Allie, What Have You Done??

I only really glossed the surface of the amount of spoiling the boys got when we were staying with the Thurmonds in October. Allie bought them scaled monster trucks, bigger monster trucks that made noise and zoomed around, then didn't let us leave without giving them tons of hot wheels, books and all kinds of random toys. When I protested that none of this was going to fit into my luggage, she gave me a bigger bag.

You are out of control, Allie... 

And we all loved it!

Even with all that, she told me to just leave the bigger monster trucks and she would ship them to us. She kept texting me to say she was going to send the package any day now, but she found something else she wanted to include. Then today, this *giant* box showed up on our doorstop. I was so confused about not having ordered anything from this company, that Matt had to make me look at the shipping label (from Katy, TX) to convince me it was probably from Allie and safe to open.

Hahahahahaha - of course it was from Allie! And you can clearly see that Thomas knows exactly who is was from. The photo doesn't even do his reaction justice - he was jumping up and down screaming with excitement!

In this package of awesome were their monster trucks, of course. But also, the Hot Wheels tracks we had been playing with - plus a brand new set! More hot wheels. Micro Hot Wheels. Construction trucks that also made noise and moved around. And giant horns...

Guess what was the favorite off the bat?? At least with two of the boys, anyhow. :)

Henry soon claimed both of these and was running around making all kinds of noise. Thus the title of "Allie, What Have You Done??". I actually should be relieved, the box she reused for shipping all this had an invoice still in it for a *dozen* green horns. It made two horns seem downright reasonable!

And what kind of parties are going on at the Thurmond house??

Once Matt and I got the tracks set up, the boys were happy to drop the horns and play with all of their cars. Thomas was telling his dad all about the tracks and how they worked because he quite clearly had not forgotten about them at all in the last few weeks!

We ended up doing car "trials" running pairs of cars down the tracks to see which the best cars were. There were a few clear duds (I'm looking at you, bubble car!), but most of the car shaped ones did pretty well. You can see the winner in this race has already hurtled off the end of the ramp in this shot.

As a side note, you can see Henry holding a Hot Wheels trailer in his hand. Thomas found it in the box and was telling Matt how the trailer was pulled by a truck and tried to hook it up to TowMater. When he couldn't get the two to cooperate, he informed us it wasn't working and we needed to go back to Allie's house to return it. I feel like this was Allie's plan all along...

The micro cars were by far Matt's favorite of the shipment though. These things are tiny, but wicked fast. They are completely unpredictable in the direction they will head because of our floor tiles and we all ended up chasing them around. I caught one and was trying to get a photo of it, but apparently I was taking too long and my eldest stole it from me. (It's tough being the only one who cares about documenting things!)

Despite the title (and the horns!), we loved the package Allie! We still would rather have you come for a visit, but the boys are happy with this for now...

Miss you all and hopefully see you soon! :)

Snowy Saturday!

It actually snowed this week and it didn't melt away, so today was party time in the yard!

The boys asked to go outside as soon as we finished breakfast and I automatically responded with "in a little while" before it occurred to me there was no reason to wait. (It's habit, I'm usually doing something...) So I pulled out their winter garb and started putting it on them - they got pretty excited once the coats came off the hangers!

Thomas had his snow flinger in hand and was ready to be out the door before I had finished getting Henry suited up. The snow was unfortunately super powdery, so he ended up using the flinger as a horn instead. I have no idea why they designed the flinger to also be a horn that sounds like an angry goose, but they did and he loves it. 

Henry was walking around saying "shovel" with a big grin on his face, but didn't actually use the shovel. He did block his brother from trying to steal it though. So, a typical morning around here. :)

Henry did move on to a broom at some point. I leave the garage door open when we are playing outside and most of the tools become fair game. I have no idea why he thought sweeping the snow was a good idea, it is quite possibly the least effective snow moving device we have. But of course Thomas immediately wanted it as well...

After playing for a few minutes with them, I started working on clearing the driveway. Powdery snow is a dream to shovel from the driveway until you drive over it. Car tires compress the powdery snow into thick, hard snow that likes to stick to the driveway. So in order to shovel easily, you have to break up the hard, crusty snow first. Fun!

