BURRRRR!!!

No mild winters here any more!! It has been COLD!! This morning the temp read 14 when I got up... we all wished we were still in bed... but as always, there is too much going on for sleep!

1st, Happy Birthday GRANDMA! What a fun visit we had with Grandma and Papa after their trips to Tenn, Tx, and then Cancun! We celebrated with the whole family at our house and feasted on mexican and gourmet cup cakes!



The past two weeks have also been HUGE for the Steelers, so obviously our household is pretty happy! Below is a pix of Riley on Spirit day - the friday before the Championship win! Today (monday after the win) she wore her black Steelers jersey to school! Speaking of school, in an email recently, her teacher said, "Riley has the wonderful gift of picking up on whatever's being taught. She's a great listener and retains information very well." My thoughts on that, "Yippee!!" One last thought on Riley - she is selling GIRL SCOUT COOKIES!!! Let me know if you are interested in buying a box! She is a first year daisy, so we are going easy on sales, however she is enjoying the sales part a lot more than I am!! (I'll try to post a Daisy pix soon!)

My Steelers Crew!
Justin got the kids Aqua Sand for xmas and they've been LOVING it! Look at crazy eyes below! LOL

Gymnastics is over for now - Riley enjoyed it but decided to take a break for a while.

She has the pink pants on (the gym is COLD)

Kyle is still our little sweetie - however starting to get more and more... personality! The other day we were all at the store and he was acting crazy. I got down on his level and told him that he was not behaving and needed to pull it together. His response, "I don't want to behave... I punch you!" With that he gently put his fist to my arm and then looked like he was going to bust out crying. We dealt with his attitude appropriately, however only after we pulled ourselves together so that he couldn't see us laughing our butts off!

Unfortunately, K started puking this past Thursday - all evening! After covering his entire room in vomit, I got him the blue bowl - around here it is known as the puke bowl. The next few times he threw up, it landed only in the bowl and he was soooo proud of himself! The Surratt family cherish the little things:-)

Welcome to 2011!!

Happy New Year!!

2011 came in with a blast! We had some friends over to help ring in the new year and at 8pm we counted down for the kids. The plan was to let them celebrate at 8pm, then tuck them into the bonus room for movies and hopefully sleep... however as suspected, they were all up till midnight to help the adults ring in the new year!

This is the 8pm count down complete with poppers and bubble wrap to run around on!

The adults still had a great time - we went old school and played some great beer pong... however my once sharp skills have gotten super rusty!

Bev gave Jen and I matching beautiful wine bottles (they were huge and delicious!)

And 2011 is here!

On new years day, I took the kids to see Tangled - what a cute movie and that just may be Kyle's first movie theater experience.

The kids are still loving the Wii and are looking forward to Grandma and Papa's arrival in the coming days so they can get some good competition on!

Riley has one last gymnastics class this session (hopefully I'll remember to get pix) She has enjoyed it, but an hour and a half is a lot after a full day of school. In addition, I'm exhausted trying to keep Kyle entertained as we wait... below he is chilling on the gym mat playing his leapster - this lasted about 5 minutes of the 90 we were there.

Since the last 2 days of school were snowed out before the holidays, we had a make up 'winter party' in Ri's kindergarten class after the 2 week break. I'm room mom this year and am happy this party is over (however I'm pretty sure the party was a success) The kids rotated through 4 stations (finger print art on a winter/kindergarten poem, decorate cookies & make home made applesauce, make pine cone bird feeders, and make an icicle ornament) Below is Ri with the finger print poem craft. She just LOVES school, her classmates, and her teacher. She already has all her sight words mastered and is reading at a 1st grade level.... we hope this love of school continues for a long time!

Kyle on the other hand would rather play with his cars! But, he does like school and is extremely well behaved for his teachers and catches on very quickly. No matter how you look at it, he'd still rather be kicking a ball! Last week Kyle asked me the following, "Mommy, did you know that both Santa and Jesus can see me all of the time?" I just love these thoughtful 3 year old questions! My response should have been, "better believe it buster, so watch out!" but instead all I could do was smile and praise him for such a thoughtful question:-)

The only other event of the week was our first call from Nurse Amy to come get Riley from school this past Friday. The poor little thing had a 101 temp and it kept her down all weekend:-( fortunately, nothing ever came of the fever and she was fever free on Sunday and back to school on Monday!

As mentioned above, Ri just loves school so I'm going to try to remember to take pix of her art work and school work more often (especially since I'm known to pitch anything in my line of sight when I want things clean!) Below is a free writing assignment they did in school (sorry for the lousy color - the paper is white, not brown!)