Home Sweet Home away from home!

We have now been living at the Staybridge Suites for a little more than 2 months. While living in a 2 bedroom suite with 2 adults, 3 kids (3 and under), 2 cats and 2 fish has lots of challenges, we have enjoyed the Staybridge Suites for lots of reasons!! They definitely treat us like family!

 

 

Perks of being kicked out of our house (due to flooding):

Friendly staff, who really aims to please!

Hot breakfast everyday! (If you get up in time:)

Dinner 3 nights a week (This is what I will miss most)

Maid-service once a week and trash removal DAILY!!

TV and cable (we don't have a TV at home)

The fun of riding an elevator everyday (for the kids)

A ride to and from the airport (we both travel a lot for work)

Location to church and work is closer

 

 

I will not list all the challenges, but I'll hit the highlights:

All the kids sleeping in the same room (which now works out great most of the time)

Trying to get 3 kids out the door, down the hall, in the elevator, out the door and in the car without loosing someone or getting hit by a car.

Not have an oven (or much kitchen space)

Having people above us and trying to make the kids understand we have someone below us!

 

 

ALL that to say the Staybridge Suites-Chantilly is an awesome place to stay (or live)!! We will definitely miss them when we go home! THANKS FOR HAVING US!!!

Stina 2 word sentence and Petra rolling over!

Stina said her first sentence a few weeks ago and her second yesterday! Her first sentence was "I sit"! She says this when she wants to sit somewhere, especially in your lap!
Her second sentence is "carry you"! She just started yesterday holding my leg and looking up at me saying, "carry you"! How can I resist!! She is so cute!
Funny and sad to me is that at her age Lars really wanted to be carried all the time too, but he was SO heavy (35+ pounds) I would always try to get him to walk. When Stina (24 pounds) asks to be picked up, I just pick her up!

Petra started rolling over from her back to her stomach a few weeks ago! Now if you lay her on her back she will be on her stomach in minutes! The bad thing is she can't roll from her stomach to her back. She gets really frustrated, when she is stuck on her stomach. It's only a matter of time now. I know she will be crawling now before we know it!

These kids really do grow too fast!!

Camping in Denial

We have had mild colds this week, runny nose, fussiness... you know how that goes. In an effort to not spread it and hopefully end it, we have stayed home. Lars and Stina are in denial that it's cold out and ask all day if we can go to the beach or go outside and swing! We have been building lots of tents and tunnels and pretending to be wild animals!!

They are really ferocious! Watch out!!

Bonus pics: Stina going to the beach and Lars showing how he really feels about his sisters!!

Petra is 6 months old and eating!!

These pics were taken the first time Petra had rice cereal. She is now eating pears and mangos too!! She has some good examples to follow!!

They must be Scandinavian...or Cajun! :)

The question of the century for this household is "What's for dinner?"!! No one ever wants to decide! The actual cooking is not ever really a problem, since both Karl and I like to cook, but WHAT to make!! Recently, we have been having lots of blackened fish, Mahi Mahi mostly.

We have offered the Lars fish in the past, but he was never a huge fan of it. Until last week! Now it's his favorite food!! I might also add that for the past 6 months or so Lars has decided to be picky and now all of a sudden he has returned to eating us out of house and home! This is a welcome adjustment (although, in his teen years you may have to remind me I said that)!

See above:
This week he has been requesting fish for dinner and a LARGE piece at that! I'd like to add that Stina is no slouch in the eating department! That girl can put away the food!! Her piece was almost as big as Lars' and she has already finished it! This week we also had steak one night for dinner. How would you divide a 20 oz steak between Karl, Lars and I? Karl, 6 oz., Jessi, 4oz. and Lars 10 oz!! Stina took some of Karl's too! These kids love their surf and turf!! They are only 1 and 2 years old!

This is just a bonus "eating" picture! Stina has been feeding herself more and more lately. She really does a good job with silverware, but sometimes things get a little messy!! I wish I looked this cute with food all over me!

A day in the life...

A month or so ago I decided that I really need to blog more and Facebook less. Mostly because Facebook is saved for like a second! and blogging can be saved forever! The dilemma is Facebook can be update in a few seconds, a couple words here and there, add some pictures and people get the idea of what we are up too. A blog on the other hand, I feel like I need time to sit down and think about what I'm going to say and be picky about what pictures to post.

That being said, I'm going to work on it! I was also checking our blog's stats today and turns out people actually come to it! I thought it was just our parents and close friends (who really only come to the blog with urging and reminding), but apparently others are interested in the musings of a crazy mom with 3 kids under 2.5!! I will try to accommodate those of you faithful readers, who have been left with nothing to read for the last 4 months or more!!

Before Christmas, we were SO busy we had at least one activity everyday of the week except Monday, which usually ended up being grocery store/Costco/Target day! SO I decided we needed to slow down and try to catch our breathe a little in 2011. This week we actually had 2 days that we (well the kids anyway) didn't even get in the car! THIS IS A HUGE FEAT!! We are all much happier for it too! We still went to Lars' Soccer Tots and his preschool co-op group, which I call Playskool. The other days we had lots of fun playing with our neighbors. One day "in the snow", even though there was only an inch. The kids really enjoyed "sledding", aka moms pulling them around in the driveways! :):) (My friend Katie took pictures and I'm hoping to steal some from her! I will add them to this if I get them) Stina even really like it! I was freezing because of the wind, but the kids didn't seem to notice. Today, we spent the whole day at our neighbor Sara's house. She is awesome! She even watched Lars while Stina was napping so I could run to Fedex, without dragging everyone along!

Well, hopefully I will actually be better at blogging in 2011! Although, I'm not making it a resolution, those always seem to backfire. Like the one I did make, going to bed before midnight, everynight! It's January 15th and I haven't gone to bed before midnight yet!