Shawls and Hats

I've been a busy knitter lately so I'm using today's post to show off what I've made since the summer.

Over the summer I made this shawl for a friend of ours. She, her husband, and their 4 kids are going to be missionaries in Lebanon. (The ladies in the picture are ladies I knit with, who pray over the shawls with me. They are so much fun.)

I finished it and mailed it in July, then took a month or so off since it was "summer" and all.

In September, the prayer shawl knitting group I go to started up again, and so did I. My first shawl of the "year" is this lovely one I made for a friend of ours who, along with her husband and young daughter, are going to be missionaries in Africa.

Once her shawl was finished, I started one for the prayer shawl basket in our church. It's pretty much what it sounds like, a basket, in our church, full of shawls that we've made and prayed over for whoever needs one.

Around the same time I started this pink one, I also started one for a friend of ours who is in England, leading Club Beyond (youth group) for the military kids stationed over there.

I finished both of them in the beginning of December (mostly so I could mail the one to England and have it arrive [hopefully] right around Christmas. And I'm currently working on two more. Most likely for the prayer basket again. At least that's what they're both intended for right now, but I guess you never know what might come up.

And now on to hats!

You may remember the Spider-man hat I made for Zeke and the Ironman hat I made for Deacon. (If you don't, click HERE.) You may also remember the Green Lantern hat I made for Josh. (Again, if you don't, click HERE.) Well, after finishing Josh's hat, I started on a Batman one for me. By the time mine was finished, the one Finn was rocking was too small so I made him a new one (which is too big) in colors inspired by the X-Men. Wolverine in particular for now since he's Zeke's favorite, but when he's big enough to pick one for himself, he'll be able to.

Now, Finn's hat and my hat don't have our respective superheroes icons on the brims like the others do, but I'm okay with that. Basically I knew I'd never get the Batman one right and I didn't want to spend upwards of $10 (including shipping) on a patch. And since Finn's isn't really anyone specific (no offense Wolverine) I figured there wasn't a point in putting one on his yet. I guess I could put a red X, but meh.

So there you have it. That's what I've been doing to keep myself busy (and warm!). Because, you know, life isn't busy enough around here on it's own.

Oh, That Youngest Walter Boy

Do you see this face?

This face is the face Finn makes every time I tell him "No" or "Stop". Yeah, disciplining this one as he gets older is going to be rough.

* * * * *

The other day, after coming in from getting Zeke off of the bus, I came upstairs to find Finn under the table. This isn't a terribly big deal, except that I hadn't swept for a few days. So by the time I pulled Finn out from under the table, he had an old, hard French fry in his mouth, as well as an old, dried up apple peel, and a little chunk of play-doh. After I swiped all of his goodies out of his mouth, he then tried to replace them with the piece of PBJ he had in his one hand, and when that failed, he tried for the dried broccoli he had in his other hand (Linda joked that at least he was going for a variety of foods). So pleased with this new area of floor he discovered (I blame the cat for this, by the way) I found Finn under the table many times throughout the rest of the day (don't worry, I swept the floor right after I pulled him out and took all his treats away).

Obviously, he's quite happy under there.

*****

Finn is pretty much in love with himself. And who can blame him, right? His new thing to do (usually while we're cooking dinner) is to come into the kitchen, and make out with the baby "in" the oven.

He's done this a few times, and I thought it was only the baby "in" the oven that he was so keen on, but then I read a book to him that has a mirror at the end, and as soon as he saw himself in the mirror, this is what he did:

Which is what leads me to believe that Finn is in love with himself. Or that he likes to lick things that look like him. Whichever.

* * * * *

And finally, here is a video for Finn's aunts. See, my sisters are somewhat known around these parts (and by "these parts" I mean to Josh and me) as cranberry sauce maniacs. Probably because one night Josh had come to my mom's for dinner and cranberry sauce was served, and each twin probably ate about a can of sauce herself. So, for them, we filmed Finn freaking out over some cranberry sauce.

