Ode to Daddy

It is no mystery to anyone who knows us that we love our Daddy. But over the last 6 months while Mommy's been so sick and incapacitated, we just love him even more. He works so hard, plays with us like a maniac (it's great!), and is just all around a super-duper dad. We thought we'd try to be just like him, but found out that his are BIG shoes to fill. How do we look in your shirts, Daddy?You think they're a little big for us? Oh well, we'll just have to settle for BIG hugs instead!

Happy Father's Day to our awesome Daddy!!

Super Summer Silliness!

We are enjoying summer so much that we've just had hardly any time to update you on our crazy little lives! Mommy is doing better each day and has even had a handful of outings in the last month! Here are some snapshots into our summer fun:Elyse: I'm working on perfecting my smile. It's still a work in progress.

When it's hot, hot, hot outside, we just love swimming in our pool:

To celebrate Father's Day early with one of our grandpas, we had ice cream cake for the first time and let's just say it was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!

Delicious, scrumptious, and I'd like to eat it peace please.

Even though we still have the baby mullet, we're currently rocking the pigtales. We think they're just the right look for the dog-days of summer:

Our grandma is here for the summer to help out Mommy and Daddy and boy are we sure happy she's here! We, of course, are working her to the bone and we love it!

Many an afternoon is spent relaxing in our lawn chairs enjoying ice cream cones:

Elyse: Ta-Da! Go for the perfect landing, Felicity!

It's a wild and crazy life, but someone's got to live it! Here's to more summer silliness!

Three's Company

Elyse: It's BIG news! Are you ready for it?

We are going to have a new little SISTER around soon!Felicity: We can't contain our excitement! We are just going to be the best big sisters, showing her all of the ways of the world and will help her get into all sorts of mischief!I'll show her how to be fancy in every way and how to always be cool and collected for the paparazzi:

Of course I'll teach her how to use her smile to get out of sticky situations and remind her that she's very lucky to have two fabulous, fancy sisters like us!

The ultrasound showed that baby #3 is doing well and growing very strong in spite of Mommy's setbacks. Mommy has made dramatic improvements in the past few weeks and is now off of her PICC line and able to eat some foods. She's still pretty weak and can't do much, but is feeling a little better each day.

A Little Easter Catch-Up

It's been a month since our last post and we can't believe how fast time flies for us when we're having fun and how s.l.o.w. it goes for Mommy while she's sick. The good news is that Mommy finally broke her 6 week food and drink hiatus last week and we're hoping little by little she will be able to eat more food. She's still very weak and sickly, but the docs think she's taking a turn for the better!

Even though Mommy was super sick, we tried to have a good Easter as a family. We celebrated that Jesus is alive and watched church on the internet together with Mommy in bed, then we got our beautiful dresses on and pretty bows (which we promptly took out) and had an eggstra-special Easter egg hunt in the back yard.

Look, Elyse!! I found some over here!I found one over here! What a tricky spot!

Elyse, you'll never believe what I see in here! I've got to check this out:

I knew it was something special! It's an Easter Basket!! Could it mean more delicious goodies? Easter is my new favorite holiday!

I found mine too, Felicity! Check out this loot! Daddy, is this really for me?! Yippee!

You won't believe it, there are even more eggs over here!

Elyse: Hey guys, did you know there was candy in our eggs? I discovered that gem of a fact early on in the hunt!

We had to take a little break during our big hunt to sample the goodies in our eggs. Jelly beans, chocolate, and other such yummy treats filled our baskets to the brim! We'd like to have an Easter egg hunt every day!

Who says you can't sit in the dirt in a white dress to open eggs to find out what lies inside? Not me, that's for sure!

Even though it was a pretty quiet Easter (and Mommy was unable to host her 2nd annual Easter party and egg hunt BUMMER!), we had so much fun celebrating the true reason for Easter and having our first unassisted egg hunt. Not to mention, we received tons of "bunny treats" and even though she can't have any, Mommy is quite pleased we share her obsession for the ooey, gooey, artificial creation that is the Peep!

What's the BIG Idea?

Elyse: You're probably wondering, "Hey, what's the BIG idea? Where have those crazy twins been?" Well, we've been holding down the fort, keeping a big secret, and helping take care of Mommy. Felicity: Because you see, our Mommy has been extremely sick lately and she wanted us to tell you the big news: We're going to be big sisters! (Elyse: well, I'm actually going to be a big sister for the second time as I am a whole 14 min. older than Felicity!). Can you believe it? It was a big surprise to all of us, but we haven't been doing much celebrating because Mommy has this awful condition called hyperemesis gravidarum which makes her just so so sick.

Mommy has been in the hospital multiple times, has home nursing care, and now has a PICC line with TPN (which means she gets all of her nutrition through a central line into a main artery). It's been a rough road for all of us, but we're a resilient clan!

We decided to document one of our visits to the hospital so you could see we're still our crazy little selves!! We hate when Mommy has to go to the hospital and we're happy she can at least be at home with her nursing service now.

