Our day

I'm SO jealous hearing about my friends in CA and AZ taking their kids outside to play lately... That's really my main complaint about living somewhere that gets so cold in the winter. Otherwise, weather really doesn't bother me that much. And it is fun for them to play in the snow, but it's just not as easy as taking a walk to park. So, we still try to get them out as much as possible and find things to do to burn off all of that energy and get them tuckered out, and not get sick of being in the house.
There are a few indoor play places near us, and they LOVE going there. We went to 'Monkey Joe's' today, and they get so excited when you bring it up, that we can't tell them ahead of time because you will have two little voices on constant repeat "mommy, monkey joes? daddy... monkey joes? monkey joes?" ALL day until we get there. Our nanny usually takes them to one of these places at least once a week to burn off some steam.
This place is HUGE, with a ton of stuff that they can jump on, slide down, tunnels to crawl through, etc... So they had a blast. This picture is only a small section of the building.

So once they were thoroughly tuckered out, (and I must say, we were pretty tired ourselves running around after them....) We went to Chili's for lunch. They did really well. When they were tiny, we could pretty much take them anywhere we went and they were very well behaved, and wouldn't make a peep the entire time we were shopping, or eating, or whatever we were doing. But the last 6-9  months have been a different story. Now that they are mobile, it's difficult to take them to a restaurant and make them sit at the table the entire time, they want to run around and get into everything (times two.) So lately, if we go out, they haven't been coming. But I think we might be getting over that phase, because they were really good today, and the last few times we went out,  and kept themselves busy coloring. Emma is a very serious 'colorer' (I know that's not really a word, but that's what I call her.) She definitely has my moms art genes in her. That girl will sit and color all day if you let her.

Talking to dad.

After lunch we went to visit my dad. He had both of his knees completely replaced earlier this week, and was in the hospital for a little bit, and is now in a rehab facility. So we've been dropping in to visit him each day. They love their Pop.

Yesterday he wanted a shake, so on our way we grabbed him a shake, and.... only because I knew Emma and Drew would probably drink his entire shake (which he would let them), I got each of them their own little shake. That was a first. They were happy about that.

They were small shakes, but in their hands they look extra large, now that I'm looking at the pictures.

They were pretty amazed with all of the equipment there, and lots of buttons to press. God only knows what they did to those machines.

Check out my little man in his big boy leather jacket