I think Henry is on his fifth or sixth tool by now. Matt had joined us at this point and found him a more size appropriate one (which of course, Thomas tried to steal). Also Matt pulled out the adult-sized square shovel and made easy work of the compressed snow. Apparently trying to get it up with the metal edge of the snow shovel is not the best way. Who knew? Not me, apparently. 

When I finished my half of the driveway (Matt started helping halfway down so we weren't running into each other), I wandered into the cul-de-sac to take photos. I think it's so pretty when the houses and trees are covered in white snow. It's less exciting when the snow has been there awhile or the edges of the roads are brown snow from the plows. So I wanted to get pretty photos while I could!

We kept getting clouds rolling through the area, so the mountains were super foggy in the background. It was very ethereal and just so pretty looking after all the yuckiness of the past two weeks. Also, I kept trying to get photos of Natalie and she kept avoiding me. This is the best I got as she was slinking away from me 

But once the work was done - it was play time again! We bought Thomas skis a few weeks ago while REI was having their big sale and we hadn't had any snow yet to try them out. He has been super excited about being able to ski with Matt, but we wanted to get him comfortable with being on the skis before we took him to the real slopes. 

He couldn't quite figure out how to make them go on his own, so Matt had him hold on to the broomstick and walked him down the hill. He needs a little work on his form, but he seemed to think it was fun to ski down the "hill". 

Matt eventually got him to stay upright without help and then pulled him across the yard with the broom. 

The snow really isn't deep enough to build him an incline to practice on, but it was a good start at learning how to stand on the skis and how fun it is to glide across the snow. Both Thomas and Matt were having a great time.

But someone was having the worst time ever:

Henry was so upset the other day when we bought the skis and boots. Thomas wore the boots at the dinner table and Henry kept pointing at Thomas, "Boot?" and then pointing at his feet. He's no fool...

Well that little bit of upset was nothing compared to when Thomas was on the skis in the yard and Henry could only watch. He was devastated! This is quite literally the worst moment in his life.

Thomas didn't seem to be fazed by the hysterical sobs of his little brother, but when he was done practicing, we asked him if Henry could borrow his ski gear to try it out. And he didn't have a problem with it. (Sometimes they are great at sharing!)

The tears dried up so fast once Henry realized it was his turn! Of course, he wasn't really able to hold on to the broom like his big brother did. In his defense, he has little hands and big mittens and it's hard for him to do anything with them on. 

Matt ended up just guiding him down the hill. Henry really didn't get the concept of the proper skiing stance. Oh well, he can wait another year for his turn at skiing with Matt. I know Thomas will love having alone time with his dada, especially with such a fun activity!

Also, I love it when the kids find one of their costumes or dress up clothes and put them on without any encouragement. We were hanging out in the living room and suddenly there was a rocket ship running around the house. And then the rocket ship got distracted by the lit-up Christmas Tree.

Rocket ships are adorable, aren't they?? Also, Henry likes the tree much more than he did last year.

Hahaha - I can't not post it again. I will love this photo for ever and ever. 

I finally got a photo of Natalie! I was worried she was going to feel left out with all the Eliza photos I posted, but she was in no mood to be photographed. She ran away from me outside and when I got her in my sights inside, she either ran at me so I couldn't focus on her or she just ran away. I finally managed to get her to sit still long enough by holding a dog treat just above my lens and snapped a photo or two while she longingly stared at it. 

And she has gotten so gray! I knew her muzzle was going white, but the top of her head is all speckled in white now. I refuse to believe our fur baby is getting old. It's not allowed to happen!

She's still gorgeous. :)

Cross Section Cake

I've never done a "thin" layer cake or the super popular rainbow cake. I did a four layer cake one time with four 9" rounds versus the usual cut two 9" rounds in half. That cake was a bit on the unsteady side...

But I had an idea that needed a bright multi-colored, multi-layered cake, so I went off of the rainbow cake ideas I found online. 

It was a bit of a disaster honestly. I didn't get enough batter in the first three 9" cake pans (you were supposed to divide it into six pans, but I only have four and only three will fit in the oven), so some of the layers turned out too thin - the purple one tore while getting it out of the pan. And then I was trying to save time, so I used my fourth 9" pan to get ready for round two, but when I flipped the cake out, realized I had used an 8" pan instead. Argh!

