Our First Snowman

Can you believe that Aidan & Noah have spent almost all of their living days in Buffalo and THIS is their first snowman?! I think Sam maybe had one in Buffalo.

So here it is!


















































And here is today :-(

no vegans here

I told Noah that we were going to have lamb for dinner.
Without missing a beat and with no concern, he pondered, "the face?"
My response was of course, "No, sweetie, not the face."
His next query was, "the tail?"
I responded, "no, not the tail. The leg."
Then, he wanted to know, "all the legs?"
I'm batting 1000 here. And dinner is sounding less and less appealing.
"no, just part of one leg"
Why this set him off, I can not imagine, because to this he hollered, "I WANT ALL THE LEGS!"

Seriously?!

With a few silly inches of snow, winter break was extended by a day.





Exploring:



















If the stick won't come to you, you go to the stick








































Catching up with my brothers!























Brrrrrrr

on the wrong side

We were on our way home when I told the boys that when we got home it was naptime. Setting expectations, not tough stuff, avoids the confrontation, rudimentary psychology...I get it!

And it worked like a charm, Sammy, tired and off his schedule (school vacation) lost it! Came unglued like a Dollar Store Elmers knock-off! I let him go about his fit while I quietly enjoyed the last few minutes of Ben Harper on Sirius...hmmmmm... and prepped to get home. We pull in the driveway, he gets out of the car, runs to the house and LOCKS THE DEADBOLT!!!

Here is where things really hit the fan. He runs to his room. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, that he had an "oh shit" moment and decided to bolt. His temperament simply isn't such that he'd run off cackling. Remember how we've moved. Yea. No keys to the deadbolt. Thank god we live in a neighbor hood where everything is unlocked, including the other door.

In the middle of all this, I'm laughing. It WAS funny and maddening, but really funny and thinking I couldn't wait to get in so I could call my brother to tell him because he would appreciate it most.

And here's a gratuitous cute pic.

PLEASE LET HIM GET A SCHOLARSHIP!!!!

The boys routinely do puzzles of 50 - 100 pieces with little or no assistance. Sammy can do a 48 piece puzzle that is in the shape of a dinosaur. Yesterday we came down to them having just finished a brand new 100 piece puzzle of sea creatures. As I said, this is fairly routine.

My aunt gave Sam this puzzle of 9 pieces with no border. Each piece has four halves of a lighthouse. In the month that has passed, countless adults , including Scott, have struggled with this puzzle with no success.

Sammy came running downstairs from "nap" today to show me this:

We're in so much trouble!!!

Roger Williams Zoo

Today Blue left us clues that led us to the Roger Williams Park Zoo.

Here we are planning our attack.

It's a Wildebeest!

The joke of the day was to run up to the planter and shout, "DIRT".
























































Sizing up our hands next to out cousins.






















On Marco Polo's trail

Clues

It is school vacation week. The first one that has ever really affected me and I'm totally out of my element. I have a list of things I'd like to do, admittedly one of them is to lay around in our jammies all day and eat nothing but food I don't have to make. But others are much more fun. Monday didn't really count since Pop Wilks spent the morning with the boys. Friday I thought we'd drive up to see my friend outside of Boston. She is one of my best friends in the world and has in her lifetime bragged about a "homemade" cake out of the Pillsbury box, opened my cupboard and could figure out why I needed spices, gave me a stern talking-to after scalding myself while canning and just generally has no use for anything that she has to make when she can buy everything she needs. So I told her not to make fun of me for what i was about to tell her. She said, "why would I make fun of you?" I replied that I was leaving them clues and they had to guess that we were going to the aquarium. "There's nothing wrong with the aquarium. I don't know why you'd bother with that first part though."





















What are you looking at?

Whaddya mean I'm a Macaroni?!?!

That is a beluga whale he's stretching his arm out to!!

Made From Real Gorilla Chests

They aren't girls but I do love dressing them up. And I will bust out the pix of all three them dress the same for high school girlfriends. My philosophy has always try to dress them "comparably" so that it doesn't look like I love one boy more.

This weekend when Scott had Sam in the B-Lo, I was sorting through the endless boxes and just in time, came upon 3T clothes. Who knew we had 0ne sweater vest, much less TWO!




And then we made it to church on time!

Trust and Technology

Our family computer is in the living room now along with all of its equipment. In the interest of access and supervision among other things this seemed like a good decision.

Things we haven't considered:

I just reached down to clear a paper jam and came out with a Goldfish.

Valentines Day!

ITS A SNOW DAY!!!!!!!


































We got Scott a kayak paddle for Valentine's Day and the boys picked it up and ran around the circle singing "Row Row Row Your Boat".






I'm so frightened for when they team up to use their powers for evil.