Lettuce!?!?

Okay I know I am still in January...well in my blogging post ;) But in second week of January (this pic was taken Jan 9th) I was walking to get Thomas from the bus stop and I see this in my front yard! I had to take a double take because I was thinking, " this is January there is NO way I have lettuce growing in my front yard?? I really need to get some more sleep."

 So as we were walking back home I walked up to the front bed we had planted lettuce back last spring and wouldn't you know I had all this lettuce coming up. We had had a lot of snow over Christmas and then we had a couple of warm days and I suppose the ground wasn't frozen because it looked really nice, I was shocked!

So I ran in while the boys were playing outside and snapped a few pictures of my lovely lettuce to remember it by. It was too bad because I knew it was going to die and I don't really have that amazing green thumb to even try to save it :( 

Nineteen hours later

We had a pretty busy Lego weekend. We started to do some sorting of the pieces late Saturday night. I first had bags that we separated all the colors, but when your looking at over 10,000 pieces it was hard to actually find any of the pieces that we were looking for. 

 So after about eight hours of sorting we had all the colors divided with most of the colors divided into the major piece sizes. We use a lot of cups and bowls and you can see and it was time consuming but it did help in finding the pieces as we were building. 

 After a few hours of watching and Thomas did help with sorting as well, the boys really wanted to build the figures. I honestly can not remember how many figures it came with but there were a lot of them to make. After we found all the pieces to the figures in this Lego mess we let the boys get to work. 

 They have been into Star Wars on and off through the years but the last few months, probably since Star War Angry Birds, they really have had a strong interest. Now they can pretty much tell you the entire story and can name all the figures/characters. So they had their favorites to build when it was time to build the various figures. 

After the boys were in bed Eric and I were able to put some more time building the Death Star. Although Eric is use to being up later I had to call it a night around 12:30ish. Since we were not going to be able to work on it again until the weekend Eric took the time and was able to get all the pieces/bowls/partially put together Death Star away. So after nineteen hours this is what we accomplished. We were about 1/3 of the way done. 

The start of the Death Star...

There is some debate about how long I have had this Death Star Lego set but it is probably around the 5 year mark. Eric got it for me I think the Christmas before we moved. If anyone has seen this set it is a huge set, one of the biggest in pieces I'm sure. It is something over a 10,000 pieces. 

 I really loved putting together all of my Star Wars sets and I have to admit I have several. Yes I still love to build with Legos and the Star Wars sets are my favorites. Sadly with everything that was going on with life at that time, I didn't have a lot of time to work on it. So over the years it has sat in a box waiting to be built. A few weeks ago the boys were upstairs with Eric and came across my Death Star set. 

The boys are really into Star Wars and really wanted me to build it so they could see it. (They have seen one online and were so excited that we actually had one at home!) So that night Eric and I opened the box. Little did I know how many pieces were really involved. The book itself was over 250 pages! So we decided we would have to come up with a plan and start sorting our pieces the next day, which was a Sunday. 

A little like Mommy

I am finding as I raise these boys there are traits that seem to come through that remind me of when I was a kid. The whole nature vs. nurture is always an interesting topic, and some of these traits are fun to see in your children and some...well your parents are happy to see in your children ;) kind of a "I hope they grow to be just like you ;) "

 When I was a little girl I always loved my stuffed animals. I still have a whole closet full of them at my parents house. Having them fill up my bed was always fun and I of course had my favorites (as many in my family have many memories of my "petey" and "flappy" ;). The ones I had to have to cuddle with in my bed, but I always seemed to have a bed full. 

For the past several months I have been working on keeping to a cleaning schedule and one of them include making the beds each morning. Since I have been doing that the boys love all there beloved animals on their bed and like Mommy love to have their beds filled up by them. So I thought I would snap a few pics of their animals waiting to be cuddled up at bed time.... just like their Mommy :) 

New Year Eve

We didn't have anything fancy for New Years Eve. In the years past we stay home and relaxed and enjoyed time as a family. This year was no different. 

 I made this cinnamon roll cake for a yummy treat and we visited with my parents who had come down for the week and played a few of the games we got for Christmas. Because we knew the boys were not going to make it to midnight, we did our new years toast before I tucked them into bed. 

It is always fun to get out the sparkling grape juice and our festive little cups and do a "cheers!" together. This year we went with a red grape juice which tasted good to even Eric who is not a fan of sparkling grape juice. So I will have to try to remember this for 2013 :) 2012 had a lot of ups and downs for our family as do most years. This year was a little tougher then others I will have to admit, so  we hope 2013 will have happier times. 

