New Addition to the Family

Grace went to the pet store for a field trip this week......when she got home she said, "Daddy, I'm thinking we need a pet".....I asked her what she wanted, and she said, "how about a cat?"......and I said, "how about a fish?".......she was excited about that so we went to PetSmart this morning to pick out a Beta fish.....he's a male, but Grace is saying he's a girl and her name is Dorothy. So I think we now have a transgendered fish......this may not look good at church on Sunday.


Alison, the Littlest Mermaid, waits for mommy to clean the fish bowl.
Grace, Alison, and Dorothy (who is hididng near the surface)

Dorothy is the blue blur on the left.......

Some Random Photos and a Trip to O-Town

We had gotten Alison a new shirt for spring but it was too cold to wear it w/o long sleeves...
She wasn't really thrilled with getting her picture taken......

Ashley and the girls went to O'Fallon to see Grami and Pop Pop while I studied for a CPCU exam, and Alison enjoyed driving a car at Monkey Joe's!

Grace has a big grin after what appears to be evidence of some red fruit punch.

Alison bouncing around Monkey Joe's....

Ready to slide down the bouncy slide.....

"You get the high notes, and I'll try to reach the low notes over here"

Alison tries to suffocate a large brown bear.....I don't think the PETA people would be happy with this at all........

Alison poses with the big brown bear while sporting some sort of Dr. Seuss hair-do....

The girls posing with the bear that came from the wilds of TJ Maxx National Forest.

Grami, Pop Pop, and the girls on Sunday morning.....

Alison sporting some crazy shampoo hair....

Papa and Nana visit for Valentine's Day

Mom and Dad came down to visit for a few days, and we got some pictures at dinner Saturday night....

Finished with dinner and waiting for dessert...

"what would you like en zee cupcake?"

"do you like my moustache?"

"I think this is sign language for '2 more cupcakes, please'"

Grace took this picture...
Grace with the big ol' grin......

Family Portrait Photo

We decided it was time to update the family photo on the fireplace.....we got our last one when Alison was 9 months, and since she's a little over 2 now, we wanted to get another one. We went to Portrait Innovations thinking we'd only get the one set of family pictures for $10, but you know how that story ends....

Here are the girls in a good sister pose....they do a better job of zooming for the prints.
The Storm Women......my girls.....

Two beautiful little ladies.......and dad.

Again, they zoomed this one for the print...it turned out well we thought...we liked the background.

We got one 10X13 of the girls together with these next two pictures.....

.....it's going to look good in the new frame we got from Hobby Lobby.....
Overall, we liked what we got.....it's always a little work to get Alison to smile because she's so shy with strangers.....we got her to throw a ball in some of the pictures in order to get big smiles. Grace was her usual picture-taking self....the girl snapped 7 or 8 really good pictures of her in 15 seconds, and she said, "wow, she's a natural!"