She May Not Look a Day Over 29 But...

We invited Joanie over for a casual little birthday dinner. Friday, her actual birthday, she had plans with friends, so she came over Saturday. We had hamburgers and turkey burgers on the grill, roasted asparagus ( which Heather loved and devoured), and roasted potato wedges. While I cooked, Wes, Joanie and the kids went outside.
Did you know that Spiderman rides a bike - with training wheels?

I hope Joanie doesn't mind me showing her age on the internet! Lemon cheesecake pie.

Cole did not enjoy our rendition of Happy Birthday as much as Estelle's. Go figure.

She had a lot of little hands helping to open her gift.

The whole evening, Cole tried to convince Joanie to stay for a sleepover. In this picture he can't take his eyes off the pie. Lucky for him, his birthday is coming right up!
Again, Happy Birthday Joanie.

Happy Birthday Aunt Joanie!

Two good things today: Joanie's birthday and spring begins, even though it's only 11 degrees here. Here's what the kids have to say about Joanie on her special day-

"I love Joanie so much because she makes the best brownies." (Cole)

"Joanie always spends time with us doing fun things. She hardly ever says no." (Wayne)

And everynight when I put Heather to bed with her quilt (now that we got it out again since town meeting day) Heather says, "Joanie made dis. It so pitty." And she checks to make sure her teddy bear is tucked in too.

Happy Birthday Joanie. Thanks for all the things you do for us and with us. I don't know what our family would do without you nearby.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

St. Patrick was born in Wales, studied religion to become a priest and then went to Ireland to teach the people about God. There are many stories about St. Patrick, some true and some not true. The most famous legend is that he drove the snakes out of Ireland. This did not happen but the Irish will tell you that you cannot find a snake throughout the whole country of Ireland. March 17 was not the day St. Patrick was born but the day he died. Even though we don't know the date of his birth, most scholars believe the year was 385 AD and the year of his death was 461 AD.

True, St. Patrick's Day started as a religious holiday, but most of us use it as an occasion to celebrate our Irish haritage.
What would my Irish ancestors think of these three silly little leprechauns? No, I have not been giving them any green beer. Everyone is skipping school today. Wes has an eye doctor appointment and then he is taking Wayne and Cole to the annual St. Patrick's Day concert at Lyndon State College. You may remember that one of our college professors, Ralph Aldrich, sang at our wedding. He sings in this concert every year. He's getting quite old. I wonder if he still will.

May you always walk in sunshine. May you never want for more. May irish angels rest their wings right beside your door.

Maple Madness

It's time.

Wes, Wayne, and Cole have tapped the maple trees

The sap runs if it gets cold in the night, preferrably down into the 20s, and then it has to be warm during the day, hopefully into the 40s. The first night after they tapped the trees, Wayne and Cole would keep checking the digital indoor/outdoor thermometer to see if it was getting cold enough. Wayne would announce excitedly, "DOWN TO 31.3!" Then five minutes later Cole would shout, "31.2 DEGREES!" It did get cold that first night, but the next day it never got very warm. In fact it hasn't been very warm at all since then, so not much sap to boil at this point.

That doesn't matter. We have to check the buckets everyday anyway. Everyday after school that's the first thing Wayne wants to do when he gets home. Even if there's only about a half gallon of sap, he'll pester Wes, "Can we boil tonight?"

Heather tries to get a good look at the "maypo sewup."

Wayne's friend Ben came over last weekend when it was pretty warm and they played in the muddy driveway, while waiting for Wes to give them a ride on the trackster out to the sap buckets.

There they go.

Sap bucket waiting for a cold night partnered with a warm day to fill it with sap.

And in other news, I have to say how nice it is around here when no one is throwing up. Tuesday evening and into the night Heather was very sick. I had to change her bedding and pajamas 4 times between 8:00 and 10:00. She finally stopped throwing up at around 12:30. The next morning, Cole came down from bed and said, "Mommy, my tummy hurts a little." I'm sure you can guess the rest. It was a long day. Luckily, everyone slept through last night without incident, and everyone has been okay today. I'm hoping Wayne escapes it.

Titanic

Did you know that Cole is obsessed with the Titanic?


