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| Here it comes! It was fascinating watching the predicted cold front, a.k.a. The Polar Invasion, roll into town. It was like a wall of menacing darkness bearing down quickly on our city. When I stopped to take the picture, the wind was blowing so hard. Tommy yelled, "Mom! It's shaking the car! It's a mighty storm!" |
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| Zac stayed home from school with an upset stomach and low-grade fever on Monday, tried to return Tuesday, and needed to be picked up early. Poor boy! Just when we thought we were out of the woods after Luke's illness the week before.... When Josh called on Monday afternoon saying his stomach hurt, I thought we were all going to go down like dominoes. But Josh was feeling better shortly after arriving home, so we guessed that perhaps his lunch just didn't agree with him. Phew! |
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| Veterans's Day brought with it our first blast of winter. And a BLAST it was indeed! Snow and cold; cold that was only going to get colder! |
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| It was fortunate that Josh was feeling better quickly, because he and two other Cub Scouts from his pack who attend our elementary school had been invited to lead the flag ceremony during the Verterans' Day assembly on Tuesday morning. He was so proud to carry the flag of our wonderful nation and be a part of the special day honoring our veterans, including his Papa (Navy medical corps, Vietnam)! |
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| Ben, Adam and I participated in the YMCA's Veterans' Day Challenge on Tuesday evening. It was really hard and really fun! We all had a tough workout and headed home with a greater appreciation for the high level of physical fitness that is kept by our everyday heroes: our active military, as well as our first responders. |
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| Tommy said, "Dad, I need someone to play the piano with me while I play the ukulele." Without hesitation, Adam picked up Tommy, sat down and put Tommy on his lap for the duet. Best dad. |
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| Wednesday morning, as we walked to school, the temperature was zero degrees...Fahrenheit. That is just really, really cold. Booger-freezing cold. |
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| Some Tommyisms that just need recording: I received this text last week from my friend who was in charge of our preschool co-op that day: "Tommy was such a little chatterbox today, he was making me laugh! Him: I petted a baby dinosaur once! Me: Oh? Hmmm. Dinosaurs are extinct. Him: I know. I'm five. That happened when I was four. They got extinct when I was four. He also blew me away with his geography knowledge. I asked if anyone knew where the rainforest was. He said, 'Africa? South America?' And he knew where they were on a map!" This is classic Tommy! He is always telling little made up "stories" of things that happened when he was "a baby." But he says them with so much conviction, you want to believe they are real. And he is so smart! The other day, we were quizzing Luke on his addition and subtraction math facts and I had to send Tommy away because he kept shouting out the answer while Luke was thinking, even though it wasn't like Luke was taking a long time to think because he knows them. "What's 9 + 8?" "17!!" Last, the other night I was about to sing Tommy and Josh (who currently share a room) a lullaby. Tommy exclaimed, "Wait!" He jumped out of bed and grabbed a toilet paper roll shaker he made in co-op a few weeks back and started to lightly shake it to the beat while I sang "All the Pretty Little Horses." I felt like we would have fit in nicely in a hippy commune. This kid: personality in droves! |
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| Snowbow! (With crazily exploding sun.) |
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| The expander is off and the retainer is on. Once all of his baby teeth are lost, it will be time for braces. There is something about orthodontia that makes kids look so old! He went from ten-years-old to fifteen in five minutes' time. |
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| Tommy, Luke and Ben all had their well-child check-ups this week. And all three are growing and healthy! Of note: Luke weighs over 40 pounds and grew 4 inches this last year. Four. FOUR! No wonder he gets those horrible, achy-leg growing pains every few weeks. YES! **cha-cha-cha, little happy dance** |
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| I don't love when school is completely canceled, especially because of cold and snow, because it means we are stuck inside all day long and that always leads to a bit of craziness by the end of it. But I embrace the two-hour delay! All the joy of a lazy morning, without the extended boredom of a snow day. While the snow totals had not gone up much from Wednesday to Thursday morning, the temperatures had dropped even more, and at the start of the school day we had a windchill of -17. So the kids had a couple of extra hours at home to let the temperature outside warm up from a chilly -3* F to a balmy 1* F. Tommy and Josh were the only two to brave enough (or cuckoo enough) to play outside in the snow. They lasted about 15 minutes. |
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| Bunny all-night snow party in the backyard. |
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| Sunday, November 17th. More snow! I say that if it's going to be winter anyway, keep it coming! Snowy cold is much better than sunny, dry cold. |
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| The nightly game of knee soccer: the only soccer they are allowed to play indoors until we acquiesce to the MLS-sized field the boys have been asking that we dig out for another level below the basement. Luke opted out of playing to ask me "would you rather...?" questions from one of our books throughout the game. "What?! Mom! You'd rather sleep in a bed of rotting fruit than a bed of dead spiders? Why?!" Ummmm...spiders are spiders, dead or alive....seems like a no-brainer to me! |
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| Is there anything more adorable than the holiday preschool program? Not much, that is for sure! I will miss them so much when we move on to kindergarten next year. Tommy practiced his line for his Thanksgiving program all week and totally nailed it. And the songs were heart-wrenchingly cute. And then we had a tasty feast. |
