The Scarlet Letter of Preshool

Crew Cuts Dress Shirt-- $25 dollars
Grey Sweater from the GAP-- $30 dollars
Yellow sweat pants that announce to the world that you peed your pants at school-- priceless.

Today when we picked Sam up from school he was not wearing his brand new jeans that we originally put him in. Instead he was sporting these bright yellow sweat pants. I was mortified. He had apparently had an accident (something that has NEVER happened anywhere but school) and I had forgotten to put an extra outfit back in his little satchel after the break. I asked what in the world happened and he told me he "peed ALOT when he woke up from nap". My first thought was "huh you really nap? That's why you will never nap for me on school days" and second "Your poor teachers." While I was absolutely horrified that he had to wear these yellow pants (irony in the color choice at all?) a virtual scarlet letter for preschool, it didn't seem to phase him one bit. He is actually still wearing them while I write this. I am so glad he is not at the point where kids know to tease about "accidents" and that Sam has such a resilient personality :)
When the Moons come over
I love when Elizabeth comes over. It means something creative is about to go down. Yesterday I showed her how to make these cool headbands. Of course I didn't grab a picture of the finished project because that would be way to on top of things, maybe she will post one :) While we crafted away the kids played away. The boys pretended to be knights

Good ole lightsabers!

While Gwyn played with something else-- the toilet.

Its okay we keep our apartment insanely warm and she has yet to develop that pesky sense of modesty ;)
My Yellow Shoes-- Well to be exact, Felicity's Yellow Shoes that I Absconded With the Last Time I Visited
I love yellow shoes. Since I have a thing about forking out money for cute shoes I generally just wait until my fashion savvy older sister gets sick of her shoes then hoard her cast offs. I have been coveting these shoes for about a year. While there for a photo shoot shoot I asked to borrow them. She said she never wears them so sure. I decided to interpret this as "and you can keep them forever." I figured I should probably come clean though in case she thinks she is loosing her mind and misplaced her shoes. So, Felicity, I stole your shoes. I fell much better.

When I took this picture Sam asked me to take a picture of his feet too! So here it is:

Now I must end this post because Abby just exploded on the brand new jcrew pants I just got in the mail... I don't know why I even try?

Runny Noses

"I am Abby. I have been very sick this weekend.... My mom tried to make me feel better by putting a cold wash cloth on my head."

"I took lots of naps, and tried to suck my thumb and breathe at the same time, it was very loud but some how Daddy slept through it"

"I cried a lot and had my mommy so worried."

"Of course when she took me to the insta-care I smiled and cooed at the nurse, and my fever broke that night. I am feeling a lot better but my mom says she needs to go into hibernation for the next week. Thanks Granny and Cady for calling and checking on me!"

We're going backwards....

Woo hoo its a new year! We had a BLAST of a New Years Eve which I have to say is pretty rare when you are married with 3 children. I mean really how often does EVERYONE love their New Years eve? We owe our awesome night to the Moon family. Elizabeth and Brandon were kind enough to host us at their home even though they had JUST flown in from their vaca in Chicago. Elizabeth had their home decked out in the cutest decorations inspired from our beloved Anthropologie. Cute little individual cards hung on strings and draped along the table.

We we drank sparkling apple cider from goblets, ate treats from crystal dishes, and had salad with homemade vinegrette... it was like we didn't have children :)

The kiddos had their own special little table and chairs complete with a table cloth! After eating yummy pizza we let the kids play with the fun party favors we brought, in an attempt to make up for the fact I had promised Sam sparklers but then didn't deliver (who knew they were illegal in the district?) They all got a pair of star glasses which they thought were super cool... for two minutes

{The Three Crazy Boys}

{Super Star Sam}

{Abbers Glammed Out}
Atticus thought his mom deserved a little star power and brought her Gwyn's

The girls had some much needed girlfriend time.

