1 Degree

It's no secret that it's been cold here this week. The Arctic Chill is all you hear about in the news.  On our way out to the bus stop this morning Ethan said "oh! It's Thursday! It's only supposed to be 1 today". So we grabbed the weather station and what do you know...it was 1 degree above zero outside. Luckily we did not wait more than a minute or 2 for the bus!!

 

 

I love this story even more because he is so much like his dad.  Steve has been in FL for work this week and missing "The Arctic Chill".  Whenever the weather gets really cold Steve likes to open the door to feel it and he always says "Whoa.  That's really cold.".  I just look at him like he's crazy and now I'm raising a crazy boy.

Silly Night With Jacob

This shirt of Jacob's is really stretchy. It makes it more comfortable, and well, more, shall I say, flexible.

Tonight he came into the kitchen and told me that he was wearing a suit.

Then at dinner the shirt made a great helmet.

He was fired up after dinner as usual, but tonight he was particularly crazy.  He's been driving Ethan nuts lately and we've been having to keep him out of Ethan's room more and more.  It's a good thing he is so darn adorable!!

Ethan's 6th (!) Birthday

Tuesday was Ethan's 6th birthday!  It isn't killing me as much as 5 did.  5 was tough.  5 meant a lot of changes and 6, I guess, is just exciting in itself!  There is so much in store for this little guy this year. 

In the morning before school.  He slept in his clothes from the day before.  It was the first of many birthday treats.

I got to go to his class to do an art project! Penguins are Ethan's favorite animal and I found a few crafts on Pinterest and his teacher picked one where you make little penguins out of the cups of an egg carton.  It was fun but CRAZY!  I don't know how they keep track of where these kids are or which ones have completed which activity.  They were all very sweet and really good but it was a lot of activity.

When we had Ethan's conference with his teacher, she mentioned that Ethan likes to rush through his table projects to get to free time.  He is often sent back to add more detail or maybe use more than one color.  She told us that he likes to spend his free time in the bean bag chairs.  I was working with the other children and when I looked up to see where he was...here he was!  In the bean bag chairs with a Lego catalog. 

One of our gifts to him was the Ogre that goes with the castle he got for Christmas.  It makes lots of cool noises.

Jacob has been having trouble discerning between his birthday and Ethan's birthday.  He still thinks all birthday's are his and therefore all presents are his.  We had an incident where Ethan let him open a present for him and then Jacob freaked out that it wasn't his toy inside. 

 

He has gotten really good at singing Happy Birthday though and was singing it a lot on Ethan's special day.  The camera angle is a bit funny, but I love this video.

 



 

New Years Eve/Day

We were all so excited to spend New Years with The Whorf Family! And I mean the whole Whorf Family...Lana, Kenny, Linda, Tara, Courtney, Josh, all the spouses, kids and of course Norma! As a bonus, Tara's sister and brother in law came with their 2 kids so we had 9 kids between 10 months and 7. Thank god for finished basements...

Here we go:  TJ holding Zach, Finn, Jacob, Brady, Ethan, Faith, Errol and Cameron!

We love our annual visit with Josh and Kate and really, really hope that 2013 is the year that we finally get them back from AZ! 

 

The boys had so much fun sledding in our driveway, we decided to take them to a real hill for sledding today.  The hill was pretty worked over, but man did they have a blast!  We were so impressed with how both of them grabbed their sleds and walked right up the hill and there was no hesitation in going straight down.  What you don't see in the pictures is that the hill ends at a huge parking lot so there are piles of snow from the plows.  They make pretty good jumps and sometimes the kids get air and land on the other side.  Steve and I were really careful about catching the boys.  Except one time I clotheslined Ethan really good to "save" him.  Oops.

Ethan didn't want any help so he would inchworm his way forward until he was on his way! 

After sledding, we took the boys out to lunch before we headed home to undecorate and clean up the house.  We've had 12 days off together and I have to say, we all still like each other!