Recently realized I've never really announced that we're having a baby on the blog... most of you know anyway, but here ya go... and official announcement:
We are expecting a baby girl on February 28, 2012!  

All three of us are excited and can hardly wait for her to get here.

AB's Dance Party

Arabella's Dance Party on our last day of winter break... I can hardly believe how old she is getting... She recently requested this song to be put on her iPod.