Birthday, Christmas

In brief, traveling backwards in time: M had a birthday party with his friends, for the first time ever. It was a big pain and took a lot of time to prepare, but the kids all had a great time! It was a Lego Power Miners party. Lego should be paying me for advertising. Power Miners are on the hunt for crystals, but have to watch out for rock monsters. Here the kids are tossing dynamite beanbags at a rock monster.
Although I didn't intend it that way, Nathan ended up running the party games, while I chatted with the moms and took care of E.
M did have a party on the actual day, also. He asked for chocolate cake with green icing.

The famous Christmas morning entrance. They were much more excited than they look, I promise.

still alive!

Hi, everyone! My apologies for the long hiatus. I'll be posting pictures soon, but let me just say that we're all doing well. With chicken pox for all the kiddies and a long Christmas break, we've been a bit busy. Christmas was great -- I made piles of enchiladas, which really hit the spot and may be a new holiday tradition at our house. We had just the right number of presents under the tree, enough to be exciting but not so much that we started wondering about our consumption habits. Best presents included: E's new baby doll which she loves and has already lost an arm (I'll repair it soon, but it is pretty funny to see her play with the loose arm), V's slinky and Barbie jeep, M's legos and cool Sudoku kids game. We are currently buried under more than a foot of snow. I am very grateful for 4 wheel drive, and also that I don't live in Minnesota. This is by far the most snow we've seen in our 5 years here, and the temperature isn't expected to go above freezing anytime soon. The kids had a snowman making contest at school yesterday, in their house teams. That's right, the school has houses just like in Harry Potter and they recently extended the program so that even the little ones have a house. You know you wish you'd had one too.