Cammy, Gerry, Reed and Spring: January 2011

I knew that the blog was in desperate need of an update, but I didn't quite realize that I was going to have to go all the way back to October to update everything! Apparently it's time to renew last year's New Year's resolution to update the blog regularly.

We got to have a firetruck come visit us a preschool one day. Reed was clearly excited!

One of Spring's (and Reed's) favorite birthday presents has been a tea set given to her by her Grandma L and Grandpa S.

It only took me one tea party to figure out that while hardwood floors are easy enough to wipe up, orange juice spills are pretty sticky. Now they have their tea parties on a micro-fiber table cloth!

We had a frog and a golden dragon in our house at Halloween. The funny thing is that right up until it was time to get dressed up and leave the house, they both wanted to be tigers, then both of them had a last minute change of heart. I suppose that's the risk you run when you have lots of dress up costumes for your kids!

And they were cute tigers too!

November started out unseasonably warm, allowing us to go to the park without our coats and be quite comfortable, but alas, the warm weather was not to last long.

R at the park.

Super Reed and Super Spring on the swings on another balmy November day. This happened to be the day before R's birthday. R decided he wanted almost an exact recreation of S's birthday celebration. We'd taken her to the park on her b-day, then to the zoo the day after so for R, we went to the park the day before is b-day, then the next day...

We hopped on the ferry to head over to Seattle and the aquarium. R's favorite part of ferry rides these days in playing with the video games. And we haven't even started giving him quarters yet!

Posing on the ferry.

I thought we might not make it past the first exhibit. It's a huge tall tank that has a scuba diver in it for most of the day. Reed LOVES scuba divers! But what's better than watching a scuba diver?

BEING a scuba diver!! As long as R spent watching he spent even longer dressing up as a diver. Once he was dressed up, Gpa D would carry him around as though he were swimming through the air. He very nearly spent the whole day here until I finally decided to take S to see more. Only after that did R decide he wanted to see more critters!

We stopped on our way back to the ferry for a ride on the carousel. Spring liked it at first, but the ride lasted about twice as long as she would have preferred. She spent the second half of the ride in my arms.

Back at home, it was time for dinner and it was R's choice. It was no surprise when he picked Mexican!

And after dinner it was for cake and presents (it was a busy day!). It has become a tradition to let R and S help decorate their cake. This one was well-sprinkled! (On a side note, when R is really excited about something, he pats his chest with an upward motion - I like that this picture catches him in the middle of doing that.)

Eyeing the candles. Got to make sure to get them all out!

Then came a distinct end to the warm November we'd had. Snow!!

S and R liked playing with their animals in the snow on top of the hot tub.

This snow storm turned out to be quite an adventure! The forecasters and not predicted this storm accurately and it turned out much worse than they expected and the commute was terrible. Gerry didn't wind up getting home till 9:30! The power went out just after I fed the kids dinner. It was terribly cold out and I was afraid they would get cold in their rooms at night so I set up a bed for them in front of the woodstove. I let them stay up a little later to make sure they were good and sleepy since they'd be sleeping in a different place and were still excited about the power being out. Just as we were finishing up our bedtime stories, Gerry finally walked in the door!

The next morning was cold!! We've misplaced our snow shovel, but fortunately, G had some help sweeping the walkway the next morning. We invited some neighbors over to enjoy the heat of our woodstove and benefit of our gas range. G's mom came into town this day too, so by dinner time, we had a wonderfully boisterous, full house! Just as we were finishing a spaghetti dinner for everybody, the power came back on! :) It was great fun and we were thrilled to be able to help out our neighbors!!

No story behind this one, just a cute one of S!

Normally when this character visits us, we call him Bubble Beard the Pirate, but when you see this fellow in December? Well, you don't have to be a genius to figure out that you are in fact, looking at Santa!

More random S cuteness!

One of the highlights of December was getting to go to R's preschool Santa breakfast and concert. I really love R's teacher. She insisted that I take home the materials to make S a jingle bracelet and Rudolph hat, knowing that S wouldn't want to be left out! So, S and I made the hat (I actually made her bracelet one while volunteering at preschool one day). Sure enough, on the day of the concert, S HAD to be up on the risers and sing with all the other kids! The funniest part to me were the dozens of moms all crowded right in front of the risers madly snapping pictures of their kids (I was no exception). Instead of the paparazzi, we had the mamarazzi!!

To celebrate the winter solstice, we made pine cone bird feeders using homegrown sunflower seeds and strung popcorn and cranberries to decorate a Yule tree (or in reality Yule bushes).

We headed to Zoo Lights with some friends. Our friends' son M made himself right at home with R in our stroller! R's holding the big commuter mug full of hot cocoa!