Thankfully we have an amazing daddy who plays with us lots while Mommy's in bed!

This curtain thing was so fun to play with and hide behind. Who says a hospital has to be boring?!

This room had a great view and we could see for miles!

We took every opportunity to climb, jump, and make this crazy place fun for Mommy!

That's it folks! We hope you've enjoyed our update and we want you to know we sure have missed you! Hopefully Mommy will start to feel better soon (although the docs aren't very hopeful), but until then, we'll be sure to take good care of her!

For those of you who want to know the details, here they are: Mommy is 11 1/2 weeks along, is due in early Oct, and is pregnant with one baby. If you'd like to learn more about her condition and how it differs from morning sickness, click here. And if you're wondering who is taking care of us, we now have full-time nanny help. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers during this difficult time!

Can't Get a Good Princess Down

Elyse: Listen up! We are not going to let this snow get us down! We embrace the snow and rule over it as Ice Princesses!
Felicity: Um...can someone from Wardrobe fix my earring?I don't think it's a coincidence that I'm dressed like Snow White...since our whole city is snow white too!!

We are getting pretty CRAZY being so home-bound lately. In the Frozen Tundra, at least they know how to clear out the snow and streets and get on with life; but here we have to wait days and weeks to get back to normal. Until some sort of normal returns to our crazy town, we're just going to have to rule the roost looking fancy!

Snowtastrophe!

After an amazing time frolicking with friends and family in the Frozen Tundra, we drove a LONG WAYS back home with Mom and Grandpa. Our crazy road trip ended with a nice week at home getting all unpacked and settled in. Grandpa did some work around the area and then came back to DC to have one last weekend with us.

Little did he know that he'd be STUCK HERE due to the GREAT SNOWTASTROPHE OF 2010!!!

The news stations said "Gather supplies! Prepare for the worst storm we've ever seen! The world may be ending due to SNOW!" and other nonsensical things that those of us who are from the Frozen Tundra (or whose parents are from there) think are ridiculous! In fact, we spent much of the weekend laughing at all of the silliness: schools closed preemptively before the snow and for days after it stopped, streets remaining unplowed for DAYS after the snow stopped, our street being half-plowed, etc. We guess the people here just don't appreciate the snow we brought with us from the Frozen Tundra!

Daddy and Grandpa shoveled and shoveled and shoveled. In the end, we got close to 30 inches!!

We weren't very helpful, exactly, but we had a great time watching the hard workers:

And after two straight days of continuous snow, the sun shines, the sky is blue, and we have mountains of snow:

The piles are taller than Dad and Grandpa!

Overall, we had a nice weekend with Mom, Dad, and Grandpa. We enjoyed fires in the fireplace, yummy food, and playing dolls with Grandpa!

We're Two!!

Today we celebrated a momentous occaision: we turned TWO!! It's so hard to believe that just two years ago we were in the NICU growing strong and here we are today, rambunctious, crazy two-year olds! How time flies when you're too busy to notice that you've grown to be 8 times your original size!!

Our Dad and Mom decided to have a big party in the Frozen Tundra because we probably won't spend too many birthdays with our family here and boy, oh, boy did we have fun!! Because we love Mickey so much, our Mommy took the theme and ran with it:The banner our Mommy made was a real show-stopper when you entered the party room:

She also took pics of us from the last year, enlarged them, and put them on Mickeys all over the room. It was fun for people we don't see very often to see what we were up to in the last year!

Our food spread was de-li-cious! We enjoyed Jimmy John's sandwiches, veggies, fruit, candy, and of course, CAKE!!

And here is our marvelous, ridiculously yummy cake. If you're in MN and looking for a cake, check out Miss Sara's Cakery--her work is AMAZING!

We were in LOVE with our cake and hated (only a little) to eat it!

And if you read this blog much, you know that no special occaision is complete without fancy outfits for us--Mommy did not disappoint! Tutus for the big TWO:

If you can't quite see it, our shirts had our names embroidered on them:

For party favors, Mommy got these delicious Mickey chocolate pops. Yum!

Mesmerized by the flame, Mom and Dad helped a little in the candle department:

Who needs party hats when you can wear Mickey ears?!

Mom brought out the big-guns for cake eating (art smocks for a bib), but with the fondant instead of buttercream frosting, we didn't even get too messy. But we sure enjoyed the delicious cake:

Elyse: When we opened presents, we were overwhelmed by everyone's generosity. We loved everything right away and wanted to play with it all. Unlike Felicity, however, I meticulously opened each present and even threw away the wrapping paper in the garbage. Felicity lived up to her nick name--when it came to presents she was the "FELICINATOR."

Our cousins helped us open each thing and we just loved celebrating our birthday with our family and wonderful friends here in the Frozen Tundra:

We are so grateful to every person who came to see us and celebrate our big birthday. It was the GREATEST birthday ever!!