Do You Want to Build a Snowman?

We had a snow day today.  School was canceled and the base had delayed reporting, meaning most people didn't need to show up til 10am.  I was very happy for many reasons.  First of all it was our first snow of the season - first in Illinois for us.  Second I had a bunch of things to do today that I didn't really want to do, especially out in the snow.  And they all canceled because of the canceled school and delayed reporting at the base.  Hooray!  And Scott got to have breakfast with us.  He has to get to work pretty early on regular days, so it was nice he could have pancakes with us.

 He even shoveled some snow...carefully

Anna wanted to play outside starting at 8am.  So here she is out there with her snow angel.  Our house and yard here in Illinois is a lot smaller than our Colorado house, but its not all bad.  It's easier to keep a smaller house clean and decluttered (not that mine is clean, just cleaner).  And since the yard is small and flat I don't feel too bad letting the kids go out there and play with only minimal supervision.  Our CO house had places people could fall and get hurt.  There's pretty much nothing in our yard and its super small, which I usually don't like, but today it worked.

 This is Matthew with his snow hill, which he was very proud of, and you can't see in this picture.

It was in the 20s so people went out in shortish spurts and then came in to get warm.  Matthew and I got into some Harry Potter activities.  I can't remember how that started, but here is Matthew striking a magical pose.  He's using a wand we got at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando.  

Anna asked if we could build a snowman together - just the two of us ("Do you want to build a snowman!"  Have you seen Frozen yet?  See it!)  I felt bad 'cause I feel like I don't go do stuff like that enough with the kids because of the little guys.  And just as we were going to go out both little guys woke up from their naps and starting crying and needing me to do things for them.  I put on a cartoon, got them some milk and told Matthew to come get me if there were any problems (he was inside watching the show with them) and Anna and I went out for a little while to build our snowman.  Our neighborhood is new and has no mature trees, so Anna ran all the way across the common space to get a stick off one of the few young trees.  You can sort of see her footprints going far away.

Now our snowman has arms.  The snow was very dry and powdery.  I'm not a snow expert but I was hoping it was only in Colorado where it is IMPOSSIBLE to make a snowball 'cause the snow is so dry that it won't stick together.

This snow was very dry also so we had to get water from the house to get the snow to stay together in a ball.  Even with that our snowman wasn't that big.  Anna wanted him to have a carrot nose, but we had no carrots.  We went through the fridge and came up with radishes and a orange slice for a face.  No nose.  Anna also contributed an extra hat and gloves...and of course the arms.

 Maybe we'll have wetter snow later in the season?

Awww, she's a cute little snowman.  She's a female by the way.  Just ask Anna.  Anna kept saying this snowman was made with girl power.  So we made our snowman...then I went back into the house to take care of the little guys. 

This one was having a hard time.  He was fussing so much and later started running a temperature.  So he wasn't feeling great.  I should have known when he was crying so much and making this face that something was amiss.  Poor Johnny.

Grant wanted to go out all day, but he would never agree to get dressed so he had to stay in.  Finally he agreed to letting me put clothes on him so he could go out.  I accidentally left his coat in my car and Scott took it to work today, so he had to make due with a smaller coat.  It almost fit.  I got him little waterproof mittens this year so he could play in the snow without freezing his hands, but it was so hard to get his little thumb to go the right place in those mittens.  We eventually got it.  Also notice the shortish snow pants and pink snow boots.  I was just throwing together the closest sized snow gear I could find for everyone.  It worked.  And Grant had a great time in the snow.

They finally came in when it started to get dark.  It was a good snow day.  

We'll see how long our little snowman survives.

The Christmas Tree Hunt

Scott has to go on a work trip for the next couple weeks, so we decided to go ahead and get our Christmas tree this weekend.  And really, I'm excited to have it.  It's starting to feel like Christmas.  We also had really great weather this weekend - in the high 50s - good weather to be out looking for trees.  We went to a local cut-your-own farm (Eckert's).  We've picked peaches, blackberries, apples pumpkins and now a Christmas tree there.  It's a wonderful place!  They had white pine and scotch pine trees there.  We ended up with white pine.  Here we are checking out the trees.

 Grant found a little tree he liked

 Here was one Matthew liked

 We thought this one might be a winner for a while, but then walked around and looked some more.

 Anna liked this one

You can see Scott in the background still looking

 Grant vacillated between being excited to be out and about and being too tired to walk.

It was nap time. 

 Excited to be out and about

Uh oh, here he comes back

Too tired to walk

I did carry him a lot

 

 The kids liked this one too
So many good ones

 Finally we found a winner

Grant was now too tired to appear in any pictures

He stood off to the side angrily

 Scott cut the tree down, with some help from Matthew and Anna

Here's Matthew having a go at it

Scott had been holding John for most of our adventure, but I got to hold him during tree cutting and carrying.  At first he was very cuddly.

 Then he REALLY wanted to get down and started pulling hair and sunglasses and things

 Eventually he accepted that I was not going to put him down

And yadda yadda yadda, we got the tree to the car

Ta Da!!

