Aubrey would like nothing but coloring books for Christmas. Something tells me she will change her mind on that, but I love her love for coloring. Now if I could just keep her crayons sharp and organized she would be the happiest girl in the world.
We reintroduced the kids to Old Maid today and they are having a blast. Aubrey is so good at finding her matches and even tries to sneak peaks of your cards if you are not careful. Ainsley is... learning. She WANTS the Old Maid. And if she has it, she isn't giving it up. In fact she will take it out of her hand and sit on it so you can't take it. That suits Aubrey just fine, she would prefer to win anyway. Ainsley also insists on searching her opponents hand so she can find a match. Silly kid! It is so fun to play games with the kids. I much prefer playing a card game or a round of Candy Land to getting Polly Pocket dressed for her day at school. 
I am so in awe at how much my little family has changed in two short years. Ainsley is roughly at the same age Aubrey was in this picture. Well, she is currently two months older, but close enough. This picture also tells me I have a missing box of 2T clothes floating around. I must locate them!
The girls providing an opportunity to vacuum the couch 
So Ainsley flat out refused to have her picture taken. "I can't" translated "I won't" was on repeat. Her eyes swelled with tears, it was so sad. She told me she wanted me to take her picture with our camera. I am pretty sure picture places frown on this, for obvious reasons, but the photographer consented and let me take a few pictures of Ainsley. As long as I was snapping, she was smiling, and the real photographer got some great ones too. Here are my two out takes.
This one is actually really cute. If I was capable of thinking quickly, I would have actually zoomed my camera. I cropped this, so I am sure the quality would be grainy if I had a print made. Her crooked smile made a few of the shots, but there were several others that I fell in love with so I passed on those. Besides, I have 100's of that smile on my camera.
This is Ainsley's current "smile for the camera" smile. It's so memorable that her CBS teachers have even commented on it. After nearly 2 years, I finally made an appointment to get portraits done, and this is her current smile. Lovely. Her bangs are a little crooked, she has a little scratch on her nose, and I have no idea what she will wear, but we're doing it. Finally. I hope it turns out well!
Since Thursday was a snow day, Aubrey's pre-school had their Harvest Parade today. I hate that schools feel the need to call Halloween "Harvest" but that is a different post altogether. I'm pretty sure they ate cupcakes and then marched around in their costumes. I don't think they harvested much of anything. Thanksgiving may be a great opportunity to celebrate "Harvest" but I digress. Unfortunately, the director told me that Aubrey hit her wall about 15 minutes before the parade started. She seems to be back under the weather. She just wanted to go home and is now laying on the couch waiting for death.
I totally rocked the fairy hair today. I guess Halloween was my trial run, because I did way better today. And yes, this is Ainsley's costume, but I didn't want Aubrey wearing a full length dress to pre-school so she happily became everyone's favorite tinker fairy. And yea for me buying their costumes a little loose. There is plenty of room to grow into them which will provide hours and years of dress-up fun!
Here she is from the front. I love Halloween, err, I mean Harvest.
Colorado had several deep freezes this month and it really affected our pumpkins. If pumpkins freeze, they mold and turn to mush. I bought our pumpkin after the first freeze, but from an inside display at Walmart (that must have been outside during the freeze). So yeah, we went to carve our pumpkin yesterday and it was soft and moldy on the bottom. We figured burning a candle in a moldy gourd was a bad idea and threw it out. Here we were on Halloween with no pumpkin to carve. 
Cinderella
My version of Cinderella hair
Tinkerbell
My version of Tinkerbell's bun
My costume from a party earlier in the week. This one is for my mom. :)
Schools were closed for three days this week due to a crazy "winter" storm. We got nearly 2 feet of snow in our town. Here's a picture of our backyard after a half day of melt.
This morning, Halloween, we played outside and let the girls sled in the front yard. Mike even built up a ramp for them with all the snow that was on our driveway. Aubrey was not a fan of the ramp and eventually found her own path. 
Ainsley was a big fan. The faster the better for our little dare devil. And yes, the kids are not healthy, but we couldn't let an opportunity like this pass up by. It may be January before we get another storm like this! I realize this is most likely a sign of things to come, but last winter our sledding days were limited and it was a bummer to wait for the perfect storm.
Ainsley has her first winter cold, in Fall, and I don't like it. She is battling a temperature of 103.6, is increasingly fussy, and we are both sleep deprived. There were about 5.5 hours that I attempted sleep last night. Ainsley was next to me the entire time. She woke up continuously, each time screaming at me, crying, or trying to bolt from the bed to go downstairs. I would wager that the longest period of uninterrupted sleep was 20 minutes. It turns out that lack of sleep makes me rival the Wicked Witch of the West. Aubrey refuses to play by herself and avoid exposure, and I am done trying to stop the inevitable. Meanwhile we are in the process of getting 10-18 inches of snow. I'm tired. Did I mention that?
