My Boys

Somewhere along the line here my babies have turned into boys! B-O-Y-S! I mean dig in the dirt, play with hose water, make mud pies, turn all sticks into guns, make believe spaceship adventures, bad guys vs. good guys kind of boys.

Take a look:











Clearly, this will be my new ally this spring:

L-O-V-E

Our home was filled with L-O-V-E for Valentine's Day once again. Thanks in no small part to a visit from the Michaud Clan of Massachusetts. We played in the bountiful snow banks, read books, made valentine's cupcakes, ate Mark's wonderful gumbo for valentine's dinner, watched the olympics and in general had a lovely time together.

More snow!

Some clean-up efforts on Sunday:




More snow this morning:





Andrew just loves to play in the snow! He has been climbing to the top of the mounds of cleared snow along our driveway and pretending that one of them is his castle. This morning he was atop another mound pretending to be Humpty Dumpty and having a grand time saying "oh, oh, oooohhhh...." as he would fall down the side. He told me I could be one of the king's men. Hilarious. As if you couldn't tell...his other favorite thing about snow is eating it.

Snow!

What a wonderful blizzard! We measured 19", although it sure seems like A LOT more than that!













I'm noticing a pattern here. When Mark and I move to a new area the first winter is filled with huge snowstorms. Moved to Cape Cod (which usually does not see as much snow as say, Boston) and we had over 100" that first winter. Now this is not our first winter here in Virginia (which typically does not see much snowfall) but, it is our second winter here and we've already had two 18"+ snowstorms with some other 2-4" snowstorms in between. Incredible. Ridiculous amount of shoveling aside...we're loving it!

New Year...New Do

Jay's first haircut by Mommy.

Before:




After:

Yes, Virginia, there is a..er....snowstorm?

It's snowing...a lot...in Virginia! Huh??? Either way, we're loving it. Andrew was so excited to wake up to snow covering our yard. He looked out the window to check if it was morning time (This is something Mark and I have taught Andrew to do. If it's light out it is acceptable to be awake...if not, go back to bed until it is light out or what we call morning time.) He turned away from the window and said, "Yep, it's morning time." Then, he froze and quickly went back to the window, poked his head under the shade and said, "There's SNOW! ... It SNOWED! ... Yay, SNOW!"

Mark and I felt excited going to bed last night knowing Andrew would wake up to a winter wonderland and knowing how thrilled he would be. His reaction did not disappoint.

Mark was able to measure 16" accumulated as of 5pm.

Some photos of our beautiful wintry day:


















Roscoe watching Andrew playing outside for the second time. Check out his nice new sweater. A Christmas gift from Andrew. He couldn't wait to give it to Roscoe. It certainly helped keep Roscoe comfy-cozy all day.

S/he's Crafty....

It's been a week full of Christmas projects. What fun!

Andrew & Jay decorated the tree,




Andrew decorated a gingerbread house,











and Andrew painted some wooden cut-outs for ornaments:





(And if I may toot my own horn...I can report that during all of these projects, I was able to keep my mouth shut and push my OCD to the background for the most part and just let Andrew decorate as he saw fit. "Why would you mix red and blue paints together on a snowflake????" is what I asked in my head. I'm pretty proud of myself for not forcing my "artistic vision" over Andrew's. Someday I can teach him the true beauty of things being neat and orderly, color appropriate, and aesthetically pleasing. But right now, I'm going to enjoy the big smile on his face and seeing how proud he is of his art.)

Deja vu

Andrew is very excited about Christmastime. He's enjoying decorating the house, talking about Santa and Christmas Eve, watching Christmas specials and going for walks at night to look at Christmas lights. We also like to pretend we are Santa's elves and that we need to wrap the gifts for Santa's bag. So, we take some of his toys or books and wrap them in Christmas paper and stuff them in a big red sack. Well, Jay likes this too especially the crinkly sound of the wrapping paper when you crawl or walk on it. I took these photos of Jay yesterday...









...which reminded me of these photos that I took 2 years ago.