We took the kids sledding again yesterday (1/28), mainly because they were trying to sled down the pile of ice we'd shoveled our car out of.
This time we went to a different hill in a different park. There was added excitement at this location because if the kids went too far, they'd land in a (we assume) shallow creek that was frozen over and slushy at the bottom of the hill. They only got close a couple of times and either stopped themselves, or I was down there to stop them.
Little Guy was frustrated because he wanted to get on his sled and then sort of hop until gravity pulled him down the hill. If he thought we gave him a push, he was furious and his run ended in tears. Once, midway down, he turned to tell me I gave him a little bit of a push and he didn't want to be pushed and he tumbled off the sled. Mostly, he wasn't understanding that we were holding the sled for him to climb in and as soon as we let go, gravity got him. We weren't pushing him at all. Oh well. He still mostly had fun. But after awhile he gave up and wandered over to the nearby playground.
Buddy's sled got a tiny crack the day before and that crack got bigger until it finally split in two on one of his times down. And of course, every store in town is sold out of sleds right now. I guess they'll have to learn to share for awhile.
Buddy turned the corner on the soccer field and found where some kids had made a sledding spot that went down a big hill and then went up a tiny hill (to what is normally a sidewalk in the park) and then down again.
The snow stopped late Wednesday night and so Thursday morning B and I joined the kids outside. We shoveled, they played.
It was a warm day, so the slow was slushy but the bottom layer was those sleet balls I took pictures on an earlier post, so shoveling was a pain. Keep in mind also that the sidewalks were shoveled at least three times already by the time we came out to play. And there's about two inches of snow on them.
Since it was such a nice day and the roads were clear, we ventured out in the car in search of a park with a sledding hill. There are a few we know of in town, but we didn't want crowds. I remembered I park I'd been too before that has sort of an elevated soccer field. I guess, more accurately, the soccer field was leveled off to create a flat field and so two sides of it are hill. It was perfect. We had to park at a nearby shopping center (because the parking lot for the park hadn't been plowed, and the gates were closed) and trek to the park in probably 8 inches of snow with just a couple other sets of foot prints in it. But it was worth it. The hills were little enough for our kids, but big enough for them to love it. And there was just another group of older kids off across the field leaving us alone.
You can see in the bottom left picture how deep my foot is in the snow. 8 inches. Maybe.
So handsome.
So excited.
Pretty and colorful.
While sledding, Buddy kept saying variations of "[Buddy Mileposts] the world's most fantastic awesome sledder!"
Lots of videos... I figured the grandparents and cousins might like to see some of them.
Buddy was thrilled with this sledding hill with a jump/bump that someone else made and he discovered.
Little Guy getting a push from Dad.
Princess Sparkley goes down the hill with the jump.
Little Guy. Then PS and Buddy.
Mom and Little Guy go down a hill together next to Princess Sparkley. Then the camera pans over to Buddy going down the hill with the jump. The best parts are PS's scream and the end of the video when Buddy has his legs straight up in the air.
PS and LG go down together.
Buddy.
I went down the hill with a jump (twice, the first time really hurt but B didn't get it on film and made me go a second time). Ow.
Little Guy goes down the jump, then Princess Sparkley tumbles at the end of her slide.
Three more videos to come... it's just taking forever.
Buddy and Princess Sparkley were not happy with me today because homeschool was in session even though it was Little Guy's birthday. And on top of that, it was a snow day for every other school in the city and county and B's classes were canceled. But it didn't even start snowing until 3 or 4 in the afternoon. And by then our school day was done. I think it's stopped for the night now (midnight). But for the first 3-4 hours we were under a severe weather warning and were supposed to get 5-8 inches. After an hour or so a snow plow went through our parking lot and the grounds crew shoveled the sidewalks. We'd gotten as much snow in that hour as we've had all winter to date. But now that the snow has stopped snowing, it's no where near the amount we got in the two separate huge storms last winter. But it's still a lot and the kids have big plans for it in the morning.
Here's the snow throughout the day. top left to bottom right: 2:30 pm hail/sleet (I opened the door and scooped a handful up) 4:10 pm 5:40 pm 7:18 pm 10:29 pm
The boys went out around 4:30. Buddy and Little Guy were eager to get out there with the kid snow shovels they got for Christmas. It hadn't been very long since maintenance guys went past with their snow shovels, but the snow was coming down hard and the sidewalks needed shoveling again so I sent them out front. PS opted to stay inside and be in charge of hot chocolate when the boys came in. The one picture is of Buddy's hood covered in snow. It was a really wet snow, so the boys came in wet like they'd been out in the rain, with snow stuck all over them.
