at the playground

The Texas winter is back: 79 degrees on January 31st! When I took the littles to the park this evening, I had visions of staging a picturesque photo shoot with the sun setting in the background (I even had props). But six dirty feet, three skinned knees and two rounds of tears later, I decided maybe I should just let them play. That's what kids are supposed to do, right? I'll save the fairy crowns for another day.

zoom zoom to the moon

Scout had her first "big show" of the new year at her preschool this morning. Tillie came as my date to watch as she and her classmates performed their rendition of Zoom Zoom to the Moon. It's always cute when these little guys dress up and get on stage. The class even helped with set decoration by making their very own planets. I was totally impressed. And once Tillie stopped playing with the timer that she found sitting on the table in the lobby, she was pretty impressed too.

are you looking at me?

Does anyone else have a 3 1/2 year-old? This picture pretty much sums up Scout's attitude today. She was a sassy little thing. The morning started with her yelling at me because everything she was wearing was not new. By the way, everything she was wearing except her socks was new. This afternoon she told me that she was going outside to be by herself and she didn't care what I said. I might have been nervous if she had been able to unlock the front door, but I did have visions of a tween "running away from home" flash through my mind. She told me what my choices were when I said it was time to leave the house to pick Catcher up from school. In case you're wondering, my choices were reading her a story or getting her a snack--picking up Catcher was not a choice. She begged me for earrings, and when I told her the plastic clip-ons she got for Christmas were broken, Scout told me to go to the store and buy her some. She hit Tillie on the head, punched Catcher on the arm and rolled her eyes when I said we were having pasta for dinner. She then devoured two bowls. The bath was too cold and then too hot, and she had nothing to wear to bed. She's sound asleep right now.

game day

This must be a new record. In Austin, TX we had our second snow day (from now on, I'm referring to them as ice days) in four days. It started as a two-hour delay (yay!) which turned into a full-fledged cancellation (boo!) around 8:00 this morning. The kids were crazy, so I put on a pot of coffee (for me) and declared today "Game Day." We pulled out all those games and activities that I save for rainy (like we get those here) days, and we went to town. It started out a little rough at first when everyone wanted to roll--or throw, in the case of Tillie--the dice in the math dice game, but eventually the crowd settled down and we made it through the day relatively unscathed. Relatively.

Here's a look at Game Day, including a nap(!) from Scout and Tillie playing dress up with her bathing suit on over her pajamas.

monday matinee

Another cold front blew in--seriously, these things blow in from somewhere--today, so I felt the onus was on me to come up with an exciting/time consuming/non-controversial indoor activity this afternoon. I was thinking of baking something, but there are so many variables. Scout likes everything, but Catcher hates chocolate and nuts (except pecans) while Tillie likes all nuts (except pecans). Then there's always wrangling over who gets to pour and who gets to stir and who gets to crack. I wasn't feeling it, so I reached into my little bag of tricks (i.e. the toy chest) and discovered one of Scout's almost forgotten Christmas presents--Moulin Roty's La Lampe shadow flashlight. 

I'm all about imaginative play right now, so I was more than happy to offer up our attic sanctuary as the perfect place to host a shadow flashlight show. There was a dragon and a princess (who looked more like a mouse to me) and a wolf (or maybe a fox, according to Scout) and a knight in shining armor. I'm not saying there weren't any scuffles--like the time Tillie attacked Catcher with the flashlight--but the little guys came up with some crazy stories that almost made sense. Inevitably showtime turned into playtime on the parents' bed, but we did manage to kill an hour of our time.

dragons vs. princesses

To keep our minds off of Alex leaving for a month in Russia this morning (and to soak in the sun before the next arctic chill hits Austin tomorrow) we headed to our neighborhood park for a little soccer time. Catcher's team was the Dragons; Scouts was the Princesses. After Catcher "taught" us his version of playing two-on-two, which involved a lot of rules and not much play time, we decided to mix it up with some old fashioned green light/red light and digging in the dirt.

to russia, with love

Last night Alex and I enjoyed a night out on the town before he left for Sochi (#winterolympics) this morning. The little ones and I are going to have quite an adventure the next several weeks while he's away...let the games begin!

snow day

In case you're wondering how much snow it takes to cancel school in Texas, it takes about this much:

Coupled with the snow, we did get some lovely icicles, which made it feel like winter until they started dropping off the gutter when the sun showed up by mid-morning. And it looks like we'll have to replace our potted palms (unless the 70 degrees we're expecting tomorrow is enough to bring them back to life).

Seriously? Seriously. That's the snow, folks. Those dreams of snow angels, sledding--actually, they have no idea what a sled is--and hot cocoa were quickly diminished seconds after the children learned that school was cancelled this morning.

living room studio

It was freezing today (I guess the joke's on me after bragging about 80 degrees just four days ago). Instead of soaking in the sun, we soaked in the living room this afternoon during an in-house photo shoot. Catcher imagined he was floating in the middle of the room. Scout did another Frozen act before putting together a look from the princess files. Tillie...I'm not sure what she was doing, but she made us laugh.