Last weekend

My oh my was it cold last weekend!  Luckily we had a lot of indoor plans to keep us busy.  Clare went to a bowling birthday party for one of her classmates...

Saturday night, we enjoyed a visit from Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunt Mary for a little Valentine's Day party.  The kids were up pretty late so we stayed indoors and cozy Sunday morning with specially-shaped pancakes to celebrate Valentine's Day :-)

I took the kids for a quick trip to the library (hence, Clare wearing pajamas and the bed-head hair) but the librarian started to bring out crafting supplies and the kids settled in for some Valentine's crafting fun:

After we came back from the library, the kids watched a movie and played while Thom John and I got to work on a very special project - splitting up the kids' bedroom!  Now they sleep in their own rooms!  We're still organizing and we need to get Sean a big bed (he's still in a toddler bed!!!) but once we do that I'll be sure to show room makeover pictures!

The kids had off on Monday so we went on a jaunt to Barnes & Noble - Clare earned a new book from her sticker chart.  Of course, the kids ignored the books and beelined over to the Thomas table.  They played for a good long time before it was time to go home (in the snow!) and eat lunch and take a lovely, long nap.

When we woke up, we had snacks and go ready for work and school on Tuesday :-)

Spring Break

Sean had the Monday and Tuesday after Easter off for Spring Break - thanks to all the snow we'd had this winter, Sean had to go back to school Wednesday instead of having the whole week off.  Monday was a beautiful day and we sprang Clare out of school after lunchtime so we could go on an adventure!  I took them to a wildlife refuge in Medford.

Our first stop at the refuge was the reptile room.  We saw many tanks with slithery, slimy creatures such as this little corn snake:

Sean examined this chart of snakes and was sad that an anaconda was not depicted...

After we'd had our fill of reptiles, we went outside to go see the animals and go on a hike.

Pretty views of the lake:

Turtles on a fallen tree:

The first animal we saw was this bald eagle named Orion - the kids were very impressed...

...and inspired!

A red-tailed hawk:

Clare consults the map - she loves to hold the map when we go places!

We walked around looking at more animals when we came upon this American Crow.  She's a very social bird and likes to greet visitors with a cry of "Awwww HELLO!"  The kids were delighted by this and spent a very long time talking back to the crow and trying to get her to say hello to them again.

After awhile, I was able to tear them away from their new crow friend and we watched a keeper play with a racoon...

... and we admired this cute little fox:

Their second favorite animal was this barred owl - Sean liked that we couldn't really see where the owl's face is.

After we visited with all the animals, we went on a little hike on one of the trails.  We started out on a .75 mile trail and I was a little uncertain that the kids would want to hike that long but the refuge had a clever idea - make the trail a storywalk!  They accomplished this by setting out photocopies of a storybook at intervals along the trail.  So we got to hike and read "Owl Moon" by Jane Yolen.  The book is about a father and child setting out late one night to go "owling" and they end up spotting an owl!

There were also fun facts about owls dispersed throughout the trail:

I stopped the kids and asked them to pose - Clare was not in the mood, despite Sean's best efforts to get her to smile :-)

After our hike, the kids said they were hot and hungry.  Well, the where's the best place to fix that?  Rita's!!

And where's the best place to work off a water ice?  The town playground, of course :-)

Hooray for Spring Break!

Celebrity Encounters

Sean's had quite a few brushes with notable personalities in the past couple of weeks.  First, his class took a field trip to a local theater to see a production of Disney's "Aladdin" and after the show, the cast mingled with the audience. I asked Sean what he liked best about the show and told me, "Jafar gave me a punch!  He punched me on the hand! And I punched him back on the hand." I asked Sean a few more questions about this hand-punching and was able to deduce that Sean was talking about getting a fist-bump from Jafar :-)

Next, I took the kids to the library the other night and Sean got some face-time with the mayor! We were walking up the path to the front door of the municipal building (the library is located inside the municipal building) and Sean hid behind a pillar to try to surprise me, but picked the wrong side of the pillar and ended surprising the mayor, who was on his way into a town council meeting!  The mayor chatted with Sean for a few minutes before going on his way.  This is extra-notable since our mayor happens to be a kicking coach for an NFL team!

And finally, Sean - and Clare, too - met some pirates and princesses!  We went to a nearby farm to meet up with some pals for a Pirate & Princess Party.  The kids mingled with Jack Sparrow, Snow White, Merida, and of course - Anna and Elsa!!

Sean had a long chat with Princess Merida...

...before taking this excellent photo:

Clare hung back - the princesses made her a little shy.

Meanwhile, Sean chatted with Snow White - he asked her why she was holding onto that old, poisoned apple.  Afterwards, he got in a photo with the sisters from "Frozen."  But Clare was still feeling shy - even about her favorite princess, Princess Anna!

But Clare agreed to get her photo taken with Anna and Elsa as long as she could sit on my lap:

Tonight

Tonight it was raining instead of snowing. The snow on our lawn is almost all gone!

Tonight we went to the library after school and got a whole bunch of new books, including a new "Star Wars" book for Sean and a Princess Jasmine book for Clare!

Tonight everyone ate their dinners all up without any tears!

Tonight we drew pictures of each other making silly faces... and then we made silly faces at each other!

Tonight the kids sang "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" together so sweetly, I clapped and cheered extra-loud. Then they asked if they could make a video of themselves singing:

Tonight Sean showed that he can really croon:

Tonight Clare pretended to be shy... but just for a minute!

 

Tonight, after the kids were tucked in, I went downstairs to set out to write this blog post when I heard some commotion on the upstairs landing. Sean and Clare were out of bed and rummaging through a box of books Grummy gave to us a few years ago.  After a few minutes of listening to pages flipping and hushed voices, I heard Sean cough, then Clare exclaimed, "Seany - you have to cover your mouth when you cough!"  Then Sean said, "Sssssssshhhhhhhhh!" to Clare loudly and added "Mommy will hear you!"  That was my cue to go to the bottom of the stairs and say, "Well, I need to go upstairs for something so I hope my kids are in bed!" Immediately, there was a clatter of footsteps and by the time I got upstairs, both kids were in bed and sweetly pretending to be asleep.  Goodnight!

Power Outage Day

We had an ice storm Tuesday night but by morning all the ice had changed over to rain but it was too late since the damage had been done - our power was out and the kids' daycare had no power, either! The school was hopeful that they would open if the power came on in the morning and they did end up opening at about 12:30 but the Sooys stayed home!

Thom John went to work and Sean and I worked on putting up our Valentine's Day decorations while we waited for Clare to wake up:

Lucky for me (and the kids), our awesome next-door neighbor went out for a Wawa run and picked up a cup of coffee for me!

After breakfast we got to work on building a bi-plane and a battleship...

...while we waited for the paint to dry, we listened to some music and had a little dance party.

After dancing, we went on a little trip. As Sean told the librarians, "We have no power at our house and there is no power at our school, so we thought that maybe it was a good idea to come here for a little while!"

We read a lot of books, did almost all the puzzles, and watched the fish for a good long time.  We decided to go home to see if the power had come back on - it had!

And just in time for lunch, too!

After lunch, we had naps, and then we put the finishing touches on our projects:

All was back to normal by Wednesday night and we got in two full, normal days on Thursday and Friday.  Sean told me that he thinks Spring will be here next week - I hope he's right!!