He was barely 3 when he first heard about it. We have a little electronic keyboard that plays hundreds of preset melodies. The idea is that you are supposed to learn how to play along with these programmed pieces. The first song that always plays is, you guessed it, My Heart Will Go On, without any words of course, just that sad, simple melody. Cole was immediately hooked. He and Wayne wanted to know why it was such a sad sounding song. I told them it was a song from a movie about a huge ship that hit an iceberg and sank in the middle of the ocean, and that it was so sad because many, many people died. I pulled out my CD of the Titanic soundtrack and the rest is history.

Now Cole is an expert. He knows the name of the captain and many of the officers. He knows where and how it was built. He can tell you the names of some of the important passengers. He understands all about the coal fed engines, the double hull, the water tight compartment doors, the failure of the bulkheads. He knows the name of the ship that was within sight when Titanic hit the ice but did not respond to distress calls and the terrible mathematics of the lifeboats. He knows the rescue ship, Carpathia. He knows all about exploring the wreckage with little submarines and underwater remote control cameras.

It's all Titanic all the time around here. Our trips to and from school are frought with danger because we are not in the van driving down Rt. 16. We're on the Titanic in the icy waters of the North Atlantic. There's an iceberg around every curve in the road. Cole doen'st just sit in a car seat. He's way up in the look out. "ICEBERG! RIGHT AHEAD!" I try to turn the ship, but we always hit.

When Wes gets home from work,he's always immediately accosted by Cole wanting to role play Titanic and by Wayne who wants to play Batman. Some how Wes has managed to combine the two games. When the Titanic sinks, Batman comes to the rescue and helps passengers into the lifeboats. They take a lot of creative liscence here, but certain basic facts cannot be changed: the ship always hits the iceberg; there are never enough boats; the first funnel always falls; Titanic breaks in half; and over half the the passengers die. Even Batman cannot save the Titanic from its fate.

I never thought this Titanic phase would last so long, but then, it is a fascinating story. Two years later, it's still going strong. Here is Cole with some playdough. Can you guess what he made? I know it looks like a stegasaurus, but it's really the Titanic, of course.

And outside, forget about a snowman. We made a snow Titanic.
Right now, in the 40 degree weather, it seems to be sinking...

Inside the Mind of a 7 Year Old

Vacation went quickly, but the kids had a lot of fun and were healthy throughout it. Wayne and Cole went to friends' houses and friends came to our house. Wayne went to the movies with his best friend Ben, which was really a treat because we never go to the movies. I took him to The Polar Express when he was 4, and that was the one and only time he'd been to a cinema until
going with Ben's family.

Wayne and Cole invented a new holiday called "Kids' Day" during vacation and convinced Wes to take them to McDonald's and skating at the outdoor rink in Newport. I seem to be on a photographic dry spell these days, so have not had a lot to post on the blog.

However, Wayne brought home a slew of artwork from earlier in the year. Some of it just cracks me up, so I thought I'd share it.

He drew this at the very beginning of the year. Can you tell what house it is? I'll give you a hint: notice the door way up high and the window to nowhere up near the peak.

I uploaded these pictures in kind of a random order, so they are not very chronological. When I asked him about this one, he said it's a fox skiing and a bear pulling a sled up a hill and the little brown creatures are mice running to their underground burrows. Remember to click on a picture to see it larger if you need to.

Grampa and Gramma will love this one. If only their house was really that big.

On the trackster. Again, a mouse running for safety.

We never go to the movies, but we do have popcorn and movie night at home. Looks like we must be watching a Batman cartoon. There's the TV stand looming taller than any of us. Apparently, in Wayne's eyes, we all have long necks, long legs, and no arms. And a really giant bowl of popcorn.

Yes, Daddy is specle.

Unfortunatley, my hair really does look like this.

Here we go, Wayne and I, skipping hand in hand to do some grocery shopping!

The Owl Came Back

Our friend came back in the evening and this morning. In the evening it was out there even while Wes was cleaning out the snow with the clankety, rattly old plow. Come to think of it, maybe Julie is right and it is Wayne H. getting a kick out of seeing the old Scout still at it.

Owl

This morning as Wayne was taking care of his breakfast dish, he happened to look out the window above the sink. "Is that an owl? What is that?" We all clamored around the sink to look. I had to lift Cole and Heather up to see. Sure enough, there was a Barred Owl sitting right on top of the flag pole. I grabbed my camera and went out into the driving snow, wearing nothing more than my pajamas and a pair of Martha's mud boots from the garage.
He was really concentrating on something below and was not the least bit flustered by my presence. He glanced at me a couple of times as I inched closer, but basically remained unbothered.

