Jillian loves to get up close and personal to Annabelle and watch her play on the ipod. It's really quite funny to watch.
Has it really been two years since Jillian was born? She is such a wonderful kid, though she is definitely much more emotional than Annabelle was. She counts, almost knows the alphabet song, usually speaks in mostly complete sentences, and is just so dang cute. She also is really good at throwing tantrums and acting like a 2 year old. But we love her and can't imagine our family without her. We had a nice family celebration together. Happy birthday, Jillian. 
Michael has turned another year older and is now ___ years old. We celebrated it on Sunday, since Tuesday, his actual birthday, he had other things going on, such as the Iowa caucus. After an early morning of church, we all took a much needed nap, and then had a lovely dinner of lasagna and breadsticks, chosen by the birthday boy. After dinner, Michael opened his presents, which included a money jar that electronically counts coins as you put them in and an office chair to use in his new home office (basically, we turned one of the guest bedrooms downstairs into his office in the hope that maybe he'll work from home and be home more often). And of course, Michael's birthday wouldn't be complete without his favorite dessert- lemonade pie. Happy birthday, Michael! I hope it's a wonderful year. 
And just as a side note, Annabelle, Jillian, and I all happened to put purple shirts on after we changed out of our church clothes. Poor Michael is going to be super outnumbered when this third little girl comes.
During our Thanksgiving trip, Jillian was doing the funniest thing. She was jump right onto her bottom. Of course, when Michael tried to get it on videotape, she didn't quite do it right, but it was still funny.
We have had one of the most mild winters thus far- warm temperatures (for our standards, anyway) and no snow. I think we did have a little snow to make for a white Christmas, but it melted the next day. So when I woke up yesterday to see about an inch of snow on the ground, I knew I had to take advantage of it. I got the girls into their snow suits and we spent some fun time outside. It was very bright and sunny, but cold. Of course, it warmed up as the day went on and the snow was mostly melted by late afternoon. Jillian was wearing her snow suit for the first time and even though it's size 24 months and she'll be 24 months in a few weeks, she was drowning in that suit. She seriously looked like a big pink marshmallow. It was so cute to see her try and maneuver around in the snow. She didn't mind wearing it though and loved the time outside. Annabelle would have stayed outside all day long, if I would have let her. She probably tells me at least once a day that she can't wait for summer. I got some exercise in for the first time in a long time by shoveling the driveway and sidewalk, which of course was silly since it was all melted later anyway. 