Seriously, I couldn't feed it to him fast enough. The video doesn't really do the moment justice. You'll just have to trust me that it was quite hilarious and made us think of my sisters. Fondly, of course.

Go My Favorite Sports Team!

As you may or may not know, we enjoy football in our house. We like to play football as well as watch football. We cheer for everyone since Zeke has no allegiance to any particular team. We do enjoy college football a bit more then professional, but again, since Zeke has no preference and football is football, we watch whatever we can whenever we can. So, we're pretty excited that the Superbowl is coming up.

I am excited for the Superbowl for a completely different reason though. This year, for the Superbowl, St. Jude Children's Research hospital has partnered with the NFL on FOX to create a new fundraising program called Game Day. Give Back. Now, we aren't having a Superbowl party to try and raise funds, but what we have decided to do is donate to St. Jude's according to the final score of the game. So, if the final score of the Superbowl is 21-16, we will donate $37 to St. Jude's. (If the score only winds up being something ridiculous like 7-0 or 3-2, we'll just add a zero to the end of the total number of points.) And I have to say it again, I'm really excited for the Superbowl now because of this. We may not wind up giving what some would consider to be a lot, but every little bit helps.

All of that being said, would any of you care to join us in this "pledge"?

Chips Ahoy!

Deacon is a potato chip eating monster. This kid would eat chips all day, every day, if we would just let him. It doesn't even matter what kind of chip, he is an equal chip lover. Doritos, fritos, cheetos, bar-b-que, regular, rippled, sun chips, etc. They are all delicious to devour.

Look how happy they make him. As I was getting Deacon up from his morning rest time the other day I said (as usual), "Deacon, what shirt would you like to wear today?" Deacon looked at me and said, "How about you get the shirt, and I'll get the chips." He then left the room, got some chips from the pantry and went upstairs.

The only downside? Chips, especially the "cheesy" ones, tend to make quite the mess. We all know Deacon is anything but neat when he eats, but still:

Chips can get a little out of control sometimes. I did show him how to lick his fingers when he is finished eating, so that helps a little. But when he so clearly enjoys them, a little cheese all over the house is worth it.

So, It's Come To This

Deacon's hair is getting pretty long. He does a pretty good job of keeping it out of his eyes, but sometimes there's no controlling it (especially when static takes hold). So, it's come to this:

He actually left that headband elastic thing in for most of the morning. He hasn't let me put on in since, but it worked really well while he was willing to use it.

Also, Finn is a crawling champion now and is everywhere and into everything all at once. He can get from one end of the house to the other end in 5 seconds flat. (That might be an exaggeration.) So, it's come to this:

I usually just put it up when I'm cooking dinner, or when I'm getting Zeke off the bus. Otherwise, I'm not usually far enough away from him that I can't stop him from doing a header down the stairs.

Good times, people. Gooooood times.

Oh Sure

So I'm pretty certain Finn said his first word on Tuesday (besides the usual mama/dada bit, or "mum" as he often says when he "means" it). I had gotten him out of bed in the morning, we were walking to the couch, when Peavey walked past us. Finn is enthralled with the cat right now, so I stopped, we watched Peavey for a bit and I said to Finn, "cat". Finn looked at me, looked at Peavey and said, "cah". Awesome. He wouldn't do it again right away, but later on in the morning, Finn was crawling around the floor. As Peavey walked by Finn, Finn stopped, looked at Peavey and said, "cah" again. And Peavey, I must say, has been pretty good about Finn. He does avoid the baby as much as possible, but if Finn does manage to get to him and crawl on him and pull his fur, Peavey (for the most part) just lays there and takes it. Once Peavey's had enough abuse he gets up and walks away.

