Art class

Michael started a new art class today: Dozers, Trains, Monster Trucks and Racecars! The teacher is the same woman that taught his pottery class in the fall and she is awesome. All of the other kids in the class also have a toddler sibling tagging along, but Justin is the only boy. He really participated in class today, so essentially I'm getting two for one. Much easier than chasing Justin around the ceramics room.

 Today's project was a kind of collage that Michael covered with paint and then drove on to make tracks. I think it will look pretty cool once it's dry.

Justin also made a picture with tracks. His first real artwork! The class is 4 weeks long, so I can't wait to see what other projects they will do!

A gift for Jesus

Luke just brought this home. I think it must have been hanging in the classroom for a couple of weeks as it looks Epiphany related. That's Luke in his "old-fashioned" clothes, giving a shiny crown to baby Jesus because "it would be beter then the crown of thorns."

Dining with friends

 Justin has a waffle with syrup (DIP! DIP!) every morning. Often, he dines with his friends: puppies, babul (bulldog) and na-nas (mickeys). Sometimes, one of the puppies gets up close and personal with the syrup. Then, mommy has to sneak it into the laundry.

Winter Hike

Yesterday, we went for a hike at Blendon Woods. It snowed for the first time on Friday and Saturday and will be gone by tomorrow, so we wanted to enjoy it while we could.

My kids are so hodgepodge--boots, coats, hats, mitts and snow pants (which they aren't wearing) --nothing matches. I think I tried at one point to have coordinating sets for winter, but then one kid grows too much, one doesn't grow enough, some items wear out and don't pass down, new items appear from who-knows-where and you end up with hodgepodge kids.

What the . . .?

How did Justin get the bag of M&Ms? How did he proceed to empty it so carefully into the bowl? How did I miss him doing this since I was standing in the kitchen at the same time?

A map of the study

Luke made a map of the new study in school today. It's probably my favorite thing he's ever drawn! I just love that he has Mom's Phd, Dad's Phd, mom's masrs dugry and Dad's mastrs dugry all hanging in a row. I guess I didn't expect that Luke would notice that mommy has degrees, too, especially considering that I forget myself that I have a PhD half the time!

Barracks and a Study

When Bo was here, we moved Justin in temporarily with the big boys. Then we all slept in one room in Toronto. It went well enough that we decided to make it a permanent move. Justin is still not ready to be in a toddler bed (well, we're not ready to have him in a toddler bed), so for now he will sleep in the pack n play. We bought a foam mattress pad and cut it down to make it more comfortable. The pack in play fits perfectly between the bunk beds and Luke's dresser. When he moves to the toddler bed, we will have to rearrange a bit, but it should still fit fine.  The big boys are not bothered if Justin cries during the night, although we are still fine tuning bedtime. They do have a hard time all going to sleep together as Luke and Michael keep playing with Justin and not letting him sleep. We've tried putting Justin to bed first, but the boys cannot seem to be quiet enough not to disturb him when they go to bed (we'll keep practicing). Right now, we are keeping Justin up until the boys fall asleep and then he'll go down fine. My kids have never played in their room, so transitioning their room into a bunkhouse for boys just makes sense. Justin's name is on the wall now (the other boy's have theirs up on the other walls), so there's no turning back! Sure, I could have made the boys' beds for the picture, but I was going for realism! BTW, there were three kids in this room when we bought the house--three girls sleeping in twin-over-full bunk beds.

 The reward? A study! Matt has really wanted a place to quietly be away from everything and I do work from home, too. We moved all of the bookcases in there and have been able to bring up some of our own books for the first time in probably 3 years. We probably need a different desk as this is a computer desk without a computer, but it will work fine for now and it does have our printer/scanner on it. Luke does his homework on it and Michael likes it, too.

 The kids' books are in here, too, and Luke just had to try out the new reading chair we got on clearance at Value City. Our degrees are finally on the wall, too!

This will also be our new guest room. It should be much warmer and more comfortable than the playroom was and allows us to send the kids down to the playroom to get out of our hair when guests are here.

Michael and Kay

I did a post like this once before back in 2008. More than 3 years later, Michael's uncanny resemblance to his grandmother Kay seems to just get stronger with time. It is simply remarkable.

   

Then and Now . . . yikes!

My flower girls, Jessie and Allie, at my wedding in July 2000. Jessie was 6 and Allie was 4. My Aunt Debbie adopted later in life, so my cousins are about twenty years younger than me. I actually haven't seen them since the wedding, but I'm friends with them on Facebook.

 

Which is how I got this picture . . . . Wowzers!

Holidays in Toronto 2011

On the 27th, we left for Toronto. It rained the whole way there and was changing to snow as we arrived. We stayed with Greg, Ange and the twins and had so much fun with them.

