February 2016

Happy Valentine's Day...

 

Playing Hullabaloo - one of the best games invented for kids!

Valentine's day boxes for the boys...simple, yet effective!

 

Xander has been growing his hair out...we are enjoying the waves on this cute kid.

Declan has straight, dark hair.

I always love it when people ask me if the twins are identical or fraternal.  Seriously?  One even has brown eyes and one blue for heavens sake!  Xander has always been taller and weighed more as well.  Lately, the height difference has been pretty noticeable!

We woke up this morning to an ice storm.  Everything looked glossy..and was of course, quite slippery.  The boys enjoyed eating the icicles off the cars...yum!

It's not very often Cache lets me take an embarrassing picture...My own little Harry Potter!

You could say I am obsessed with cubes.  I have decided it is the perfect furniture for storage.  Cheap, easy to put together (just ask my 5 year olds who do most of the work!), and quite versatile.  So much easier to move from place to place than a formal dresser or bookshelf.  I got quite the bargain on 3 of these gray shelves...$20 each!  I believe I counted 15 cube shelves in my house...and honestly I could use more.  I suppose I could just get rid of some stuff, but until then, it's cube time around here!

Oh, and not only are the cubes great, but the boxes are quite handy as well!

My triple decker cube shelf.  It hold all my preschool activities, crafts, and puzzles. 

Lifting the 3rd shelf to the top was a little tricky and I'm sure it would kill a small child in an earthquake, but it works for now!

A beautiful rainbow after our last storm.  I ran across to my neighbors house and up on their porch...but I still wasn't far away enough to capture the whole thing!

How cool is the double rainbow on the right?!

The boys enjoying hot chocolate for breakfast with whipped cream, sprinkles, and a hershey kiss on top...so spoiled!

Easton decided he wanted to catch a bird.  He took his net, a camping chair, and a book and literally sat outside for an hour under the bird feeder.  The result...no luck.

Easton practiced and practiced and practiced for his duet.  They had several grand pianos on the stage and all the duets played the same song.  He did a great job!  

 

Jacqueline was his partner. 

 

Poor Easton, suffering with a really hot fever.  I have never seen his face so red.

The school sent home these cool valentine cards made from the boys' school pictures...

They also made this great collage of prior pictures for Easton.  I love it! 

January 2016

The great snow-mageddon of 2016!  

Every few years we get a big storm.  This was the year.  The last one was in 2010 - the February that we moved into this house.  I remember wondering if our moving truck would be able to make it through the snow piled streets.

This year it snowed for 2 days and it was awesome.  We were completely stuck at our house - even David's manly truck couldn't get out since the snow was above the base of his truck and stayed that way through the streets until we hit a main road.  The snow started Friday and on Monday evening at 9pm, we finally had a snow plow come through.  The next day the kids played on what we called 'Mount Candlewood' (named after our street).  Mount Candlewood didn't disappear until nearly 6 weeks later!  The blue flying child in this picture is Easton!

This was the second snow pile in the culdesac, a twin tower...you can see it is easily 3 times the height of the 10 year old standing on the ground.  And if they fell off the snow pile - a nice hard, solid pavement!

Sometimes the kids seem so normal, and then they do something like this...

Ok, back to the snow.  We decided to enjoy a forest hike in the snow.  Man, was it tough!  The kids seemed to be able to walk on top of the snow by this point (a few days after the storm), but the adults still sunk through every step.  

Here is Declan walking through the parking lot of the trail head (which is still clearly not plowed or passable via car)

Cache and Declan

These boys love being outside and especially hiking.  

The 2 men of the house.

Natalie and Easton, friends since babies (with a 3 year separation when she lived in Mexico City).

This part of the trail, usually quite steep on a good day, required the kids to either roll or slide to get to the bottom!

Easton trying to make it down the hill...imagine me laughing hysterically at this point!

Imagine an adorable picture with all the kids here...if only they would slow down!

The Svirs and Tikalskys (Emilee stayed home with their 2 year old Aaron).

Cache and Xander resting on a log.

Xander and Tyler

Tyler, Natalie, and Joshua Tikalsky

Joshua & Cache

I walked the gaggle of kids home while the guys headed for the cars.

Walking on snow (where I of course would step right through!)

Warm at last...time for Monopoly!

Another realization my kids are not normal.  Easton had all the boys sign this before playing...

Cache had the flu shot then kept complaining he didn't feel well.  I didn't really believe him, but decided it also wouldn't hurt to just let him stay home.  (I later saw how inflamed his arm was!)

He helped me with preschool.  Here he is reading to the 4/5 year olds!

Hiking in the forest behind our house...

The downside of a hike through the forest after a rainy day...sooooo many shoes to clean!

Easton loving his guinea pig for the last time.  Poor fluffy.  He was a shedding, stinky, pooping machine...but he was cute!  

Twin bonding.

It's a bird, it's a plane...it's Easton and David heading outside at the beginning of snow-mageddon!

The snow was so high on our roof.

The snow was so high on our cars!

David decided to bring in some wood for the fire...now if I can just get him to move it off our front mat...grrr

Let the chaos begin...

Declan, aka. the child without fear.

The kids resorted to crawling across the culdesac since each step with up to their hips.

HOURS later...seeing the red on my car was miraculous!

Easton, Cache, Brendan, and Jonathan - boys in the 'hood

Did I mention that the kids left all our snow shovels out the night before and we had to dig for them in our yard?  We only found a couple.  It was a week later before we pulled out the last one and a few of our sleds.  Oh, and did I also mention that I had to walk across the culdesac to borrow a neighbors shovel and literally had to sit half-way across because it was so exhausting!  So sad.