The Great Ice Fort

Lennon, Mia and I spent several hours over two or three days time working on building a snow/ice fort. It was coming along really well and we were all excited to get it done. I didn't think I wanted to bother with trying to figure out how to get it to come together in the middle, so I thought we could just drape a blanket over the top when we were done. Unfortunately, Mateus had a sleepover and they wrecked the whole thing before we could get it finished and then we lost our motivation. Mia was pretty sad and cried, but Lennon took it in stride.

I didn't really get a great picture of the size of the fort, but this one at least gives you some idea of how tall it was. Lennon could stand up and it was still taller than him, so I'd say it was about 40 inches high and you could probably have fit four adults sitting cross legged inside.

We would have gotten further with the fort, but Lennon insisted on having a tunnel entrance on the side, so we spent about an hour making him his tunnel and making sure it was safe to crawl through. It turned out pretty cool and the kids thought it was awesome to glide through on their bellies.

This shot kind of gives you some perspective of the length of the fort. Wah! I think I am as upset or more about it being ruined. I had so much fun building it with them. Oh well. There will always be more snow.

Valentine's Day

The past two years now Granmommy has sent the kids a fun Valentine's kit with everything you could possibly think of to use for making home made Valentine's. They made some great Valentine's this year that we passed out at Claire's party next door on Valentine's Day. Thanks Granmommy!

Mia posing with some of her personal favorites. The yellow one was for Lennon and he chose it as his favorite before he knew it was for him. You can still see some of the remnants in this picture of whatever reaction she had to that raw milk. Poor baby. Thankfully it's all gone now with no scars or anything.

I decided too late the night before Valentine's to go buy flowers for the table and all the stores were closed, so I had to make paper flowers for the vase and cut and hang hearts from the ceiling. I got a great little ice dancing outfit for Mia's American Girl doll from some crazy lady on Craigslist for super cheap a couple of days before hand and Lennon had been asking for Buzz Lightyear wall decals. They were both stoked about their gifts.

I got up early and made breakfast before anyone was awake. Chocolate chip waffles for Mia, blueberry for Lennon and coffee for me and Shelby. Well, we had waffles too...with lots of butter.

For lunch the kids had pre picked some heart shaped raviolis and green beans. Mia said early on that this was the best Valentine's Day ever.

A little out of order. This is the day the kids opened their package from Granmommy.

Lennon being silly when I asked him to pose with the box he decorated.

This was one of the first things Mia made from the kit and she cut up an old shirt to make a dress for the little bear too which she then gave to Bianca.

For Dinner, Gaga had sent us a gift card to Cheesecake Factory for V-Day, so we ordered take out and shared two entrees between the four of us, and because it was Cheesecake Factory we even had leftovers. Thanks Gaga!

The kids also both got a card with money in it from Granmommy and Bill which they were so excited about. Lennon is always shocked when people give him money.

It was a pretty awesome Valentine's Day. After breakfast I took the kids to Mom to Mom where we had a speaker talking about the love languages which was a nice little reminder for the day that just because I like things a certain way, not every one receives things in the same way. A friend of mine said she hated the holiday because there was so much pressure to be romantic. I guess I've just never felt that way. I love having a whole day devoted to telling the most important people in my life that I love them and they are special to me and worth a little extra effort, if even just for one day.

I'm Still Here

***WARNING: THE FOLLOWING IS WAY TOO MANY WORDS AND NO PICTURES***

I just wanted to pop on and say that I know I've been majorly slacking with the blog lately. With home schooling, taking care of Lennon and trying (read: failing) to keep my house in order there's just not tons of time left for keeping up with the blog. Couple that with the fact that when Shelby updated our system it for some reason now won't read our camera when I try to upload pictures.

