vermont, in a snow storm

I forgot to mention our great winter adventure. During spring break (that would be March), while normal New Englanders took themselves some place warm , we wandered north to ski country. Our timing could not have been better, apparently. We made it to Stowe, Vermont, just before they shut down the state for the fifth largest snow storm in the state's history. Snow storm or no, there was skiing to be done, well, by the crazy people. I am not a skier, so when Seal Pup 1.0 begged us to let him go back to the hotel room because skiing in a blizzard was no fun, I was willing to bring him in. Papa Seal, weighing the economics of the situation (the class was already paid for, so....) decided, that it would be a good opportunity to build up his moxy (or whatever skiing in snowstorms builds up).
The second day of skiing went much better than the first because the storm blew over and Vermont was left with a foot and a half (maybe more) of fresh snow for the skiers to go crazy on. And go crazy they did. Seal Pup 1.0 finished he second day of lessons by skiing down a green triangle run with his class, and then he did it all over again with his dad. Good times.

(Pretend there is a video here. There was supposed to be, but, well, nevermind).

You might be wondering what Seal Pup 2.0 and I did. Let me tell you! We ate, slept, went shopping and watched other people exert energy performing the fine art of skiing. I can't speak for the masses, but that's my idea of a good vacation.We also stopped at Ben and Jerry's on the way back home. As one does.

easter high jinx

I hope your Easter celebrations were as enjoyable as ours.

We dyed eggs.
We pretended to be ambassadors for the Easter Bunny.We dressed up in Easter finery (wardrobe selections brought to you by Most Esteemed Child Number One).

We did some egg hunting.And by "some" I mean, we did a great deal of egg hunting.And we made some cupcakes for an Easter luncheon with friends.It was a very celebratory weekend.

five is good

We did some wandering last month, but I will tell you about that later. I think it's probably more important to tell you about a certain someone turning five. It was a big deal. We celebrated for ten days. That is a record for us. There was birthday week. There was birthday (day). There was a birthday party at school. There was a birthday party that involved a bowling alley.And there was a birthday sweater. So far, being five has been pretty good.

As you can imaginge, there are many more shots in flickr centered around this most auspicious day. If you want to know more about the sweater, see here.

love was in the air

Somehow, I failed to tell you about the Valentine's Day high jinx we endured in our household. There were cupcakes (it seems like there are always sweets of one sort or another).

There were flowers.

And there were, of course, Valentines. Seal Pup 1.0 decided he was going to write out all his Valentines this year (2.0 decided to just take a nap and let me do his).

He had a lot of fun. It only took him two hours (in which I was required to watch his progress, weeeEEEeee!).

don't forget about the children

Seal Pup 1.0 has taken to referring to himself and his brother as "the children." I think it's hilarious. We wake up to, "the children are awake now..." We are nudged to come up with meal plans with, "the children are hungry..." and so on and so forth. When school closes for a federal holiday or because of snow, we discovered that the children become especially cranky because they are bored. While the parental units are fun, they are small potatoes compared to teachers and school friends, apparently. In order to entertain "the children" for our last holiday, we visited the southeastern Connecticut Children's Museum for a morning of fun (and apparently, "discovery"). It's a small and modest museum, but it does offer some opportunities for scientific and dramatic exploration
And, well, "the children" had fun. So there's that.
More pictures of "the children" can be found in flickr.

snow daze

I can't speak for anyone else, but I would not call snow the greatest thing ever. It's cold, it's wet and it requires movement, these are not things that equal a winning combination. But the kids, they like snow.
Which is okay since they think shoveling snow is fun right now.

But I think even they were pleased about the whole snow blower acquisition initiated by the pater familias.

Probably not as pleased as Papa was, but pleased in their own way.
Because less time Papa spends moving snow about in the driveway means more time sledding, which is great, if you are into that sort of thing.You may be shocked to discover that there are more pictures of snow (play and removal) in our flickr site, the most recent photographs are at the end of the set.

out with the old, in with the new

Due to personal injury (and perhaps a little bit of stupidity), this post is happening a little later than I had planned. I threw out my back while lifting Pup 2.0 from a snowbank (because my life is full of glamour like that). I also sliced into my thumb while washing a pot (not one of my finer moments of 2010, but there you are). In any case, we had a great Christmas. We hope you did too.The pups were royally spoiled. Papa and I agreed that this year was a little...excessive.

We did our traditional Christmas Curry (it'a really ust chicken curry, but if you say it's Christmas Curry, it makes it sound really festive) for dinner, tasty and easy! We take the (extremely) low stress approach to Christmas dinner.

We made pear cake, because is sounded good (it tasted good too).

We took advantage of the after Christmas snow (storm?) to do a little sledding in the back yard. I think snow sports will probably be enjoyed more by Papa and Seal Pup 1.0, because Seal Pup 2.0 and I are the only ones who think that whole playing in the snow business when it's 10 degrees outside is crazypants.We spent our New Year's Eve at the public library in our new neighborhood, because we know how to party. Fun and functional at the same time, library cards for all!

We partied so hard, none of us really made it to midnight. But that's okay, it just means we will be well rested for a great 2011, or something, I have no idea; but, we are looking forward to a great new year.

Happy New Year! And of course, there are lots more pictures in flickr.