New Fort

Refer back to October's post on request for a fort. Dad, Granddad, Pap-Pap and Mommy spent all Christmas break building the coolest play fort. It has a climbing wall, escape rope, trap door and great views for seeking out wildlife in the field behind the house. 

On the road

We made our first family road trip to Arizona this year to surprise Oma and celebrate Eden's first Thanksgiving in her new house. The trip was over two 10 hour days in the car and surprisingly the boys did great. Between the movies, snacks and periodic stops the boys were entertained. Our first stop was in Las Cruses, NM where the boys got to see and play in snow. For their first time experiencing snow I was amused by how they immediately gravitated to making snowballs and throwing them at each other. It must be a skill built into the Y chromosome. Once in Arizona we pulled off the best surprise for my mom by running into her in a grocery store. She thought we are staying in Texas for the holiday so when she saw us it was such a surprise and it wasn't until I said "Mom!" that she believed who she was looking at. The boys thought it was great and gave her big hugs.

No applause please

Aron was in his first school play. He did great up until the second he realized he was going to have to perform for a room filled with parents with video cameras.

Camping Action

Since the camping test-drive in the backyard didn't pan out, we decided to go all in.  We went camping at Lake Somerville with some triplet friends of ours.  Fished, didn't catch anything, hiked, slept in a tent, cooked s'mores and hot dogs on the fire.  It was fun and the boys did well.  More camping for us in the future...

Another New Word

Mushrooms = Marshmallows
So Daddy made big plans to camp with the kids in the backyard.  Leaving daycare Aden kept telling the teachers about how we were going to cook mushrooms.  Daddy was confused.  We finally figured it out later in the evening when it was time to roast the mushrooms, er marshmallows...

The Sweetest Thing

In an interesting turn of events it was not the super adorable costumes I made or the king size chocolate bar that was the excitement of the evening. It was the joy of passing out candy to all the kids. Aden and Aron were so excited to give candy away that they consolidated all their candy so that they could give giant handfuls to the kids. Aden was giving out hugs as well to all the girls he knew from the street. It was the sweetest thing all night.

Small gifts sometimes are the biggest

Last weekend the boys woke up from a nap and insisted they needed a tree house. I said we needed to make a list of all the things they wanted in a fort. It included:

1. Flag
2. Plank
3. Swing
4. Slide
5. Dungeon
6. Bridge
7. Orange Protection Cones
8. Race track for their cars

This weekend we took them to the playscape store and tested out a few models. They of course selected the largest model. Thoroughly disappointed when we left without one the boys wanted to know why we didn't bring one home. Aden figured it out that it couldn't fit in mommy's car but that wasn't a good enough answer for Aron. I told them that we needed to write a letter to Santa to see if he would bring one because mommy didn't have $3,000 to buy one. Aron asked me how much I had and I told him $1,000. When we got home he got out his piggy bank and sorted through all his coins to find the (2) 100 yen coins to give to me. "Here Mommy now you have enough to buy the tree house." I cried.