Not so good of Peavey though, is where I found him Tuesday evening:

I'm not even fully sure how he got up there. I'm hoping it's the only time he's been up there, because he's kind of gross with the shedding of the fur and the kitty litter in the paws and stuff, and I'd hate to think he's been using my clean towels as bedding for awhile. Especially when he has his own little pile of blankets there in the bottom corner of the closet to sleep on. Speaking of gross Peavey, he's shed so much fur in that little spot of his, I'm fairly certain I could collect it all and make a new cat. A quieter cat who doesn't insist we stop everything and pet him when he wants to be pet. Petted. Pet? When he wants to be petted? I think I need a nap.

My Boy

Zeke had his 5 year check up yesterday. I originally made the appointment early so that I could get him there, get him seen, and get him out in time to still make it to school. However, when I realized it was on a Tuesday, and that he's due to see the dentist again, and that the dentist only sees kids on Tuesdays at the clinic thing he sets up at the indoor playground on post, I changed the plan. Josh took Zeke in for his appointment, then brought Zeke to work with him where he was supposed to hang out until I got there with the other 2, to take them all to the dentist. However, when I called the dentist in the morning to make sure they were still doing the Tuesday morning clinic thing, the woman on the phone told me that they are still doing it but that the dentist is gone until February. So I called Josh, let him know this, and asked him to bring Zeke to school, which he did, because he's wonderful.

When Zeke came home from school I asked him how school was, and all he wanted to talk about was going to work with Daddy. He was so excited by that part of his morning, he talked about it all day long. Listening to him talk, you'd think it was the best 10 minutes of his entire life. But for those of you who are curious, Zeke weighed in at 41 1/2 pounds (50-75% for his age) and was measured at about 3 foot 8 (75%).

Now that Zeke's speech is really coming along, he says some of the funniest things. The other night I was teasing him and asked if he wanted broccoli or bananas with his waffles for dinner (yes, we have waffles for dinner sometimes). He looked at me and said, "Why don't we wait a little bit and then see where we're at." Zing! Nothing like hearing your own words coming right back at you. The week before Christmas we moved Zeke's speech lession from Saturday morning to Tuesday afternoon. It was dark out when we left, which is different from leaving and having the sun come out like usual. So as we exited the building Zeke said, "Hey! Who turned on the dark?" I laughed and said, "I don't know. Who did turn on the dark?" He replied, rather matter of factly, "Miss Kathie (his speech teacher) did it." There's also his way of making verbs like "picturing" and "teachering". Or when we had spaghetti two nights in a row (leftovers) he sat down and said, as he slapped his hand into his forehead, "We're having this again?" followed by heavy sighing and head shaking. Yeah, he's a funny kid.

He's also a big help around the house, and apparently at McDonald's. Today, I overheard a boy on the play equipment saying, "I need help" (he was having a hard time navigating the spiral staircase). Immediately after I heard Zeke say, "I will help you." As I looked up I saw Zeke take this little boy's hand and lead him up the stairs. He also chose to sit in the middle row of the car on the way to McD's last week so he could help Finn, should Finn need help with anything on the way, instead of sitting in the back row with his friend Evelyn.

Zeke is also starting to understand more about emotions. One of his new things that started last week is that, when he gets home from school he "slams" his hat and mittens into the bag we keep them in and says, "I'm angry." Or he'll stomp around the house, kind of grunting, and say, "I'm angry." He's never angry when he does these things, but he's displaying that he does understand what the word means. Yesterday he took it to a new level though. Since he was overtired from getting up way too early to go the doctor's, he took forever to decide which episode of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse he wanted to watch. I told him if he didn't pick soon, I'd pick the one I wanted to watch. Well, he stood there and said, "Um...um...um...um.." so I played the one I wanted. He got all upset with me and went behind the couch and sulked. After a few minutes I said, "Are you okay, Zeke?" He said, "No. I'm mad at you." If it wasn't so cute and funny my feelings might have been hurt. He did eventually get over it, but he's said that to me at twice more since yesterday.