SCHOOL STUFF:

Since Christmas we have been very busy. Once we finally got home from Texas in the middle of January we went right to work on 3rd grade. We had ordered Mia's math book, but hadn't really started on it. In the past 4 weeks we have worked our way through an entire semester of math. We have the second semester stuff now that we just ordered and will start on that next week. She's doing great learning her multiplication tables and also working on division. We haven't done a ton in our history book this month. Mia wrote a letter to her cousin Morgan, in Hawaii for an English assignment, but she wanted to type it up, so we haven't sent it off just yet. The kids have been back to The Boston Museum of Fine Art for their home school art classes too and always love it. They did self portraits most recently and they turned out great. Mia's was not exactly a self portrait though, but it was still really good. I'll have Shelby scan them in if he can later.

I just found out about a great science curriculum called Noeo that I am going to order. It's a bit pricey because everything you need for each experiment is included, but Claire is going to split the cost with me and we will just do science together for the kids.

SHELBY

Shelby has been very busy between working for Walderi every morning and school three nights a week plus the occasional job around the house. Right now he's working on a bid for a job for Walderi that was designed by the firm that interviewed him a few months back.

EXTRAS:

Lennon is only doing gymnastics right now and he still loves it. Mia is taking ballet and piano and doing great in both. She is hoping they can get 6 girls to sign up for a tap class to be tacked on to the end of her current ballet class. It would only be an extra $25 per session which would be a really good deal.

OUTINGS:

This Thursday we went to another home school day at Old Sturbridge Village. We went together with the Lima's as we've done sometimes in the past. Everyone had a blast except that it was extremely cold. As we were leaving our computer said it was 26 degrees! We bundled up and braved the cold. It turned out great too because there weren't many people there so the kids got a lot of extras they would not have ordinarily gotten. In the blacksmith's shop he let each of them come back behind the counter to help him make a fancy iron hook to take home. The kids all thought that was amazing. In the potter's shop Mia got to help make a flower vase on the potter's wheel and all the kids were given a bag of clay to take home. Mia and Mateus took a class on making old fashioned remedies for colds. We also got to visit with an actor portraying Esther Howland, the mother of the American Valentine. It was really interesting to hear her tell of how this woman in the early 1800's took the simple idea of creating a better valentine and turned it into a $100,000 per year business! It's amazing to think about having that much money back then. They also had these awesome wooden sleds and a huge hill that we spent probably an hour sledding down with the kids.

Just after sledding we ducked into an old farm house where they were making fresh hot chocolate, but not the usual way. They had fresh cocoa beans that they were roasting that day then the kids got to peel the hard outer shell off to reveal the cocoa nibs. They ground the cocoa and made hot chocolate two different ways. The traditional way of the 1830's with no sugar and with cayenne pepper and nutmeg and other spices and also with just a touch of milk and sugar for anyone who didn't want to try the spicy kind. The spicy kind was so much better even without the sugar. The freshly roasted and ground chocolate was soooo yummy! They served it with a "chocolate cake." It was no chocolate and neither was it cake. It was more like a semi sweet biscuit or cracker that you dipped in the hot chocolate. Kind of like a biscotti I guess. None of the kids liked that much though.

RANDOM NEWS:

In other news, Angel has seemed to stop peeing outside the litter box for now so we are holding off on making any kind of decision about his future. We are all really relieved that the whole situation has sort of diffused itself.

Lennon had his three year check up a little late yesterday. The doctor suggested we have him evaluated for sure to see if he needs speech therapy. His opinion was that he did, but still he gave me a number to call a place that would do a formal evaluation.

Mia is up in NH right now with Chloe and her mom, just the girls. She went to ski school today and they will be heading back some time tomorrow. Then, tuesday after gymnastics, Claire, the kids and I are all heading up to NH. The Little's have offered us their house for the week since they only go on weekends. Shelby can't go because of work and school, so I'm taking Claire up to keep me company.

That's all I know right now. I'll try to get Christmas done sometime soon on here and put some more pictures up. I took a bunch at Old Sturbridge Village which would have probably made this post a whole lot more interesting.