I was left with the option of trying to cut all the layers down to 8", accept I would only have four layers or bake another cake. I went with the third option as it seemed less stressful. So while four of the layers are Vanilla Buttermilk from scratch, the other four are white cake mix. Thankfully, no one seemed to notice...!

I went with cream cheese icing and made a batch and a half for this giant cake. And I had enough to crumb coat the cake, but no more. I usually don't even bother to crumb coat cake because I am that lazy of a cake decorator, but it seemed like a good idea with the super colorful layers. Also once you have a crumb coat layer on, it's much easier to straighten the cake up - look how crooked it was in picture #1!

Thankfully, Matt hadn't made it home yet, so he stopped to get me more cream cheese for the "pretty" icing layer. I say that in quotation marks because I never intended for this cake to look pretty. I wanted it to be a dull gray with darker gray accents. Unfortunately, the black icing dye I have turned the icing purple. The photo makes it look less purple than it was in real life. I ended up just giving up and using it anyhow. I was hoping it would turn more gray and less purple-y overnight. (It did!)

In googling, purple is a common problem when trying to dye icing black. Apparently, the easiest way to get black is to start with chocolate icing - which is less helpful when all you want is a light gray. But I did try the chocolate icing trick for the lettering on the top I wanted to be black.

Which worked like a champ! And my writing actually looks like an adult wrote it this time - wooo! But I should probably explain why this cake is an intentional gray / boring cake. (And since I was calling it a boring cake, I liked the rough look on the icing. Easy peasy!)

Dom is a coworker who is retiring today. He's been with the company and my present group forever and they sent out an email asking for stories to "roast" him with at a retirement party. I have only been in the group a few months, so I don't have much to help with. But just a few weeks ago, I was showing Dom and my team lead our technical work before a larger review to the partners for approval. I had several geologic cross sections showing where we would like to land our wells and as is my usual method, I colored the sand layers yellow and the shale layers gray. Of course, there is usually more shale volumetrically, so imagine a little bit of yellow and a lot of gray.

After giving me a thumbs up on the technical work, Dom pipes up and asks if I really like gray. I was a bit confused until he explained to me that "Gray is boring" and therefore my cross sections needed to be livened up a little. I conceded to his suggestion and presented cross sections the next day that would have made an unicorn wince. So I decided to "roast" him for the one thing we had joked about (I may have sent him a cartoon of an Unicorn farting a rainbow in an email asking if he liked the new sections better.) And I figured it would be best to make the cake so boring on the outside and tell the story for the rest of the group before cutting a psychedelic piece out for the "wow" factor. 

But Dom's favorite cake is actually chocolate, so I made him my favorite chocolate cupcakes as well. Plus the dinosaurs - I will use this dinosaur mold to make fun dinosaurs as many times as I possible can! 

In full discosure, I volunteered to bringing cake without realized there were 40 people invited. So the cupcakes were a necessary addition to not start a riot. "/

I didn't take my camera in to get a picture of the cake and by the time I did get a photo of it, it had been quite thoroughly attacked by hungry coworkers. However, photo quality aside, the cake was a huge hit! Everyone got a good laugh out of the story and the "cross-section cake" was pretty darn impressive in it's own right. Who knew harassing someone with a cake could make so many people happy? :)

As a side note to those that have seen rainbow cakes and are wondering why the blue layer is missing - blue is generally a "bad" color. It either means a water-bearing layer (not what we want!) or in our group it can mean ankerite cemented sandstones - which are also bad because they make drilling incredibly challenging. And since I wanted this cake to be a geologically "positive" cake, I nixed the blue and went with all of the colors that are our "good" zones. Except the purple - that represents the shale layer between our two productive zones. This probably makes no sense to a non-geologist, but everyone in the meeting appreciated the level of detail in the color scheme!

Snowy Flattop

Matt and I wanted a chance to get outside and do something fun with Noah while he was here. We suggested either skiing or hiking and he was definitely more interested in hiking. After loading up the car with all the appropriate gear, we headed off to Flat Top!

There was a bit more snow on the ground that the last time we hiked Flat Top and because we had such a "fun" time trying to hike the top part of the trail with snow on the ground last time, we definitely had better footwear for today's hike!