{Gwyn could not believe it when Abby told her she was moving so far away}

How cute is Atticus! I had actually thought about doing a whole post in black and white.. so clean and classic.Then today I hoped on the Moons blog and all the pictures of Elizabeths most recent post were in BW. I started laughing, I am telling you great minds think alike :)
We then broke out the poppers which were way better then I thought they would be. The boys liked them at first but then my cuties got a little scared of the sudden popping. Elizabeth caught a great photo here.
Then we let them go out in the hall and throw poppers around on the ground. Sam and Liam thought this was great! We showed them how you could snap them in your fingers and stop on some of them on the ground.

Liam was terrified and ran inside. (You can see him in the above picture totting around the Forrero Roche he was begging for)

Gwyn was mildly entertained.

So here is the thing, Gwyneth is ADORABLE!!! I couldn't help but take pictures of her the whole time.

Luckily her mom is also a photographer so she is totally used to it.

She is hilarious and does this AHHHH face. No noise, just the face.

I love it! We let the kids play and we chatted the evening away. Finally around 10:30pm the kids starting falling apart and we headed home. We weren't even 10 mins away and I looked back and saw this:
Nothing shows you had a rockin evening quite like two zonked kiddos!
We got the cuties to bed and I enjoyed the last of my guilty pleasures. My New Years resolutions are simple and as follows:
1. No carbonation: I am absolutely drinking ALL my calories
2. No chocolate until we get to Dili, where it will be to expensive to buy :)
3. No more ponytails. I wear my hair in a ponytail basically EVERYDAY. I decided this a few days ago and have been really good about only putting it up in the morning and night time. It is sad because I have never received as many compliments on my hair as I have the last few days. Was it really that bad before-- the answer is YES.

I love fruit-- Apples to be exact

There will be lots of pictures to follow but right now I am trying to get everything organized on my new imac!!! Merry Christmas to the Crawford's! Christopher's laptop has given us trouble since day one. We have had to take it in to the Geek Squad so many times that they finally suggested we use our lemon policy and just call it quits and use the mola to get something new. Well Chris knew that I had been drooling over my friend Reese's imac and how much I love editing pictures on a desktop so tadda he came home with an awesome Apple. We are in the process of transferring over all our files etc via external hard drive (my original Christmas present-- it just better not crash while I am transferring things!!) Between the imac the hard drive, the Kindle and point and shoot camera I got Christopher for Christmas, we feel fairly technologically overloaded. Sam and Liam like the technology they got from Santa (remote control Wall-E's) so everyone is happy! Hope your Christmas was as crazy fun as ours (lots more to come on that soon).

Christmas Eve and train overload

After Chris went into work for a little bit we headed to downtown DC to see the special train exhibit at the National Botanical Gardens. We drove right up to the front and were lucky enough to get a spot right infront of the doors. Honestly how often does that happen? I have to mention it because with three kids it is always ironic that we get horrible parking spots and then after unloading all the kids and stuff that comes with them, we will walk into where ever we are going and a person will be THEN pulling out of the front parking space. ARgggggh. Not today though and I knew it was an omen of good times to come. The National Gardens are RIGHT nextdoor to the capitol and the reflecting pool infront of the capital was frozen over.

We took the boys out to slide around on the ice, Abby hung out in the stroller, oddly enough I didn't want her strapped to the front of either of us since I figured someone was going to fall. What a suprise when it was Liiam- haaa

He got right back up though and loved saying "woah woah woah I fall down!" everytime he lost his balance even a little bit ;)

Sam was more reluctant. He wanted ice skates, which I was impressed he knew to ask for.

I snuck in this shot right before a policeman whistled and made everyone get off.

I just think it is so cool that we live that close to THE most powerful place in the world (well at least I think so-- China might disagree). Thankfully they had passed the healthcare bill and all gone home so DC was fairly quiet. We straped Abbers in and headed inside.

