Snow Again

So Wednesday afternoon it began snowing again. I really can't complain since we've had a beautiful two or three weeks with weather that has hinted at an early spring. We even had to abandon the Igloo project due to effects of melting. Yesterday morning the weather was still trying to decide what it wanted to do and finally gave up and turned nice about 10. Mark decided to hang out with us for the day since not too much was happening at work this week. We decided to go run some errands after the plow came by but as we were getting ready to go an impromptu snowball fight began which then resulted in the random decision to build snowmen.


I decided to go the traditional route... being that I think this is only the second snowperson I've made that's more than 1 ft. tall I think it's cute. Alicia named it Cubby - no idea really but it's close to her height and she thinks she's got a new friend.







Mark of course had to try and show me up a little bit. He decided to make Batman....I decided to name him Goyle short for gargoyle. Unfortunately the weather was so warm that his head fell off by the time we got back from our errands.




The kids helped both of us, mostly by providing a very enthusiastic cheering section. We only had one minor problem when Ryan decided he was going to eat Cubby's nose and wouldn't relent until we got him his own .

Valentine's Chaos

As to be expected when holidays that involve massive quantities of sugar come around the kids had a blast with both preparing for and celebrating Valentine's Day.

We made lots of Valentine's... some have yet to make it to the post office... but hopefully that will be remedied this week. Here are pictures of the kids during one of the less messy moments of painting their Valentine's. The dining room table and kitchen counter may never be the same, but that's what makes it fun I guess.

Alicia wound up spending a good part of Valentine's Day at her notebook drawing more random notes of love...


We also had a few balloons that were responsible for a lot of the non-messy non-sugary holiday fun. Ryan now also says "woon" instead of just classifying them along with the rest of the balls.
(gotta love experiments with static electricity.. Alicia kept trying to get everyone's hair wired and Ryan's was definitely the easiest.)

Fun at Story-time

I'm a little slow on this one but this is the face I woke up to the other morning running through my door and jumping up on to the bed as I was trying to hit the snooze button and go back to sleep for another blissful eight minutes. As for the Easter hat... he's convinced that it makes him look like Indiana Jones.



Later that day I took the kids over to story-time at the Springfield Library. They had a blast, not only was story-time fun with stories, songs, cookies, a craft (a Valentine's card that Alicia's holding in the picture), and a movie, but Alicia had great fun putting on puppet shows and Ryan found a truck play set that he spent most of the hour obsessed with.

Winter with the Kids

Today was actually a nice day considering that it's February in Vermont. The kids and I were at home for the day while I worked on a paper that was due for my class. I took a little break before at about 11:30 this morning and came out to find Ryan snuggled up on the floor of the living room with Alicia's blanket, pillow, and bunny. Apparently he had decided it was nap time and crashed while I was working and Alicia had one of her cute big sister moments when she decided that he needed to be all wrapped up and snuggled. She also tells me that she decided to lay down with him for a while just to make sure he was okay.




This afternoon I finally gathered some courage and decided to embrace winter in Vermont. I guess I'm still a Florida girl because I've had a really hard time feeling okay about them playing outside when it's so cold. Last year I got especially bad because Ryan was little and he decided right off the bat that he and cold did not get along well. The kids have been getting a little restless and stir crazy though so we bundled up and headed out. Fortunately we've got enough area here for them to have fun playing right in the yard.


The kids had a blast for the first little bit. They ran around, ate snow, Alicia climbed all over the plow piles, while Ryan watched her with awe, we shoveled a path to the back of one of the piles in Phase I of an Igloo building project that we decided to undertake, and we even had a visit from our neighbor's dogs who just had to check out all the excitement. Even Daddy got a chance to join in the fun for a bit when he got home from work. The excitement did sort of crash quickly when Ryan decided he didn't want to wear his gloves, but he still wanted to eat snow and just couldn't understand why his hands were so cold. But we did have a nice fire to come back inside to and I made up some hot-cocoa... which resulted in Ryan learning how to say "cocoa" because he kept begging for more. All in all, a good time.