Glad Scott was here to lend his Christmas tree expertise and manly manpower to this endeavor.    We missed him last year.

Happy Thanksgiving

We had a nice Thanksgiving this year.  Scott was here, unlike last year.  We made a big dinner and has some friends over to share it with us.  Here are the kids making some fall tree crafts.

 Getting our dinner ready.  Anna and I made place cards for everyone.

 Some of our Thanksgiving art work

Scott making potatoes.  He also made cheesecake, baked beans and buttermilk rolls and helped with everything.

 We had tons of food!  But lots of people to eat it.  Our friends came over.

And pretty much everything turned out yummy!

 John really liked the sweet potatoes, stuffing and rolls.  Glad he's eating.

 Here are some of the kids starting on dessert.

We had pumpkin pie, dutch apple pie and cheesecake with blueberry topping

 The kids saying goodbye to each other

They always have so much fun playing together

Here are all the kids together - 4 of ours, 3 of theirs

It was a lot of fun!  Successful Thanksgiving!

A Stand Up Guy

John is hitting all those gross motor milestones...just a little later than usual.  This week he reached another one.  He can now pull himself up to standing on his own.  He's about 15 1/2 months old now and he still goes to physical therapy once a week to help him with his gross motor skills.  I'm glad he's making progress.

He likes being able to get himself up to a standing position 'cause now he can more easily grab things off the tables and couches.  A new skill.  Another step closer (no pun intended) to walking.

Hospitality by Anna

Anna REALLY loves her kindergarten teacher.  And that's a good thing.  Anna told her teacher about our upcoming Thanksgiving menu and came away from the conversation with the impression that her teacher would be coming over to our house for Thanksgiving.  From what I could piece together, I think the conversation went something like this:

Anna:  We're having cheesecake with berries for Thanksgiving!
Ms. Taylor:  I love cheesecake!
Anna:  You can come over to our house for Thanksgiving if you want.
Ms. Taylor:  It sounds like it will be fun at your house.

Anna thought it was a done deal and made a nice card for Ms. Taylor.  Here is her card, with translations:
"Happy Thanksgiving Ms. Taylor"
I love her picture of the two of them together.  Ms. Taylor, in real life, reminds me a little of Tina Fey (maybe with a little Rose Byrne thrown in).  And I always like Anna's pictures of her.

 "I hope you love the chicken" (She might have meant turkey?)

"I hope you love the cheesecake with blueberries"

"Take your family if you want but we will not have enough seats.  XOXOXO"

I couldn't help thinking her "famlee" might feel a little less than welcome by this card, but I still thought it was a nice card all in all.  I told Anna that Ms. Taylor and family were certainly welcome to come, but that I didn't think Ms. Taylor would really be coming over on Thanksgiving.   Anna was disappointed and then I felt bad about the whole thing.  We are having dinner guests that night though, so maybe she can focus on them.  Thanksgiving is going to be here soon! 

St. Louis Zoo

One great thing about St. Louis is that there are several fun things to do with kids that are free.  One is the zoo.  The kids had a day off school last week so we gave the zoo a try.  The weather was great, mid to high 60s and the zoo was not crowded at all.  Hooray!  Plus its free!!!  And the zoo was really nice and had lots of cool animals to see.  Here we are at the entrance.

 

 Going into the zoo.  We got a super close parking spot because it was so empty.

It's the little things.

I can't even remember what we were looking at here.  I think it was a rhino.  But I like how John was getting all excited about it.  If the animals are hard to see, sometimes its hard to get the little ones to see them.  Luckily most of them were front and center, including our rhino friend.  So John got to see lots of animals.

 There's our rhino

The kids looking at a model of a snakes nest.  This nest was part of a big log for kids to climb through and Anna kept insisting that I crawl through it too.  So I did.  It was not big person sized, but I didn't get stuck in there, so hooray for that.

 Grant and Matthew found a nook to sit in

 And a snake statue

 Elephant.  We got better views of the elephant, but not better pictures

A giant beetle.  Zoo statues are the best.  They also had a beetle quilt inside the bug exhibit. 

There was a butterfly dome too and the kids were brave and went in there with the butterflies.  Read about a bad butterfly encounter HERE.

 Ok, now its just starting to feel like we didn't see any actual animals at this zoo.  But we did.  And we got to see a lot of them close up too!  But here's another statue.  ;)

Giraffes.  We saw an ostrich chase some of the giraffes around. Bully.  There were also a lot of great fall colors to see there.  So we had a great time.  Grant really liked seeing the grizzly bear take a "bath" (he was sitting in a pool of water).  I liked seeing the big cats.  There were so many of them.  We saw lions, tigers, mountain lions, panthers, jaguars, a snow leopard and a cheetah.  I think there were even some other big cats, but I can't remember.  I also liked seeing the Okapi, which I have read about in a few books but never seen.
So, the St. Louis Zoo is a wonderful zoo.  And free.  We'll be back...we just need to find days, like this one, when its not too hot, cold or crowded.