It was really a gorgeous day for a hike though! After being cooped up most of the day yesterday, it was nice to get out and stretch our legs. And it turns out that Noah hadn't ever hiked a mountain before - a fact he didn't mention until after the hike. Ok, so Flat Top isn't all that much of a mountain in the grand scheme of hikes in Alaska, but it's still a better hike than he would get back home. :)

Of course, it's getting darker and darker every day, so we did have a bit of a daylight crunch to get this hike accomplished. The upside to this was that the lighting was just gorgeous. Of course I can't ever seem to capture it's full glory with the camera, especially when I am fussing with the camera settings on a hike. Oh well!

Noah was dutifully impressed with the view back toward Anchorage. I tried to get a photo of him and Anchorage, but apparently teenage boys do not cooperate when asked to look at the camera. Guess that's a fair warning for me...

Also when we got to the parking lot and were putting on gloves and hats we realized Noah didn't have either one of those. Of course, Matt and I packed extras for him, so he ended up with Matt's gloves and one of my hats. Don't worry, Noah's parents, we wouldn't let him freeze!

His favorite gear though, were the crampons. Matt bought these before his deer hunting trip on Kodiak and he loves them! I don't think he intended for this to be the pair Noah ended up with, but Noah's feet are bigger than both of our grippers and the crampons were the only pair that would work with his giant feet! I assume that means that Noah is also going to end up being a very tall guy when he stops growing. Better be nice to him now... ;)

Halfway up! We paused for a quick rest (and to eat chocolate we stole from Pawpaw) before the last climb. There was a bit of a debate on whether we should keep going or not. We were losing daylight pretty fast, but Matt was adamant it was fine. He had packed headlamps, so even if we were off on timing, we would be fine to get back down. So we continued on and up!

Noah was actually ahead of me for most of the last part of the trail. But the snow got deep toward the top and it was super hard to see the trail. He got off to the side and had to work his way back just below the summit. So I took advantage of that and bolted to the top so I could get photos of him coming up the last few feet - you might be able to tell from the photo that the "last few feet" are a little steep! :)

And he's up! He was pretty proud of himself! Don't get views like that in North Texas, do you?

Speaking of comparisons to Texas, Noah and I had a in-depth discussion on the relative sizes of the two states and how maps make Alaska look smaller when it is really several times larger than Texas. He didn't believe me at first until I showed him Texas superimposed on Alaska with both at the same scale. He was so impressed that he ended up buying on of those Texas/Alaska shirts you see in all the tourist shops. Something about "Alaska - pissing Texans off since 1959".

Ok not that *exact* one, but you get the gist!

The last time I hiked up Flat Top it was super windy and I think it was even windier today! You can see the flag blowing in the breeze - it was also super cold wind. Noah was ready to go down right away, but I insisted we had to get a few photos to prove he made it. (Plus we had to wait for Matt - the downside to bolting ahead of him.)

We had enough light to make it almost all of the way down without pulling out the headlamps, but we were hustling enough that I didn't take many photos. I did get ahead of the boys at one point, so I stopped long enough to get a photo of the city lights. Thanks to the invisible turbulent air, they all looked like they were twinkling from up here. So festive!

Back safely at the house, we resorted back to technology to keep us entertained. There were so many Wii tennis tournaments between Matt & Noah that it was like the Wii olympics in our house. I think here Noah is blaming technology for not being able to return a serve. Or he's accusing Matt of cheating - can't imagine why...

Probably because his Uncle Matt kept beating him! And Matt like to rub it in a little when he wins. I didn't get into the tournaments too much because it started to bother my shoulder after a few games, but I did manage to beat Matt. Technically that makes Aunt Jen the best player, right?? ;)

Everyone is headed back home on Tuesday. I have to admit that I was a little worried about how to keep a 13 year old boy entertained, but it wasn't stressful at all! Plus, all three of my boys were happy to have someone new to play with and I really think Noah enjoyed spending time in Alaska.

You are welcome back any time, Noah! Though I might recommend the next trip for a summer month just to get the full Alaskan experience!

Dreary Saturday...

