Second Snow!!

Unbelievably, the weathermen predicted snow and we got some!  Not the 4 fluffy inches we thought, but we'll take it!  Crisp icy snow for clumping, squeezing, tasting, shaping, scraping and spraying!

Ruby likes snow (and really anything that reminds her of Christmas, I think).

 Both the kids love to eat snow compulsively.  It's like they see it and they fall to the ground with their tongues sticking out.  They eat till their heads hurt.

 Such icy snow really held it's shape when you squeezed it.  (Perfect for the snowball fight which Todd and Evan had after lunch.)

Evan said the snow on the garage roof was especially sweet.   I'm still pondering that statement.

Chloe spent an excessive amount of time scraping ice off both swings only to ditch her shovel and the clean swings to go eat more snow.

We braved the freezing wind and walked (briskly) around the block while we were out too.  Just as I went in to cook lunch, the kids got out their sleds to careen across our gently sloping yard. Eventually they both ended up on the deck using cookie cutters to make snow-cookies which are now in the freezer.  

I never thought I'd be glad it snowed, but after last year's  lack of snow days, I have to say this is pretty great!

Cushions & Cooties

Downstairs it's all about the cushion tower (with an ottoman underneath) on the broken playground couch.  Climb up.... toboggan down.  They say they are usually pretending to be Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner. 

Upstairs it's all cootie catchers in piles getting ready for the great wars.  Speed-bursts, Gross-bursts, and Spy-bursts chase each other or smash into walls.  Leader-cooties (the Alphas) hide while the others search for them.... I hear other names like Beta, Gamma, Epsilon, Theta....

I don't understand these amazing ways they think and play, but it is how they spend entire days.  Cooties and cushions are the interests right now.....

Hurry Christmas, the kids need toys!!  (or maybe they don't, but they sure will like their new things)

Playing With

*Battleship and chess*

*cards*

*Monopoly*

*a new RC truck*

*RC helicopters*

*this RC car*

*friends*

*each other*

*Ajay*

*cushions and cardboard boxes*

 

*ribbons*

*the cats*

*gourds (which are slowly dying)*

*slingshots*

*Did I mention RC toys??*

Two Won't Do

When a girl has sparkly hairclips in every color of the rainbow that just happen to match her church outfit perfectly, it is impossible to just pick TWO to wear.  So we just put all of them in.

Night Walk

Our house:

Kids on scooters with flashlights:

Our next door neighbor's house:

 (this lights up both of the bedrooms in our house and sounds 

like a small airport with all the fans blowing... so festive)

Just down the block:

 (the kids are like moths to a flame)

A few blocks away there are two right across the street from each other:

This is our favorite:

We came home, read a Christmas book and the kids went straight to bed, exhausted.

First of December

Today was the beginning of the Christmas season for us.  We played Christmas music, pulled out the stash of Christmas books from the library that I've been hiding, unpacked Christmas decorations and put up the tree.

Evan put the (fake) tree together by himself this year.

Chloe unpacked every ornament, admiring it, showing it off and placing it neatly in a pile waiting it's turn to be hung.

I strung lights and wrapped the silver garland since no one else knows how, but the kids did the rest.  They even hung 95% of the ornaments themselves, which amazingly they are getting pretty good at.

And Ruby was a part of the process every step of the way.  She loves Christmas :-)

Chloe is so proud of the tree.  She took this picture right away and asked me to print it out so she could hang it on her wall.

Bits & Pieces :: Late November

**Bunny hopping on the scooter is something that defines "big kid" around here.  Evan once saw Mikey (a friend from years ago) do it and that solidified it in Evan's mind.  Now, he's an old pro and Chloe watches him with intrigue.

**Chloe has recently added a small herd of dogs to her daily horse-play.  (I love the rubberband bridles and the tinsel hay for the horses.)

**Evan has always love old-fashioned cars.  He has a small set from his Gramma that he treasures and we just recently found these three models at the second-hand store.  I don't know what it is that fascinates him so much, but he really loves them.

**Todd is making progress on his current building project -- the walls are up and the roof is in the works.  How nice of him to take a break to visit with us when we came... or maybe it was nice of us to show up so he could take a break...

**Aunt Bryce's car with two stowaways.

**Chloe and Evan build 'gourd contraptions' on a daily basis.  Sometimes they turn out so great, they have to take pictures of them to remember how to build it just right.  This one is Chloe's.

**It's always nice to have an extra set of hands for doing yard work.

**I spent hours hanging from swings and monkey bars as a kid, so when I see my own kids like this for hours on end, I always smile.

**Friends came over early this week and entertained my children for about 6 hours.  No one interrupted my thinking or said mom even one time.  It was so glorious.

**We found a sweet little kitty during our walk on Thanksgiving.  She looked and acted just like Ruby except she was dark with faint gray stripes.  Maybe Ruby wandered from here on the day she showed up on our doorstep so many years ago.

**Chloe loves to draw with sidewalk chalk and Evan still prefers to just observe.