My sweet boy also enjoys the usual things like reading, coloring, trains, cars, trucks, balls, football, dragons, etc. To counter all the "boy" things, Zeke also enjoys a good princess movie. His current favorite is "Beauty and the Beast", although we did play "Enchanted" for them the other night, and he's asked for it a few times since. I saw it's because of the talking animals (or talking household [castlehold?] items) but I think it's the storylines. He gets so excited at the end when the prince and princess get together. I have recieved so many kisses when the prince and princess kiss in the movie, usually because he's so overcome with happiness and excitment himself.

He's such a great kid. And even though he does have "moments of attitude", and even though he does get a bit "over sensitive" about things sometimes, I'm having a lot of fun watching this boy grow up.

Good Thinking, Us

Josh's cousin's kid is doing the Flat Stanley project. When they got our Christmas card from Alaska, they wrote us and asked if they could send Stanley to us so he could do some "Alaska-y" things. We said, "Of course!" and so Flat Stanley came over. Unfortunately for Stanley, the day he arrived marked the day the temperature around here dropped into the negatives and stayed there.

Notice how that says negative 15, at 9 o'clock in the morning. Yeah. Here's a little rabbit trail: on Saturday when I took Zeke to speech, it was -9 when I left and a whopping -14 two hours later when we got home. When we got to church on Sunday, Finn started gasping when I took him out of the car on account of the cold. Also, our garage door takes a few tries to get open when it's this cold. You push the button and raises about a foot, then goes back down. And repeat. Push the button, watch it go up a foot, then watch it go back down. And repeat a good 4-7 times until finally, it opens all the way. And that was really 3 closely placed rabbit trails. Forgive me.

So Stanley got here, the weather got severly cold and so poor Stanley only made it to work with Josh. Which is cool since he works on a military base, right? On Thursday or Friday I got an email from the zoo (because I'm a member, and because I'm cool like that). The email said they were having a birthday party for the polar bears on Saturday. Sweet! I figured that would be a great day to brave the cold and get Stanley to see something else. Only Josh reminded me that Zeke has speech at the time of the party and so went that plan.

I then determined Stanley had to do something besides sit around our house, so we figured we'd take him (and the kids) to the Imaginarium at the museum in Anchorage. On Monday. You know, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I'm sure you can see where this is going, and where the title of this post is really going to come into play.

We bundled up the kids, grabbed Stanley, and drove to the museum. We walked the 2 short block (as opposed to 2 long block) walk from the parking garage to the museum, in the -4 degree weather, took our picture outside by the sign:

then walked to the door, only to find it locked. Because it's a holiday. Why we didn't think about the museum being closed on a federal holiday is beyond me. So we walked as fast as our frozen legs could take us back to the car. Poor Finn was not a happy baby by this point. He was cold, he was getting hungry, and I pulled his hat down over his face to try and keep as much of the cold off of his face as I could, so he couldn't see anything. On our way back to the car though Josh suggested we take the kids bowling, so off we went to base, to the bowling alley, hoping that it would be open.

And it was! I think this is the first time we've taken the boys bowling that they can remember, and it was so much fun. They had a blast throwing the ball, kicking the ball, pushing the ball. At one point Zeke asked about the bumpers and I explained how they help keep his ball from going on the gutter, so he can knock down more pins. My next turn I wound up throwing a gutter ball and Zeke said, "Mom, you need the bumper." Thank you son.

We bowled one game, then went home. Once we got home I put Finn down for a little rest time as he was one pooped out baby:

while the rest of us had dinner. Then it was video and bed time for the boys, followed by veg-time for us. All in all, a pretty good MLK day. Plus, I'm happy we actually took Stanley out to do something while he was with us. Farewell Stanley. I hope you had a nice visit.

If you click on the pictures of Zeke and Deacon at the bowling alley, they'll take you to little videos of each of them bowling. Oh, and Deacon won. Towards the end of the game he kept getting spares, pushing ahead of Josh and me. Although I can't prove it, I'm fairly certain Josh threw his last ball in the gutter on purpose so that Deacon could keep his lead and win. He claims he didn't but I'm not buying it.