We had a lot of snow when the in-laws arrived on Monday. And luckily, Noah went out and played in it for quite a while that day. Luckily because it all melted that night! Matt said Noah woke up Tuesday morning and said "Where's all the snow??" Welcome to Anchorage, Noah!

And to add insult to injury, it's cold, rainy and just plain dreary outside! Thankfully, we have ways of entertaining the little ones when it is like this. (Apart from the bounce house - that obviously works wonders!)

I can't even claim this - the boys did this one all on their own! I came downstairs to see them playing choo-choo train with their rearranged chairs. Henry was super in to it, he was making train noises and pretending to blow a train whistle. Thomas was more interested in giving me the run down on how he was the conductor and this was his train and then a choo-choo or two. 

After the snow melted, the boys rediscovered their sandbox on the back porch and wanted to play with it. Since it was raining, we moved it to the garage so they could play without getting wet. Noah was ready to play with them until he saw the sandbox - "That thing is tiny!"

Yes I know, Mr. Judgy McJudgerson - we'll get them a bigger one next year! He did still play with them, for the record, he was just a little less excited. ;)

We also learned this tip from several parents up here. When the weather sucks, back the cars out of the garage and let the kids play in there. The boys were more than happy to ride their bikes in circles. And even though I feel like our garage is pretty spacious, they still managed to collide with each other. I started to think it was intentional...

Henry got tired of waiting for me to help him back on his tricycle at one point and did it himself. So close and yet so far...! 

We finally decided to get out of the house drive out to Whittier to show Noah the super cool train tunnel and get lunch (Newsflash: there is no lunch to be had in Whittier in winter! Consider yourself warned!)

The downside to going to Whittier is that you have to wait for tunnel openings. Luckily, Matt suggested we bring the iPad along in case the kids got bored. And that morphed into the whole family watching Monsters Inc. on the iPad while we waited. Turns out my dash has a perfect resting spot for an iPad!

As a side note, thanks to my Pilot's third row, we could all ride around in one car. Thomas and I hung out in the backseat quite a bit this week. He thought it was super fun! It's not as comfortable as the front two rows, but it's not too bad.

And I didn't notice he had smoothie on his face until hours after breakfast. 

Ok, Matt noticed it, not me. 

Whatever.

Back at the house, I decided to try and play with my flash. I found a awesome book Matt bought me last year about flash photography and wanted to play with some of the ideas in it. Unfortunately, my subject was not the least bit interested in me taking photos of him. He has apparently decided a good offensive is the best defense and was photographing me instead!

Instead, I turned to the one who is literally always by my side - my dear Eliza. She was more than happy to jump up in the chair and let me practice bouncing my flash. 

Also, she kinda needs a haircut. 

Also, I kinda like it when she looks like a wild dog and she won't be getting a haircut. :)

Henry wasn't that much more cooperative. He let me take photos of him, but he wouldn't leave the incredibly well lit living room. And a flash isn't that helpful in a well lit room anyhow. This natural light photo looked just as good - if not better than the ones with a bounced "fill" flash. The natural light one had much better contrast to the photo. There's something to be said for shadows. 

And yes, there might be a trend of Henry wearing his pj's most of the day this weekend. I said it was rainy, didn't I?

Back to Eliza! I managed to get her to move to a darker corner of the room and played with my flash some more. Except I couldn't get her to look up! I had the fireplace going and the lighting "just so" but no dice on her looking up. Matt apparently noticed I was struggling and from across the room said "Eliza!" in his deep, booming "dad" voice. She perked right up and I snapped this cute photo. From the front she looks a little less like a stray that wandered in from the streets, right? 

Also, what I wouldn't do to have the "dad voice" effect. Sigh... 

Oh Christmas Tree

As I mentioned the other day, we discovered that the bounce house blower was good for more than just keeping a bounce house inflated. After telling the relatives about the chaos that happened the other day with the painting and clock, Matt ended up pulling it out again to shoot things into the air:

Thankfully there was nothing left to knock off the walls, so the shower of colorful pom-poms was nothing but tons of fun. Grannie brought these with her and they were all over the living room for most of the visit. Today we managed to clean them up several times, but only so we could shoot them all over the place again. Ha - we're never going to be considered "adults" at this rate...