I was woken up this morning by Little Guy standing next to my bed saying, "I three already, Mommy." Cute boy.
We reused the firetruck party supplies from his first birthday with some added balloons and streamers. Little Guy had waffles for breakfast (with a candle in them). We discovered the other day that he apparently loves waffles so we had them a few nights ago for dinner. The next morning he woke up and saw the waffle iron still out and demanded waffles again. So I bought some frozen ones to have for his birthday breakfast.
Then, because it was cruel of me to decorate the table with all of his presents and then make him wait all day to open them, we opened them shortly after breakfast. He got a piggy bank and Peanuts Linus mug from Grandma and Grandpa M. Grandma and Grandpa L got him some puzzles and the game Orders Up. Princess Sparkley got him a soft fuzzy Snoopy (which is nice since he's taken to calling Bubble "Toopy"). Buddy got him a train push car. B and I got him a Lego airplane set, a train crossing, and a set of Lego Star Wars people (mainly because it included Darth Vader, and Little Guy insists on being the bad guy who is usually Darth Vader). He'd already gotten a fun golf set last week. At one point he loaded all the balloons on B. Later they were all in his bed.
Because he's our donut thief, he got a stack of donuts for his "cake." We had Grandma and Grandpa on Skype (hence the laptop at the table) for the singing of happy birthday and donut eating.
B's sister's family introduced us to Bucky Balls when we visited them for New Year's. We quickly became addicted after playing with them for hours and then seeing H successfully recreate the cube. A couple weeks passed and our very own Bucky Balls arrived in the mail. Yea! 1/19/11 Here's B once he finally mastered the cube. And a picture of his outfit for the day. He decided to thin down some of his clothing, including one of his two pairs of pajama pants. So on this day, those pajamas were dirty and he resorted to this clothing ensemble.
1/20/11 And here's me after finally mastering the cube.
The kids also love Bucky Balls.
And some more of our creations (and cell phone pics me sent to H to prove our Bucky Ball abilities).
A mom in our homeschool group planned a police station tour in Vienna, VA and invited other families to tag along. We of course jumped at the opportunity. We toured fire stations several times while living in Kansas, but never a police station. Buddy was thrilled.
It's a smaller police station but we got a full tour including the basement firearms practice room, and holding cell for bad guys when there is a wait for a spot at the county jail, and the room where all the officers get prepped on a situation (I think my only experience with this sort of room is from the TV show CHiPs). We also got to see the police cars outside (in the freezing cold) and the motorcycles (in their shed because it was too icy of a day for the officers to be out on them).
Fun facts we learned: To be a motorcycle officer, you have to be able to lift your bike. The back license plate on the motorcycles say, "Smile, I could be behind you." The baton officers carry nowadays open like a toy lightsaber. Bicycle officers have to be able to ride their bikes up and down stairs.
1/13/11 These were taken after I'd helped completely clean the boys' room twice already that day. Little Guy decided to go through a dumping out every box phase for several days in a row. Argh.
Here are three more Princess Sparkley's creations.
First is "Let It Snow, Or Maybe Not." In the first panel, the girl is observing that there is "no snow." In the second panel, she issues the command, "Snow go!" In the third panel, no snow falls. In the fourth panel, in disappointment she says, "Aw." In the fifth panel, she commands more emphatically, "Snow GO!!!" In the sixth panel, she is dismayed that there "still" is no snow. In the seventh panel she again commands, "Let it snow," but in the eighth panel she tries politely asking, "please." In the ninth panel, snow gently begins to fall. In the tenth panel, the girl tries to up the snowfall by again commanding, "Let it snow." In the eleventh panel, a giant snowball falls on the girl. In the twelfth panel, just her hat is sticking out, next to a mountain of snow. In the thirteenth panel, she says, "Or maybe not," and then in the fourteenth panel, she calls, "Help!"