Our requisite trip to Ikea for Swedish meatballs and fries with gravy. And new Ikea stuffed toys. And new Ikea plastic plates, bowls, cups and flatware. Then it was time for more aunts, uncles and cousins!

Three of four Ponesse girls, we found out there will be five kids on that side soon!

 Uncle Chris with Justin, Kyan and the girls.

 Like father, like son. Greg and Kyan on the guitar.

 Luke and Michael helping to make empanadas for the big Christmas party.

 Hangin' with the twins.

 Luke decided I should take pictures of him hugging the toddlers. Kyan was totally uninterested. Justin didn't mind.

 Kayla wasn't sure what to think, but isn't she beautiful.

 The only picture with all nine cousins in it. Maeve and Justin were NOT happy. From left to right: Maeve, Talia, Kyan, Jacinta, Kayla, Claire, Michael, Justin and Luke.

 Justin was much happier when the food came out. Here he is charming Grandma Sylvia and Auntie Katie. And, later, Uncle Chris and Granddad.

Meanwhile, Luke, Jacinta and Michael had turned Granddad's den into an undersea kingdom and played quietly with Justin's new sea animal set for a long time.

Justin was totally fine at the party except that I noticed he had a runny nose. We got back to Greg's late and the kids went to sleep. At midnight, Justin woke up with full blown croup. At 4am he woke up with stryder, too. It was awful. We started to pack up and leave since we don't have health coverage in Canada and it's 2 hours to Buffalo, but as Matt was loading the car, Justin and I fell back to sleep. By 8am, he was doing much better, so we drove back to Columbus. Matt took him into Urgent Care last night since it's another holiday weekend coming up and they gave him an anti-inflammatory, but they didn't think it was too serious. Well, we needed to use up the last of the flexpay anyway. He is still coughing a lot and very snotty.

Goodbye, Grandpa Bo!

Bo left the day after Christmas. I think he had a great time and that visiting with us was a nice escape from all of the chaos he is dealing with back home. I was surprised at how easy it was to have him around and how truly enjoyable it was to get a chance to visit with him. However, he left at noon on Monday and we had to get new tires put on the van that afternoon and then get everything packed up to leave early Tuesday for Toronto, so we were pretty frazzled by the time I drove him to the airport. We hope he will come visit us again this summer!

So much to catch up on . . .Xmas 2011

My grandfather arrived on Dec. 21st and from that moment until now, there has been very little time to get online. I am way behind on everything. Here are a few pics from Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  We had our traditional meal of antipasto and gnocchi.

 As you can see by the fact that the kids are half in jammies at dinner, we did not go to church on Christmas Eve. Since Luke decided not to be a sheep for the third year in a row in the pageant, we decided to skip The Christmas Eve craziness on go on Christmas morning instead. It was a good choice. The 11:30am mass was sparsely attended and no one cared how antsy my kids were.

Christmas morning we actually got up before the kids! It was a Christmas miracle.

 Oh, yeah, take that beatches! Our elf left a note!!

Santa left this massive castle. Santa probably should have looked up the dimensions of the room before he brought it, but it does fit and the kids think it's totally awesome. It also folds totally flat and can lean against the wall for storage. There are two towers and a big horse on the inside. New swords, shields and a couple of medieval costumes were also left. Luke got dressed as a knight right away.

 More new castles from Grandma Carole and Happy Nappers from Bo. The boys also got Spongebob Legos from Poppy and Nan and the much begged for Nintendo DSs from us. Justin got a toy grill from Santa, train tracks, duplos and lots of Sesame Street figures.

 For Christmas dinner, we had a "real" turkey from the Sponseller farm. It was delicious.  For some reason, the cooking seemed much more laid back than at Thanksgiving even though we had basically the same things. I think it was because we ate Christmas dinner at 6pm instead of 2pm and the turkey was about 8lbs smaller than our Thanksgiving bird.

Oh yeah, and on Christmas night, Luke lost his second tooth. We thought it might come out Christmas Eve, but it held on by a thread for another 24 hours. As expected, the Tooth Fairy left $1, but Grandpa Bo supplemented with an extra dollar.

What we've done so far . . .

As most of my friends know, my grandfather Jimbo is visiting for Christmas. My grandfather likes to be kept busy. Luckily, so do the boys, so this has worked out well for everyone (well, Matt and I are exhausted, but we would be anyway). Forgot to take pictures of going down to the Sponseller farm to get our turkey, but the weather was awful yesterday morning anyway. It dried out a bit in the afternoon, so we hit Wildlights at the zoo last night.  

 

Today, we went downtown and let the boys run around the Statehouse. It wasn't open, but the kids just liked climbing all over everything anyway and we had the whole city practically to ourselves.

Tonight we'll have gnocchi and get ready for Santa to visit. We may have a second visit from the Tooth Fairy tonight, too!