But I digress, I wanted to talk about how we were getting into the Christmas spirit up here! I have always been anti-fake tree for Christmas, but we ended up going that route last year. The biggest factor in buying the fake tree was because the last real tree had Matt so paranoid about it being pulled over by a rambunctious child (and how heavy a real tree is!). So Matt no longer has to worry about a tree falling on the kiddos and has the bonus side effect that we can put it up whenever we want without worrying about needles falling off!

I did insist we wait until after Thanksgiving, but since it *has* to come down before my birthday in January, now seemed like a good time to put it up! :)

Matt and I dug up the pile of boxes and crates of Christmas stuff from storage. You can see that we are now up to three trees - one for the living room and one each for the kiddos! They love having their own tree to decorate. You can also see the usual family dynamic: Matt fixing things, me taking photos and everyone else playing. Ha!

You can also see a new painting over the fireplace. That is a piece of art I did in High School and have been dutifully moving around since. I noticed it was starting to rip earlier this year and decided to frame it. Matt assures me that it will not stay above the mantle, but it made me happy to have it there temporarily. There's a bit of a running joke on the cow bone art - I love my art, Matt not so much. But he loves me! :)

Finally the decorating gets down to business! Thomas managed to get a few ornaments on the tree by himself this year - though it did require him asking "Should I put this here?" ten times before placing an ornament anywhere. Henry was just happy to hand ornaments to his Dada to put in their proper place. 

Plus he was just fascinated by all the shiny and glittery ornaments. Overall, he was much more excited about the tree than he was last year! (Seriously, if you haven't seen the photo of Henry crying next to the Christmas tree last year, it's worth a look!)

After we finished up with the big tree, Thomas moved on to his tree. His tree is about 4' tall, so he is quite capable of reaching the full tree span. Considering that, I'm not sure how all of his ornaments are clustered in the same 1/4 of the tree. I added the stocking to try and balance them out, but otherwise I left them like he arranged them. It's his tree and he thinks it looks perfect!

But I think my favorite part of this photo is Grannie and Pawpaw in the background. Don't they look adorable? Pawpaw is straight-up passed out from all the fun of the day and Grannie is snuggled up happily watching her grandkids. It's a perfect capture of the day and a perfect start to ignite the Christmas spirit. :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

As I have mentioned here and here, we've made it our Thanksgiving tradition to go to Talkeetna for Thanksgiving and enjoy an amazing family style Thanksgiving dinner at the Talkeetna Roadhouse. This was our fourth year and the first time we didn't stay overnight in Talkeetna, instead we spent some quality time road-tripping with the family!

I never remember how amazing their hot chocolate is until someone else orders it. Someone needs to always reming me they have amazing hot chocolate. The sprinkling of cinnamon on top was just perfect today! It was actually pretty dreary out today - the snow is melting and it was misty and just yucky. Luckily, the climate is always nice inside the Roadhouse! 

Dinner time! The contingent changed up this year - Matt's parents flew up for Thanksgiving and brought our nephew, Noah with them. We still managed to stake out the end of the table, but unfortunately for me it was the dark side of the room. It made getting decent photographs pretty challenging. :(

Thomas was such a champ with the dinner this year. He tried almost everything and amazingly ended up chowing down on beets. I didn't even try them and he was all about them! He didn't like everything, of course, but he certainly did better than last year's menu of bread and mashed potatoes. Plus I didn't even feel the need to pack him little kid plates - amazing how much kids can change in a year, huh?

To be fair, Henry got a big boy plate too, but he was considerably messier than Thomas. Here you can see him eyeballing his brother's plate - I think he was plotting to steal the bread. He actually gave Thomas some corn at one point - Thomas had eaten all of his and wanted more. What a caring little brother, huh? 

After dinner, the boys were ready to play with all of the toys! Unfortunately, the Roadhouse added in an extra row of tables where the play area was last year, so it was pretty tight quarters to play with toys. I tried to keep them out of the walkways and they were good sports about it - as were all the other diners. We struck up several conversations with the people around us.

Thomas found the scooter from last year, but was much more interested in the trains. He did make sure to tell me that the scooter was the one he took last year and kept in our room upstairs. I was impressed with his memory - I can't remember hardly anything before age 6. Does that mean we overwrite memories as we age? Or does he have a super memory already?