When my camera was soaked with snow, I came back in and plugged my xD card into the computer to get a better look at the pictures I had taken. As I was here at the computer, I could see out the window that the owl swooped down from the flag pole into the raspberry bushes, scuffled around for a moment, and then took off dragging a small, unfortunate creature with him to the woods. I had not disturbed his meal.

We're a Long Way From Candy Land

It seems like yesterday that we introduced Wayne to his first board game.

At age 3, Wayne loved this game with its little gingerbread man playing pieces, roaming a candy filled world.

What an innocent time that was.

We've moved on to bigger, more complicated and intellectually challenging games.
I played this Titanic game with Wayne and Cole the other day. It's quite complicated, but in many ways, similar to Monopoly. You have to acquire several items including a health inspection, passport, and life jacket before you can leave the second class section of the ship and make your way through first class and race to the life boats. When we played, Cole, not surprisingly, was the first to make it to his lifeboat. Wayne was second, and I, unfortunately, went down with the ship.
Cole shows off his loot. Cole also has this intriguing Titanic computer game. You can literally wander and explore the ship, from deck A to deck G, meeting people to talk with along the way. It's supposed to be a fairly accurate digital reconstruction of the ship. The game itself is a little over Cole's head, but it's amazing how he has learned (and remembers) to find his way all around the ship. Here he explores the turbine room in the lower-most deck. He's obsessed with this game.Wayne and Cole are on the "boat deck", I think.
Wayne has become a hotel mogul in the game of Monopoly. Wes doesn't stand a chance. I'll be in another room and Wayne will come running in, all excited, saying "Mommy! Daddy just had to pay me 1800 dollars!" That kind of thing happens repeatedly during their games. I don't know how Wes even manages to stay in the game long enough to finish. Other games that the boys have become experts at are Scrabble, (you can't win against Wayne. He's always go a strategy), Battleship, Bigfoot, Checkers. Cole is a master at the game of checkers. He's very good at thinking ahead to how his current move will affect later moves. Opponents don't stand a chance.

And here's Heather who is not quite ready for board games yet, but likes to get into the middle of it all and spread the pieces all over the room. She may not be ready to play games, but she is ready for a sunny day!Wes and Joanie took W and C to a collectors show this weekend, where they were fascinated by a model train exhibit. I stayed home with Heather who has been a very sick little girl with a terrible, painful sounding cough for the past few days. I sent the camera with them to the collectors' show, but they didn't take a SINGLE PICTURE!

Heather is feeling a little better today.

Thank You for All Your Love

If Valentine's Day is a time to celebrate all the love in your life, then these kids have a lot of celebrating to do.

Every trip to the mailbox is filled with anticipation. Wayne, Cole,and Heather have really enjoyed all the Valentines they've received. The three on the top are from Gramma and Grampa and each contained a couple of dollars. Heather carries her dollars around in her little pocket book and says, "My moneys! My moneys!" Cole used his dollars to buy a treat at C&C yesterday, and Wayne is saving his to take to the skating rink to buy some hot cocoa for himself and his best friend, Ben.Thank you Gramma and Grampa. The lovely hearts on the right are handmade by Grammie. Lots of detail in those cards with the ribbon and edging. Looks like Grammie spent a lot of time making those! Thank you Grammie. The hand made hearts on the left are from Aunt Lisa and Uncle Dan. I bet Dan had a lot of fun making those;) Thank you Lisa. There's one in the center from Aunt Martha and Uncle Chris which contained some beautiful wallet size family portraits. Thank you Martha. And on the bottom is a fabric post card made by Joanie. She's always got great ideas. Thank you Joanie. The kids also got a fun filled Valentine package from Auntie Di. It contained some Valentine chocolates, some activity books, the ever important potato sticks, and for Heather some Dora the Explorer socks, some cute pinks pants, a pretty striped shirt (which she is wearing today)...
And this hat which she has been wearing for every waking moment since we opened the package. Thank you Auntie Di.

Thank you, everyone for thinking of us this Valentine's Day.