Up next is "Pizza." First, a "guy with stand-up hair" (which I assume is something very different from "a stand-up guy") is laughing and putting something on the pizza. In the second panel, the guy zips from the room as the mom calls, "Pizza for dinner." The guy warns ominously, "Don't bake pizza." The mom asks, "Why?" In the fifth panel, the mom calls, "Here is pizza." In the sixth panel, despite his knowledge of the doctored pizza, the guy with stand-up hair nibbles a piece. Finally, he gets X-eyes. (In explaining this comic to me tonight, Princess Sparkley backed away from her obvious original intention of having the guy with stand-up hair die, as indicated by the word "Die" next to his corpse. Perhaps she felt the moral of the cautionary tale was too heavy-handed, or perhaps she has doctored my food and is trying to ease her conscience by lessening the imagined repercussions. We'll never know.)
Lastly we have a more-recent effort, "Super Twins." This comic can get by with less explanation. In the fourth panel the girl in bed is one of the Super Twins (Ruby, specifically), hearing someone else cry for help. In the eighth panel, the bad guy is saying, "Ha ha!" while a girl cries out, "I am shrinking!" In the tenth panel, Ruby is walking the shrunken girl to the grower, which does its work over the next two panels. Finally, the girl asks the unanswered question, "How can I ever thank you?" How indeed, rebigulated girl. How indeed.
Sometimes my church comics are single-panel affairs, like Family Circus, only funny.
My son Buddy decided to make Mittens holed up in a cave, and Sparks sitting on top, roasting a marshmallow over an open fire, using his tail to hold his skewer.
A Clarice Bean inspired effort. (Proof of its humor is found in Princess Sparkley's annotation, "He he!"
Okay, so maybe I was wrong to call out Family Circus. But I think we can all agree that my comics are funnier than those in the New Yorker.
About a year ago, I drew a comic for our kids during sacrament meeting. It told the story of a dinosaur attacking a church, and two children who were eaten because they couldn't sit still. I've looked all over the house this week, but I can't find it. It's like Fermat's Last Theorem: you'll just have to believe me that it was awesome.
This started a comic-drawing trend in our family. At first, they were church-themed, as shown in this comic drawn by my daughter Princess Sparkley.
In the first panel, a girl is excited to be baptized. In the second panel, the baptism is occurring. (No one filled PS in on the whole "don't depict a baptism" controversy.) In the third panel, the girl is drying off. In the fourth panel, she's bearing testimony of how she felt after her baptism. In the fifth panel, she's enjoying the refreshments. In the sixth panel, she's receiving a new journal, and in the seventh panel, she's recording her feelings. In the eighth panel she's in bed asleep (under a bed canopy), smiling as she remembers her baptism in her dream.
A few weeks later, Princess Sparkley drew the squares, labeled the paper "A Good Comic By Dad" (which is why all my subsequent efforts bear that subtitle), and passed it to me. And this is what we got.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't poking fun at PS for not singing the hymns. I wasn't. See, a total lie.
Next, she came out with this effort, which was so hard to understand, that I created a panel-by-panel translation for her.
As you can see, our subject matter quickly went downhill. From baptisms to dogs eating stinky diapers. I'm not going to say I wasn't proud.
Little Guy told me this morning that he needed me to cuddle him because he was sick. He's never on his own come up with being sick so I questioned him to find out that his mouth hurt. We cuddled for a bit and that was the last that I heard of it all day. But, remembering this, and needing him out of Princess Sparkley's room so she could clean it without him throwing books all over (which he was apparently doing) I put on a dvd for him and he requested the Pittsburgh Penguins blanket (it's a Steelers blanket) and when I came back a little later I found him like this. Of course, when he saw I had a camera he tried to cover his eyes, or just close them.
Little Guy had some potty success about 6 months or more ago and since then has had little interest in the potty at all. Every once in awhile I can get him to sit on the potty. Some times he pees. Sometimes he demands that he doesn't want to sit, he'll only stand... so far that hasn't worked for him. We got him the book Pirate Potty for Christmas. It comes with a pirate hat that can only be worn while on the potty. And the book comes with stickers to put on the hat. He did pretty well yesterday and today with it.
Little Guy got a gift card for Christmas and decided to spend part of it on puzzles today at Target. (He also requested some chips telling me in a half crying voice, "but I want chips for my birthday gift card.") He's currently and expert and big fan of 24 piece puzzles. He told me at the store he wanted to get one Princess Sparkley would like, one Buddy would like and one he would like. Nice brother. We just picked out two because we don't really have a need for a 24 piece Barbie puzzle.
