Knight Readers

Our children have all developed a love of reading, which is fantastic on many levels.  On top of that, Phineas wants to be wherever Enoch is.  Add to that Enoch's desire to dress like Phinn and you get two knights sharing a chair poring through books together.  I really wish I could pause the clock sometimes. These boys are awesome.

Be My Valentine

Happy belated Valentine's day!  This year we kept it simple.  The kids enjoyed making crafts at school and making Valentine's for their friends.  The three big ones had parties at school.  We had playgroup at our house and so even Freya got to celebrate with friends.  Everyone got a chance to decorate heart shaped sugar cookies with neon pink frosting.  Overall it was a really nice day.

Haircuts

My boys will tell you that nothing makes me more giddy then seeing them right after a haircut.  I love running my hands over that short, adorable hair.

I know you cannot see Phinn's hair in these pictures, but he too had just had a haircut and I rubbed that little head until it shone.  Then he promptly went and put on his pajamas, pirate hat, aviator goggles and fire belt.  Because nothing says it is bedtime more than ARRRR!

Phinn's first stitches

It was supposed to be a fun night reconnecting with old friends.  They came over for dinner, we ate, and then let the kids loose.  6 kids running around is not an unusual sight at our house, and for the most part everyone has fun.  But about 15 minutes into the fun, Enoch and Phinn ran from our living room into the kitchen and bumped into each other.  Phinn fell into the railing and started crying.  Enoch then turned to me with a worried face and voice.  Then I looked at Phinn.  Blood everywhere, tears streaming down his face.  We cleaned him up the best we could and took a look inside to find his lip split pretty deeply.  It meant that we had to take him in for stitches.  So we loaded him into the van and my good friend came with us to keep us company.  It was not the night we intended, but we did get a lot of time to talk!  Phinn was a trooper.  We ended up at Fair Oaks Hospital's emergency room where I was really glad that Phinn only had a split lip.  Some of the people there looked pretty sick with what I assume was the flu.  It took about 4 hours, but he finally had two stitches and a popsicle for being so great.  He did not even cry when they put in the stitches, he just calmly told me that it hurt.  I was extremely proud of my little guy.  I picked up a bottle of antibiotics on the way home and at about 1 in the morning put a very tired kiddo to bed.  Something tells me that this is not our last emergency room trip for this kid.  Phinn has an independent, energetic spirit.  He is nearly fearless.  He loves adventure, fighting whatever he can (monsters, bad guys, his family members...) and jumping, climbing and exploring.  

Boys

I sure love my boys.  There are a lot of reasons, but here are just a few.  Living with a 3 year old pirate all the time is a whole lot of fun.  Each morning, afternoon and evening Phineas announces whether he is the Pirate King (from the Pirates of Penzance) or the Pirate Captain (from The Pirates! Band of Misfits) or the funny pirate.  He begs to watch pirate shows, listen to pirate songs (from the two movie soundtracks) and to attack anyone who might be threatening his livelihood.  In short, he is adorable.

Then Enoch comes home from school with the latest fashion trend....pants ripped all the way down the middle.  He apparently did this himself when he found a small hole early in the day at school and thought to himself, "Hey, I wonder what would happen if I pulled really hard from both sides".  He is growing taller everyday, his coat and pants are all getting too short.  And he has a great sense of humor.

Dave keeps the whole family laughing.  He forgets that anytime he does something once he will be required to do it for HOURS to entertain the kids.  He loves to make funny faces, sing funny songs, and teach the kids jokes.  They love to have daddy time.  And recently, he taught Enoch about photo bombing.  Guess if he likes it...

New Years Day

Welcome 2013, may you be a year filled with love, kindness and happiness.  The festivities on the first day of this new year included attending a birthday party for one of the neighborhood boys.  He wanted a football party and he had a brother and sister Phinn and Hilde's ages respectively, so Dad and Freya were the only two who didn't attend.  There was some tackle football and I have to say, Hilde and Enoch were pretty good.  After the boys lost interest in football, some of the kids did races.  Hilde was pretty darn quick and she LOVES competitions.  She outlasted everyone.

After the birthday party we picked up Daddy and Freya and headed over to Grandpa and Grandma's for the annual New Years Day Chili.  Grandpa had made a huge pot and there were a ton of fixins'.  Yum.  Bonus - quality time with the cousins.

And grandma found a way to keep Freya occupied for quite a while - tupperware!  She had a blast playing with it while grandma tried to work on sorting and clean-up.  Fun for everyone.

2012 ends

  In the last days of 2012, we needed to get ourselves OUTSIDE.  We went to a new park that I discovered in our neighborhood.  Unfortunately, it was pretty wet, but we played for a while and discovered that Freya LOVES the swings.  So I still consider it a win.