Like Father...

Like sons...

Now We Just Need to Get Rid of the Snow

Zeke got a bicycle for his birthday from Josh's parents. It was pretty hilarious when it was delivered. Zeke stuck his head out the door while I thanked the UPS guy, and loudly exclaimed, "IT'S MY MOTORCYCLE BIKE!!" Sadly for him, the bike came on a Thursday and didn't get put together until Saturday. Also, there's ice everywhere so he can't really ride it yet. Well, he can't ride it outside. Josh says we can move the cars onto the driveway (and hope they don't slide into the street) so Zeke can ride around the garage a little. Maybe this weekend? Anyhoo, he's super excited about the bike as you can see.

Even more exciting then the bike though, is the bike helmet Josh took him to buy Sunday afternoon. Zeke has worn this helmet every. single. day. since buying it on Sunday. In fact, when he put it on Sunday after getting it home, he spent 5 minutes in the bathroom mirror looking at himself. But it's so funny to see him playing with his cars or watching TV with his helmet on. Yesterday I had to show him how to take it off since he kept wanting it, on then wanting it off. Then wanting it on, then wanting it off. On Tuesday, he put the helmet on then declared, "Mom! I'm Helmet Man!"

Yes you are sweet boy. And I hope you are always this enthusiastic about wearing your helmet.

My Day

Yesterday was my birthday. It was quite the day. The morning went as usual. After the boys rest time I decided to vacuum since it really needed to be done. Usually Josh vacuums and the older boys run around while Finn hangs out with me on the couch. This time, I put Finn at his running table thing and he was not happy. At all. He worked himself up so bad that when I finally managed to calm him down (after I finished vacuuming and got Zeke off the bus) he did that little, sad, extra breath thing (I know you know what I'm talking about) for a good 10 minutes. Of course, he was so upset by the previous half hour that when I tried to put him down to make lunch he screamed, so I had to get out the moby wrap and strap him to me while I made sandwiches for the older boys. So, I was a little on the stressed side by the time naptime finally rolled around.

I put the boys in bed, had some lunch, then did the dishes that I was too tired to do the night before. Sigh. Then Josh tried calling and my phone "broke". It would ring and it worked, but I couldn't get any sound to come out of it. At all. So, as people tried to call me all afternoon, I would sit there listening to my ring tone, then text them back that I couldn't talk because my phone had no sound. I tried so many things to fix it. Finally I gave up and took a nap.

After my nap I got the boys up from their nap. I made hot dogs and macaroni and cheese for dinner (we really do things up special here). Josh came home and brought with him a super yummy cake from Coldstone Creamery. It was devil's food cake and chocolate ice cream layered with peanut butter cups. Soooo good. Here we are singing to me.

I think my favorite part of the evening was watching Deacon eat his piece of ice cream cake.

Yup, that's my boy! I know this may be overkill with the videos and the pictures, but I don't care. It's my birthday post, and I'll put up whatever I want. Lol. Besides, Deacon had us rolling.

While the sugar monster finished off his cake and ice cream, I opened my presents. Josh got me a Cold Stone gift card with the promise of time away from the boys (yay!), and Karen got me these sweet sock monkey slippers, that I apparently have to share with my children.

After we cleaned up Deacon, I left for evening Bible study on base. The ladies there sang to me as well. All in all, it was a pretty good day. A nice way to start the next year of my life.

And by the way, Josh came home from work, essentially looked at my phone, and fixed it in, like, 3 seconds. Jerk.

May I Have Your Attention Please?

I have an announcement I'd like to make.

*Ahem.* We have received some information on what lies ahead for us. We don't have much of a timeline, but we do know now what's coming next.

Josh has to go to a school in Alabama (Roll Tide!) from April until July. It's a TDY assignment, which means the boys and I will (hopefully) stay in Alaska until Josh's class is finished. After his class is finished, we will be moving from Alaska to....

(drumroll please)

Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey!