Henry was not at all interested in napping after dinner like he did last year. He kept crawling up next to me on this couch and then back down again. I told him he should lay down next to me and take a nap. He dutifully laid his head down and made pretend sleeping noises. It was pretty adorable!

Then it was time for dessert! They both claimed to not be interested in pie until the people we were playing next to got their slices of pie. Suddenly my boys were ready to put up their toys and get pie. Amazingly, they didn't eat it once they got it. What kind of kid doesn't like apple pie?!? And for as adventurous as Thomas was for dinner, he refused to even try my pecan pie. His loss! Though I think it was my loss on the whipped cream, he snuck most of that off of my plate...

We decided to venture outside to check out the snow. The boys were pretty bummed ours all melted, but there was enough on the ground here that it was hanging around even with the warmer temperatures. Luckily there was plenty on the porch so we didn't have to attempt the super icy sidewalks.

Henry tried to kick the snow like his big brother and fell right in to it. He managed to catch himself and this was the face he made as soon as he stood back up. Apparently the snow was a little chilly on his bare hands. He was much more subdued with his snow kicking after that! 

Noah was outside playing in the snow forever! I can't blame him - he doesn't get much of the white stuff back in Texas. He kept climbing up to the top of the big snow piles and jumping on them. I managed to catch him right after he fell into the snow. I think his Uncle Matt pushed him into the snow as soon as we got here, so he at least knew it wasn't going to hurt. Such a thoughtful Uncle!

Speaking of Noah, this is his first visit up to Alaska *and* the first time he's stayed with us since Thomas was a little baby. The boys have loved having their cousin for a visit - they may have been abusing the fact he is happy to play with them. I think they conned him into bean bag rides around the living room for about an hour the other day. Noah is a good sport!

Back to today - see this frowny face? Totally an act! He was just pretending to be bummed by the huge mountain of snow, well that or being told to go sit in it by his bossy aunt just because she wanted a photo of him in the giant snow "chair". Who knows! :)

Back home again! We got home a little late and I figured the boys needed to eat something before bed. In order to distract them from how past their bed it was, I let them play with their play-dog again. I even managed to find another rolling pin and cutting "knife" from their food toy set so there wasn't any fighting over tools. Win!

Last, but certainly not least, pie! I am maintaining my tradition of not making Thanksgiving dinner, but I love making pies! I decided to try a new recipe this year - the Cook's Illustrated Best" Pumpkin pie. As is usual for their recipes, it was a bit weird, but it was best one I have made so far. My oven (once again) make the edge of the crust a little too dark - the mark on the surface is from where I tried to save the crust with a pie shield and part of the filling stuck to it. Perfection eludes me these days, but it did taste amazing!

Happy Thanksgiving everybody! Hope everyone else got to spend it with people they love and is too stuffed to move! :) 

A Shot in the Dark

Sometimes I buy the boys really cool things and then put them somewhere where they are promptly forgotten. Such was the case with several cool stocking stuffers I bought them last year. When I rediscovered them a few weeks ago, I moved them somewhere I would remember them. Which meant they were forgotten again until Matt saw them and pulled them out before bed tonight. 

These are balloons that have a tiny LED light in the bottom. Thomas came home with one from a birthday party and he loved that glowing yellow balloon so much! The light actually lasts for a few days, so it seemed like a fun present to dole out over a few days. Or, if you are Dada, blow them all up at once!

We turned all the lights out so that the balloons would be extra exciting. After watching the boys running and swinging the balloons around, I thought it would be fun to try and get some photos of the light trails!

It didn't work out quite like I expected, but a few photos were still pretty cool looking. I really wanted to get a photo of them sitting still so the balloon would light up their face. Ha - fat chance! I did get Thomas to sit down at one point and he proceeded to swing the balloon around like a crazy person.

I definitely need to go buy more of these for this Christmas - maybe I'll even let them open them right away! :)

Bounce, Bounce, Bounce!

The mom-friends on Facebook are full of good ideas this month! First there was the whole "how to make play-doh bearable" and then a good friend with two similarly aged boys posted the most amazing idea ever...!

She (plus hubby and kids, of course!) just moved to Calgary and she has been looking for ways to keep the boys from going stir crazy during the winter / shorter days. And she bought them an inflatable bounce house! She posted a video of them jumping with a "Am I crazy?" type of post. No Jen, you are a genius!

