Well, for once the weather forecasters were right! We woke up this morning to about 10 inches and it was still snowing! We ended up with 12.5 inches, which is a lot for Indy! They said it was the 6th biggest snowfall ever here.

So, talking about the weather is really not very exciting, but you should have seen how excited Madelyn was about it this morning. She got all bundled up to go outside with Daddy while he shoveled off the driveway.

Maddie had fun playing in the snow. She kept throwing it up in the air and began falling down in it with a high pitched "eeeeee!" squeal! She decided to help daddy shovel.

Notice she is saying (after Chuck asked her what she was doing) "I fixing the snow because you broke it". Too funny

Look what I can do....

Amelia learned some new tricks pretty quickly! She had been working for awhile now to get sitting up and she has it mastered! She is so quick and flips from sitting to crawling in a split second.

Her newest trick began on Monday evening. I was out for the evening and the girls were with Chuck. He told me Amelia started pulling up on the stairs. She gets into a kneeling position and then pulls herself up.

Getting started:

Got it!

However, I think she must have decided the stairs were too easy because she moved on to the exersaucer. Once again, she started on her knees....

Then stood all the way up! What a champ! Not bad for 8 1/2 months. Maybe she will walk early!

Christmas #3 12-25-08

The Carnes Grandchildren -
Back row - Brenna (4 1/2), Zack (14), Kayla (9), Amelia (8 mo.), R.J. (2)
Front Row - Caitlyn (2), Madelyn (2 1/2)

Our third and final Christmas was spent at Chuck's parents house on Christmas day. We got up and had some donuts before we headed down to see if Santa came. He had come and delivered lots of presents for the girls.

Later that morning the others arrived for the big festivities. There were fifteen of us there and it was a madhouse of wrapping paper and toys!

After dinner we went outside for some sledding. We don't really get snow at all, so Madelyn was thrilled to be able to not only see it, but play in it.

Kayla and Madelyn wore ski masks to keep their faces warm. We were surprised Maddie left it on the whole time!

Brenna, Kayla and Maddie making snow angels.

Amelia and Uncle Randy

Christmas #2 12-23 and 12-24

Shinevar Grandchildren -
Madelyn (2 1/2), Rebekah (1), Rachel (3 1/2), Amelia (8 mos)

We spent the 23rd and 24th together atMammaw's house celebrating Christmas. It was kind of a revolving door of people! Unfortunately Mom had to work on the 24th. Randi and Joe hit some bad weather on their way North and didn't make it for the 23rd. So, we spread out our festivities and enjoyed the time we had together!

Grammy and Amelia

Mammaw and Pappaw

Grammy got Madelyn a tea set for Christmas. She set it up and was serving tea! She plays with it all the time with her ponies, dolls and stuffed animals....pretty much anyone that will come for tea!

Rebekah and Amelia "sharing"

A new rug for my laundry room! Chuck thought it was kind of funny to get a themed rug, but complimented it when it was in the laundry room!

Christmas #1 12-20-2008

On Dec. 20 we celebrated Christmas with Dad, Roberta, Randi, Joe and the kids here in Indy. This was our first run of opening gifts with all 4 girls here. Amelia, as usual, slept through most of the gift opening festivities, but the other three girls were more than willing to open her gifts.

Rebekah was pretty excited about her gifts!!

This gift is for Rebekah, but the older girls were circling so they could "help".

Amelia did get to open a couple!

Chuck got some new binoculars, however this picture makes him look like Johnny 5!

Christmas smiles!

It was a fun weekend and glad it worked for us all to be together!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was a great, 5 day break! We did a lot of traveling, as usual. Rachel rode up with us because Randi and Joe had their appointment for Rebekah at Riley. The girls were all excited about our roadtrip!!

We went to South Bend for the day Wednesday to visit with Uncle Greg, Steven and Kelsey who had been at Grandma and Grandpa's for most of the week of Thanksgiving. Everyone had a great time visiting and playing.

Some had a little too much fun......

Our visit was all inclusive to be able to visit with Grammy and Mandy as well!

After our visit in South Bend, we headed to Grand Rapids. This time Madelyn went with Randi and Joe, so we just had Amelia....and some Barnaby's! We spent Wednesday evening through Sunday morning in Grand Rapids. We went to Lansing for the day on Thursday for some good food and Lots of family....think we figured there were about 45 there!

The Rachel and Madelyn got some cool air matress beds to sleep on. They were kind of a pain to blow up, but were perfect for them and they loved them.

Friday morning, Randi, Roberta and I got up and left to go shopping at 6. We got lots of good deals and didn't really deal with too many unruly crowds. Walmart was a little sketchy, but that is to be expected I suppose! Chuck and Joe kept the girls entertained while were were gone and got some really cute pictures.

Amelia Crawls!!

About a week ago, Amelia started crawling. She does more of an army crawl by only using her arms, but she moves pretty fast! As with Maddie, we used the remote to inspire her to crawl. Not bad for being just 6 months!!

Chuck gets sleepy too!!

Just want to make sure everyone is aware that Chuck has his sleepy moments during football as well. As a matter of fact, this was taken today while he slept through an extremely exciting second half of the Indianapolis Colts game! He slept for 2 hours like this (well with Maddie up and down from there).

New pictures of the girls

We haven't done anything terribly exciting in the past few weeks, but have managed to catch some great pictures of the girls around the house.

The kids are doing well. Amelia is now 6 months old and getting big! She has started crawling this week (We will get a video of this on here soon!). She just uses her arms to pull her along, but she gets quickly gets to where she is going! She is now 18 pounds and 28 in. long. She has her first cold, poor thing. But, she is hanging in there. She still remains all smiles....well, most of the time!

Maddie is keeping us busy. The other day I heard her counting....in Spanish! You can see in this video that she can go all the way to 8!

We had a quiet weekend at home this weekend. We poured some rice in a container and let Maddie play with it. This kept her entertained for nearly an hour (and took about an hour to clean up!).

Her new favorite place to play.....