(I am so pysched about that head clip. I have a whole other post about that-- but wanted to give Kristen a sneak peak at what will be in here package!)
Once inside we found out why DC was so quiet... EVERYONE WAS IN HERE! It was nuts, but gorgeous! Sam loved the huge Christmas tree with the train going around in the main entrance

We had to wait in line to get into the exhibit. Luckily the nicest family was waiting in front of us. They were visiting from Pasadena and had two boys that were 14 months apart and a 4 month old baby-- but thiers was a boy (a big part of our conversation was how lucky I was to get a girl:)) It was great because both sets of boys beat up on each other while we waited and we chatted and were able to ignore all the disdainful looks we received from old people who apparently thought the "magic train" exhibit should be for adults only. The exhibit did not disapoint. Everything was made of natural materials with flowers and plants growing everywhere.
There was a huge castle in the middle

There were tiny little trains zipping in and out of little hide outs

And huge trains that zoomed around over head on bridges and through tunnels.

I was watching one go over head when Chris pointed out how cool it was that the capitol rotunda was right in the background.

There was a Santas Village and a place for the fairys to live. It really was magical. To conitnue in this fabulous day we head to China town and took the boys to one of my fav places, Potbelly's. I ordered my usual and we got the boys PB&J's. Wow, lets just say I stopped eatng my chicken salad sandwhich and polished off Liam's PB&J. Chris loves their sugar cookies so we indugled and even hid one in my bag for later. We had been wanting to take the boys to see the trees on the Elipse and although it was beautiful, it was cold. So Chris took the boys in the stoller while I hung out with Abby in the warm car. Sam loved watching all the trains going around, particularly the Thomas train. But his hatred of being cold was bubbling up. Chris made him make the horrible decision of staying and watching trains and being cold or going to the car and being toasty. He relented and they came back. After we got home they took a nice LONG nap. Woo hoo! When they woke up Chris and I let them open one gift. They were identical robots that walked and spun around and had swords. While the robots were plaed with for about 20 mins. the swords were played with the rest of the night... and then taken to bed! This is Liam the pirate who finished attacking the TV right before this was taken.

And then he put a bow on his head

We finished off the night taking neighbor gifts to the people in our building and of course stoping to play for a good hour at friends Tommy and Geoges house. The boys LOVE playing with their trucks!
Chris read the Christmas Story and it was off to bed. About an hour into "bedtime" I went in to find the two of them plopped infront of their TV watching the Phineus and Ferb Christmas special... I have GOT to remember to unplug their TV :) Santa made a call on the cell phone and let them know he wouldn't come until they were asleep. The both liked this and finally fell asleep at 10:45 PM. PHEW

We like Christmas ALOT

Chris growing up wasn't a HUGE fan of Christmas. I mean he enjoyed it well enough but wasn't crazy about it like me. Since we have had kids it has taken on a while new meaning. Kind of like Disneyland. When we went to Disneyland as part of our honeymoon with thought we had fun... that was nothing compared to going to Disneyworld with two little boys, now that is magic. It is the same way with Christmas. Sam and Liam have inherited their moms love of Christmas. I think that is why I am so sad that it has come so fast. I am excited though that each day brings us closer to our warm island home. Today was COLD and it is always a struggle to get our cuties in coats, shoes, you know-- clothes in general. I finally got Liam to wear a hat today and oh my gosh it was so cute! LUckily I got a picture before he ripped it off.

We are going to try and JAM as many fun holiday activities as we can tomorrow, the national tree, wreaths at Arlington, drive through lights. Its a christmas blitz!!

Did you know we have twins?

Yup here they are:

Sportin' their beloved Brazilian "soccer jammies". (How many Crawford kids have worn these Jan?)

People are asking me more and more if Sam and Liam are twins. They are playing soooooo well together (knock on wood). I have never ever been more grateful that we had them SO close together. I am telling you if you are thinking about it-- DO IT! It will totally pay off in two years. Of course you have to get through the first 2 years :) I am just so grateful that no matter where we go in the world they will have their self proclaimed "best friends". I love these two!

PS if I wanted to have a sibling that close for Abby I would get preggers in a month! Hello no way! Haaa