The natives are restless

and I don't even mean my little natives. I mean the grandmas. Or one particular grandma in this case. I guess it's been entirely too long since I've posted and I knew I was going to get a reprimanding email sooner or later. Amazing that some one who is 29 (ha!) can still be told what to do by their mother :). I guess that wouldn't be half bad if said 29 year old wasn't also being told what to do by her 4 year old. It's fun when you get it from both ends.

So the other day, Miss C went through a pile of Christmas presents that haven't even been touched yet. I secretly put some aside so if we ever had one of those "break glass in case of emergency" days, I'd have stuff to entertain them with. This particular gift (thanks P family!) was a paint by numbers shadow box. She loved it! And so did I because it kept her busy for the better part of an hour.

Just look at that concentration.

She actually did really well with it. I'm going to have to get some more paint by numbers activities since it was such a big hit. So as I'm marveling at how artistic Miss C is, I look over and see this hot mess.

Gotta love the difference between boys and girls. Or maybe it's just the difference between first and second child. Whatever it is, it made me laugh.

When I was younger, my dad used to always say "well, that's what we had kids for" when it came to doing anything housework related. Washing dishes, raking the leaves, basically we were made for manual labor. It used to really irk me as a kid because you never really knew if he was kidding or not. My pop had the kind of sense of humor where it really could have gone either way. Now that I have kids, I think he might have been on to something.

Well, I'll post more later. We are having the house painted downstairs and I'm getting a head ache from the fumes. Hopefully this will keep someone at bay for at least a little bit!

old friend

I grabbed the old 50mm (which has been so neglected lately), set it at 1.8 and begged the kids to cooperate. It took a lot of coaxing and a lot of candy promises, but I had fun busting out the old lens. Mental note. I need to put this on my camera more often.

This one is my absolute favorite. I had the door open to get more light and she made it known that it was freezing outside :)

And here is the forced fake smile look. You would have thought I was torturing her for a smile.

Snow day part deux

The second day (Sunday) was even better than the first. The snow was a perfect icy mix that allowed us to make a snowman and sled down our front hill. Not so good for driving though :).

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. They had a blast!

First the snowman. Little J walked past it and said, "pretzels and carrots?" with a puzzled look on his face. Yes, Little J. That's all I could find.

Then we tried our hand at sledding again with the skim board. I'm glad we are getting some use out of it.