Family Day in the Snow

Tucson has turned beautifully cold these past few days with highs in the 40's. It is rather uncharacteristic and so we have taken many opportunities to go outside and freeze our butts off. I guess when "cold" is a novelty it is more appreciated than when it is a regular part of life. I may not think it to be so awesome if I were living in it constantly.

Anyway, this morning my son and I were running some errands when he could see the snow on the mountains. He asked if we could go and see the snow. I figured, why not? We went home, grabbed my husband, and two daughters and hit the road. About 40 minutes later we were in a good 6-8 inches of snow and about 30 degree weather. It was amazing. We got the kiddos bundled up and sent them off. (There's my hunky husband and daughter throwing snowballs onto the car so we could drive back into town with snow on our hood).Our 5.5 year old daughter LOVED it. She was out there forever, running, jumping, sliding, falling in the snow; making snowballs and throwing them all over the place. She was red faced, cold, and happy. She'd fare well in my master plan to relocate our family to Boston at some point. :)

Our 3.5 year old son lasted about 20 minutes before he realized he was getting wet and then freaked out. He started crying hysterically about how his pants and gloves were wet and needed to be changed immediately. He then took off for the car in search of dry clothes. Guess he wouldn't last long in Bean Town.
Our almost 4 month old daughter spent most of her time with me in the car but I did take her out for a few minutes to commemorate the occasion with a photo. She has on two layers of clothing, a jacket, a blanket, an Elmer Fudd hat, a fleece hood, and then a jacket hood. That was a lot of work for about 5 minutes outside.
We stayed for an hour or so and then headed back to town for frozen yogurt...oh, the irony.

Christmas in Pictures

This is what my living room looked like at 10 pm tonight. And these are just the presents from family members for our kids. The mess is killing me but I told myself, and the kids, that they could keep all toys out for 1 week. It's going to be the longest week of my life.Baby number 3 is 3.5 months old and started rolling over 3 days before Christmas. She rolled herself across the room to get to the presents. And then tried to EAT them.
Child number one opening her Disney Princess Deluxe Pack. Loves it.
Child number two discovering his Razor scooter.

We had a really wonderful Christmas and it is magical to see the joy of Christmas through the eyes of my children. They were so excited and thankful. Hope your Christmas was splendid.

Up and Down, All Around

I'm sure my son has the attention span of a typical 3 year old boy. But I'll be damned if it is not killing me these days. He goes from one activity to the next, usually demanding my immediate involvement in a matter of minutes. By the time I get settled into one he's moved on to the next. This would not be a problem if it were just the two of us at home. But I have a 3 month old baby constantly in my arms, which requires lugging her around as well as keeping her happy as we move about the house every three minutes and twenty-seven seconds.

Our days goes something like, "Mommy, come upstairs to my room and play superheroes with me." I go upstairs, sit down start playing superheroes, and the next thing I know he's done. "Mommy, can you turn on the click start game for me?" Get that turned on, sit down to play with the baby and he's done. "Mommy, can you turn on Batman for me. I want to watch Batman." Turn on Batman. Son watches four minutes of it. "Mommy, I want to ride my bike outside." It takes me fifteen minutes to put his shoes on, open the garage, get his bike, set up my chair in the driveway so I can watch him. Just as all this gets complete, he rides his bike for five minutes and he's done with that too. It takes me another fifteen to put everything away. We go back inside, "Mommy, can you get out the crayons and some paper. I'm going to make a picture." I get out the art supplies, he scribbles for thirty seconds, and then asks if we can go play trucks upstairs.

Are you seeing the pattern?

How I haven't lost more weight is beyond me.

Does this go on in your house too?

Neighborly

We bought our house when our neighborhood was being built. We were actually the third house up and saw the rest of the homes go up around us. Two years after moving in we had our first child and two more have followed since. Our oldest is now five and until a few months ago we could have sworn that no other kids lived in our neighborhood.

Then our daughter went off to school, our local public school. Each afternoon after school let out our streets and sidewalks became filled with kids riding bikes, scooters, playing catch, etc. Then, out for a walk one day, our daughter saw a classmate and they were beyond thrilled to learn they lived so close to each other. In the week since kids have come out of the woodwork. One of our daughter's best friends lives just down the road from us on our same street. Ironically, they have lived there almost as long as we have and yet we have never run into each other. Now, we are out almost everyday after school watching our children play as well as the weekends. It's actually really nice. It seems strange though that after 7 years we are finally starting to meet more of our neighbors, especially those with children.

Some of my best childhood memories are those that involve playing with the neighborhood children. We rode bikes, played ball in the street, went in and out of each other's homes as if they were our own. Today people are much more cautious and stand offish and I can understand much of that, but it sure would be nice to have a little bit more of that true neighborly and community feeling and we are starting to have some of that. It's nice.