Two against One

With kids off-track (aka driving me insane) I have been trying to send them outside as much as possible. When we had our recent snowfall (snowdump), they took the opportunity to have a snowball fight.

Giggles only lasted seconds and quickly decided that a snowball fight was not his thing. He liked throwing the snowballs but not being hit with them so he wandered around the yard with a football instead.
The others lasted much longer. I noticed a decided inequality, however, in how the fight was divided up...







Brett would say that it will help Smiley toughen up. That's a dad response though isn't it.

What do you do in the Wintertime

Oh what do you do in the wintertime,
When all the world is white,
Do you sleep in a boat?
Wear an extra winter coat?
Because it's so cold outside??????
Is that what you do?????
Not I!!!!!!!

But my crazy boys do!!!!

Last weekend they thought it would be a great idea to camp out in the boat, watch movies, eat popcorn and sleep in it:


In the early hours of the morning I heard them come in the house amidst whispering and Brett shushing them. When I didn't hear the cereal bowls clinking I wondered what they were doing. I came out to find out what was going on and discovered them in these positions....


warming themselves up on the heaters!!! hahaha!!! I wasn't so crazy after all for staying inside in my warm and cozy bed.

Sleigh Riding

HAHAHA!!! No we didn't go sleigh riding! I'm mocking (I mean teasing) my husband who calls sledding sleigh riding. I always ask him where the horses are when he says that.

We went just after Christmas with the new sleds the boys received for Christmas but I've only had a chance to post the pictures now. You can't tell from the pictures but the hill is steep and at the bottom was a creek. Two dads had to stand at the bottom in order to catch kids and stop them from landing in the unfrozen creek. Sounds like fun right? It was for the dads!






Of course there was the inevitable crash with the tears that followed...


but...overall we had a great time!!!

Sledding, Tobogganing or Sleigh Riding????

When I was little my parents would take us up to Dunmore in the winter with the trusty wooden toboggan and we would go tobogganing.  It was one of my favorite things to do in the wintertime along with building snow forts in front of my house.  Moving here to Utah I don't often hear the term tobogganing .... I hear sledding so that is what I use with my boys.  However, whenever Brett refers to it he says let's go sleigh riding.  Sleigh riding???  Where are we going to get a horse from on such short notice??? lol.

We took the boys sledding (sleigh riding according to Brett) on the coldest afternoon of the week after Christmas.  We didn't know it would be the coldest afternoon of the week but there you have it.  We lasted all of 20 minutes with 2 sleds (because remember we only have 2 and all of the stores are sold out).  

The boys did a great job of sharing.

Of course there is always at least one kid who ends up crying and hurt because dad pushed him on a sled down the hill too fast resulting in a crash....

I thought I was smart enough to wear two layers of pants and two pairs of socks but the wind still made it through my coat and I found myself bribing my kids off the hill with promises of pizza and hot chocolate.  

Once Smiley made it to the top of the hill (no easy task as the hill was pretty slick) the kids eagerly ran to the car.  

They must have been as cold as I was.  And don't anyone say I should be used to the cold because I'm from Canada!!!!  My excuse is that I have poor circulation.   My sister would say it could stem from the poor genes from second cousins marrying second cousins way back in our family line.  That would explain a lot of other things too wouldn't it???

Well, sadly for the boys they are back to school on Monday and happily for me, they are back to school on Monday.  

Oh The Irony!!!!

So the other day the mailman got stuck in the road trying to put mail in our mailbox and this morning a poor teenage girl got stuck in the road in front of our next door neighbor's house.  It took four of us to rock her car out of the rut she was in and send her on her way.  

I was thinking about calling the City of West Jordan to ask them when they were going to plow our streets.  Not that I need it for myself because I can kick my vehicle into 4-wheel drive but I realized this morning that there are others in the neighborhood who can't do this (plus I also realized I have scrawny chicken arms and am not really useful at pushing other people's cars out of sticky predicaments).  

As I was about to call the city I heard this repetitive beeping sound coming from out front.  I looked out my window and saw this just past my mailbox...

I couldn't help myself.  I had to laugh as I saw the snowplow stuck in the snow.  The snowplow!  Of course my first instinct was to run for my camera.  But I'm not all bad.  After I took the picture and had my laugh, I put my coat on and took out two shovels and helped the driver dig out the back tires so he could get unstuck.  It worked and he was able to finish our street and hopefully finish the rest of our neighborhood.  I can only hope that no one else gets stuck so I won't have to embarrass myself trying to push their car out.  I really have no upper body strength... or lower for that matter. hahahahaha!!!!

Merry Christmas!!

My Christmas miracle was that I didn't have to take my four year old to get stitches for his lip.  The day before Christmas was full of boys fighting with each other.  Three weeks of being off-track and too much time together with too many snow storms is a toxic combination.  I could hear something going on downstairs but was 5 seconds too late in intervening when the wailing began.  My four-year old came upstairs with blood coming out of his lip and accusing the six-year old of kicking him in the face.  When asked why he did it??? the reply.... "because he wouldn't play with me".  Do you think he wants to play with you NOW????? 

But Christmas morning dawned and the fighting had ceased.  Excitement had set in as boys opened presents, 

we had our traditional steak breakfast, 

then as I prepared to put the turkey in the oven...in horror I discovered I had 3 inches of tin foil left but my faithful friend was willing to lend.  I gave Brett the task to get it from next door but when he looked out the window at the blizzard he palmed it off on his oldest son who didn't make it to the end of the truck before returning to the warm house.  

So Brett had to go anyways...

Brett received a traditional remote control toy from his dad, 

the car got stuck in our driveway when we got home...

some kids got stuck too...

Brett cleaned off the driveway...

and was horrified to discover that he would have to do it again!!!

The next day the boys took advantage of all the snow and their snowman kit while I went into the doctor to see if my nagging sore throat was strep.  No strep but we ended up with a cute snowman.