New games

For Christmas the boys got a few games from us and other family members. They love to play any type of game so it didn't take long to get the new ones out and have some fun with them. 

One of their favorites was this Jake and the Neverland Pirate game. It was a good thing that there are two boys pirates and they liked the different ones so there was not a fight over the pieces :) After a few times playing the game they made their own episode with all the character pieces. 

Sometime the "old fashion" games are still a hit. They also got cooite, Thomas did really well with it but Sup really just wanted to build it. Sup didn't have the patients (not at all surprising) to keep rolling the dice to get all the different piece. So he would just take the piece and make the cootie he wanted which didn't go over too well with Thomas who is more into following the rules. 

It seems that operation has gotten a few changes since I have played....too many years ago. The pieces are different a perhaps not as challenging, but that is my personal opinion. We still had fun getting the pieces it, like a cell phone ;) Sup tried the twisters but later just used his fingers because "it was way easier mommy " ;)

The steak

Since Thomas got a steak for Christmas it was a gift you can't exactly wait for days to enjoy it. Since we were pretty much snowed in for the day anyway it was perfect to cook for the day after :) 

 It might be kinda hard to understand but this little boys loves his meat. So when I unwrapped it to show him his steak he was very excited! It was "such a huge steak!" and he could hardly wait to eat it. 

 Grilling it wasn't really an option, at least it wasn't for me. I know there are some diehard grillers out there but standing in 8 inches of snow in the cold was not for me. So we sprinkled some seasoning on in and put it under the broiler. Thomas pretty much sat right by the oven smelling the steak cooking licking his lips. 

Once the steak was done he was all ready to dig in. Sup ran and got his steak sauce and he enjoyed his yummy Christmas steak. Amazingly he ate about half of it that day and the other half for lunch the next day. I can't remember how big the steak was but for a 5 year old I was surprised he was able to eat it in just 2 meals. 

Snow storm 2012

After Christmas sometime during the night we were hit with our first snow of the year. The boys were pretty sad that they hadn't seen snow yet so when we learned of the storm/blizzard earlier in the day they got pretty excited. 

 The storm hit southwest Indiana pretty hard and lots of blizzard like conditions were in effect for the night and into the morning after Christmas. When the boys got up it was still snowing and you could hear them yelling and having their faces plastered to the window watching it come down that morning. 

 I think it was around noon the snow started to taper off and the boys were itching to go outside. It was nice that we had nowhere to go and no work so we could have fun and play in the snow without having to worry about being out and about :) 

 I had to work a little bit to actually find all their snow gear. We really didn't get any snow last year so I had no idea where I had put up all the stuff. Luckily I was able to find everything and the boys got all bundled up and headed outside. It took all of maybe 1 min for Thomas to throw a snowball in Sup's face and then there was crying. After a brief talk about throwing snowballs in faces and an apology, the rest of the afternoon was all fun and smiles. 

 I am not sure the exact snow fall we got, something around 7 to 9 inches. I had a snow button on my camera and was excited to try it out so here was the scene of our neighborhood. It was a pretty heavy snow so it was fun to play with but not so fun to clean. 

 While the boys and I played Daddy dug out the snow shovel. At first we couldn't find them anywhere in the garage, and it took some time to get them down but we finally got them. It was a pretty good workout for Daddy ;) because of the heaviness of the snow, but a good way to stay warm ;)

One of the things the boys were dying to do is to make a snowman. Our was not the best on the block but the boys really liked it so I will call it a success :) After a while Sup wanted his own so Daddy helped him make a baby snowman next to Thomas' and Sups had a blue bucket for his hat :) The boys did great in the snow and we were out for over an hour. As fingers were getting cold we headed inside and warmed up with hot chocolate :) 

Christmas Day

After everything was opened it was time just to relax and play. I think this is what the boys really love as well as Eric and myself. 

 The rest of the day is to play with all the new stuff! The boys got some really fun things from us and the rest of our extended family. Angry birds is still pretty popular with our boys so they got a lot of fun Angry Bird stuff. 

 We did have a chance to talk with our family for Christmas and thank them for all the fun things as well. The boys were entertained for the rest of the day so it was very relaxing and stress-free for us so it was a great day!

We did have to pull the boys away from there new stuff to eat dinner, but we were all hungry from all that playing! We like to do some special things for our Christmas dinner so we were all happy to come to the table. We always have a spiral ham, which the boys love and simply refer to it as "big meat". I also tried a new roll recipe which came out very good! After full bellies the boys were pretty pretty tired from all the playing and the excitement of the day it didn't take long to fall asleep.