This means that after leaving New Jersey 8 years ago, we will be heading back there for a bit. Needless to say, the grandparents are thrilled, and we're pretty excited too. Until then, we'll be here. In Alaska. Trying not to freeze. Because baby, it's cold outside. (Although, it does help to know that it doesn't get this cold in New Jersey.)

Ah, Deaconland

It really must be a magical place since Deacon tends to spend a good part of every day there. I'm sure I've said it before, but this kid really does have quite the imagination. Whether he's in a room full of robots, fighting for his life or reenacting scenes from his favorite movies (I'm trying really hard to capture his maniacle laugh for you because it is fantastic), this kid is all over the place.

So often I watch him as he sits there daydreaming, and I wonder what goes on in his head. It makes me excited for when he starts school, to see the things he'll come up with for writing assignments and art projects. You know, assuming he ever potty trains so he can go to school (I am seriously running out of ideas on how to motivate this kid to want to use the toilet).

Happily, Deaconland doesn't just stay in his head, I guess you could say. Deacon loves to chat with his toys and act out what he's dreaming about, so sometimes I can get a good glimpse into the wonderful world of Deacon's imagination. Sometimes. Sometimes I'm at a loss to figure out what a safari hat and a dump truck have to do with each other. But he plays so nicely on his own, lost in his own little land.

One of Deacon's current favorite movies is "Snow and the Seven Dwarfs". This is fun because you just never know when he'll break out with his own version of "One Song", or when he'll ask me to sing the wishing well song with him (I sing as Snow White, he sings as her echo - it's a good time), or when he'll bust out something like this (my apologies for the sound being all over the place, he was singing loud then soft and I filmed it with my phone):

And in case you're still wondering, yes, he does still put random things on his head.

I seriously love this kid.

Eight

That's how many months old Finn is now. Eight. Eight months. Some days I still can't believe he's that "old" already. He's so stinkin' cute and so very, very sweet. Finn is my happy baby. Not that he never cries, but it's just not a frequent thing. Smiling is a frequent thing. So is crawling now. Every day he gets better at it, which means every day he gets faster. Now I put him down in the middle of the living room and find him 30 seconds later in places like this:

Or this:

This one is his favorite since we made a game of it. Now he crawls over there and I'll pull him away and roll around with him on the floor, tickling him. Once I let him go, he crawls back over, laughing the whole way, waiting for me to grab him again. If I don't grab him, he still likes to go over there because there are things he can grab and pull off the bottom shelf. So really, it's win-win for Finn.

Finn also loves to be tossed about and thrown around. He loves, loves, LOVES bathtime with his older brothers. He is so happy to just sit there in the water splashing and chewing on bath toys. He also likes to eat. Which you could probably guess pretty easily just looking at him, the little chunk. He gets excited when he sees his daddy, and likes to snuggle with his mommy (every once in a while anyway). He watches his older brothers with fascination and anticipation for the day he can join them. He has the best little laugh, and the most wonderful smile.

I think we'll keep him.

Gah! How Did This Happen?!

My baby, my boy, my oldest son turned 5 years old yesterday. FIVE!! I mentioned in Saturday's post how Zeke was excited to take down the Christmas stuff so we could focus on his birthday. And I have to say, I think it was a pretty good birthday.

Sunday night, while he was sleeping, I made and hung this banner for him, so it would be up, "decorating the house" when he woke up in the morning. He was thrilled, and spent a good 5 minutes just looking at it, naming all of the letters over and over. Okay, maybe it was more like 2 minutes because he needed to get ready for school.

That's right, not only was it Zeke's birthday yesterday, but it was also his first day back to school, truly making it an awesome day. I brought some cupcakes that I made to his school, a few minutes before his class was over. Since I had a bunch of cupcakes, we invited the other preschool class there to join Zeke's class for the special snack. (Every Monday they open the wall between the 2 classrooms and do big group activities, so they were all together and cleaning up anyway when I got there.)