I got Matt on board once I found one that could reasonably fit in our house and then all we had to do was wait for it to arrive. We told the boys it was coming, but they didn't really catch on to what we had bought them - until the box landed on the front porch!

We were a teensy bit worried that it would be loud and apparently so were the boys. They covered up their ears before we even plugged the motor in. We had to tell them several times that it really wasn't that loud before Henry decided to trust us enough to check. Thomas waited until Henry was convinced before uncovering his ears. These boys are *so* trusting...

But it only took them mere milliseconds for them to get in the bounce house once we told them it was ready. Henry wasn't quite sure what to do, but Thomas was jumping around in no time. In his defense, Henry is a little more unsteady in the bounce house. ;)

Here's the aerial view of the bounce house. We stuck it here for testing purposes, but Matt would only agree to the bounce house if it would fit somewhere besides this particular spot. If we have company over, we want the kids to be able to jump, but not block the TV. After all, game night needs the option to play Mario Kart!

Of course, the bounce house is only half of the fun when you have a husband who likes to play. He realized that all of the plastic balls (that I had put in the bounce house the night before) would fly through the air if he turned the blower on. The boys were quite impressed by their daddy's aim sending projectiles at momma.

Also notice that the clock and the painting are not in their usual places. Apparently if you are waving a high powered fan around the odds are pretty high that a lightweight painting may fall off it's perch. And that lightweight painting might be heavy enough to knock the clock off it's perch on the way down. It was a bit dramatic, but amazingly there was no damage beyond a slight paint scuff on the clock's edge. Impressive!

The lightweight balls soon got replaced by the mini-basketball, four square ball and soccer balls. Thomas was so excited about all the floating balls that he ran and grabbed his football. We figured it would be a good lesson in the fact that not everything will float in a stream of air.

Except it did float! We were all super surprised and Thomas was even more ecstatic! Science in action!

I finally figured out that if I made the boys take their socks off, they could both get up the slide much easier. Once Henry could climb up by himself he was much more excited about the bounce house!

Though he still isn't quite up to the bouncing like his brother is. Thomas is a jumping champ! I think once Henry gets his jumping skills a little better on solid ground, he'll be a match for Thomas. Right now Henry can only manage teensy little hops in tumbling class. But he'll get there soon!

He doesn't seem to mind though, he was happy enough with going up and down the slide. When I laid down at the bottom of the slide to take photos, he was more than happy to try and dive bomb me. This particular photo, he was sitting on me and bouncing for all he was worth and so very proud of himself. Apparently nothing is as fun as attacking momma!

Play-doh... Ugh

I am trying to be less of a play-doh hater, I really am. The boys seemed to have a ton of fun when we played with it at the Larson's house, so I figured we could give it a try at home. I also felt inspired by the back-and-forth of my momma friends on Facebook. One of them was a fellow play-doh hater and called it a one time use activity. When I realized the containers are about 50 cents each at Target, that seemed like a good outlook to me. If they ruin it, it's gone. If it's fine, they can use it again another day. Win-win!

I actually have a few play-doh tools thanks to the Koala Crate that Brittney bought Thomas for Christmas last year. So I dug those out, a few cookie cutters, cutting mats and let them go to town. 

Thomas was soooooo excited about getting to play with play-doh at home. Ha - these kids are obviously so deprived.

Henry was pretty focused on cutting his chunk of play-doh into smaller pieces. 

But even more excited when he discovered the balls of dough I had been rolling for him. So easy to please! I made him a few primitive looking animals (fish, frog and a snake - of course!) to play with and he smashed those pretty quickly.

Balls it is then! 

Also, I noticed the other day that Thomas' class had been practicing tracing letters. I was pretty impressed by how well Thomas had done on tracing his name! I showed Matt the photo and he was skeptical that Thomas did it without any help. 

So we printed out a sheet of letters for him to trace to see how well he did. He was a champ!!! He did his name, then a sheet of car letters and still wanted to do a sheet of rocket ship letters. Matt was duly impressed. :)

Also thanks to Pinterest for all of the letter sheets it helped us find. Such a great resource for early learning activities!