Now, these cupcakes were somewhat special. See, there's this sweet girl in Zeke's class who has all sorts of physical delays and speech delays, and what's it, and my heart just melts whenever I see her because she is the happiest, sweetest girl in spite of it all. Whenever the bus brings Zeke home, this girl and I say hi to each other through the bus window a good 4-6 times. But to top everything off, the girl has food allergies and diet restrictions, so she hardly ever gets to have the same snacks as the other kids - especially at "parties" and things (like the kids will be eating cupcakes and she'll be eating veggie curls or something). So I asked what her allergies were so I could make something for the class that she could have too. Therefore, the cupcakes I made for Zeke's class were gluten free and dairy free. They were a little extra work (and a little extra money), but it was so worth it when this girl, with cupcake all over her face and hands, yelled, "I LOVE CUPCAKES!!" The other kids seemed to love them too, and couldn't even tell the difference.

After school it was lunch and naps (and some "Happy Birthday" phone calls from grandparents and aunts). While the birthday boy was napping I was whipping up some more cupcakes (regular ones this time). He originally wanted a Spider-man cake. But then he saw the chocolate frosting with the sprinkles in the lid at the store and changed his mind to that, on cupcakes. So I thought I could use the sprinkles on some and then draw Spidey's face on some, so he could have both (since the amount of sprinles they give you is no where near enough for 2 dozen cupcakes). That didn't really work out so well since cupcakes are a really small space to draw on, so I did half with sprinkles, then drew a spider on some of them, bats on others (yes, those black blobs are bats), and wrote his name on others since I was running out of time.

Daddy came home from work early, we had some dinner. Hot dogs and macaroni and cheese, as the birthday boy requested, despite my trying to change his mind to something else. Then Zeke blew out the candles on his cupcakes, ate the yummy cupcakes, opened his presents, and watched "Toy Story 3" (it was one of his presents from us).

When it was all over, off to bed one tired, but very happy 5-year-old. Happy birthday sweet boy. I pray that 5 will be a wonderful age for you, that this will be a great year for you. We love you Ezekiel.

Happy New Year!

What an end to 2010. After the boys got up from their rest time, Josh took them outside to play in the snow. Whenever it snowed here, Josh would shovel all of the snow off of the back deck and into one giant pile in the yard. The other day when Josh and Zeke were out there, they dug a little slide into the giant pile of snow:

Yesterday though, yesterday the snow was nice and maleable so Josh helped them make this:

Which makes me think of this:

Josh said it was Zeke's idea to make the snowman with 2 heads. He claims he said he would make a head and the Zeke said he would make a head and so they wound up with 2 heads, which is what Zeke wanted. Hmm. Anyhoo, shortly after finishing the snowman they had to come in since it has started raining. Yes, it got warm enough here to rain yesterday. Of course, it all froze and turned into ice by the end of the day, but it was nice to have some warmer weather, and a little color in the sky.

The rest of the day went normally. After we put the boys in bed we decided to play World of Warcraft while we waited to ring in the new year (yeah, we are super exciting people). Around 9:00pm or so people in our neighborhood started setting off fireworks. We thought it would be cool for the boys to see so we went downstairs, woke them up (because of course last night was the only night in weeks that they both fell asleep right away instead of staying up playing until 9 or so), and carried them upstairs to see some of the fireworks.

Zeke and Deacon were super excited (once they woke up and realized what was going on). At one point, another house started setting off some and even though we couldn't see most of them we could hear them. Deacon looked up at Josh and said, "Do you hear that? It sounds like fireworks!" Eventually Zeke decided he had had enough and wanted to go back to bed, so we put them both back downstairs and sat back down at our computers. Midnight came, midnight went, and so we did we, off to bed.

Today we took down and put away all of our Christmas. Josh suggested it, and Zeke jumped on the chance to put Christmas away so we can turn our focus to what comes next - his birthday on Monday. Oh yes, this year he definitely understands what's going on. Five really is going to be a fun age.