A Little Chess?

Samuel and Philip played chess.  Samuel says he helps Philip decide on moves but doesn't always show him things that would help him win...or something like that.  Not surprisingly, Samuel won, although he did admit it wasn't as easy to beat Philip as he thought it would be.

Happy Birthday 12th Thomas!

Jeremy:  Happy birthday Thomas!  Did you thank your mom for bearing you [in her womb] today?
T:  Yes, and I thanked God that Samuel was first so that I'm not the guinea pig!

We love you Thomas!

*Sigh

When you realize that if you hadn't quit teaching to stay home you would have been teaching longer than either of your online class instructors.  Five years more than one, one year more than the other.  Not regretting my decision for a second....just feeling old.

Fixed It

I think he kind of enjoyed melting off the ice dam up there.

Drat. He's Right.

When I updated my picture wall I changed the quote too.  A couple hours after putting it up I found this:

Samuel objected.  Smart alec.  And since he's right I changed it.

Also I answered the question the kids have had since I put up the old quote.

January Birthday Boys

We were able to celebrate Thomas's 12th and Nicholas's 4th birthday on Nicholas's actual birthday this weekend.   Nicholas had a firefighter theme and my mom made a lovely cake.  Thomas decided he didn't need a theme and chose German Chocolate cake, which he made himself; the cake part anyway, I did the frosting.

Nicholas has been busily playing with his new Rescue bot set, bulldozer and Paw Patrol things. 

Thomas mostly got money which he wants to spend on an ipod or MP3 player.  Mom and Dad just have to finish researching to see what we think is most appropriate for him.

Happy Birthday boys!

Happy Birthday Nicholas!

Happy 4th Birthday to our affectionate, moody, family clown, mama's boy, Nicholas!

We love you!

I Think I Might Cry

Blurb no longer slurps blogs the way they used to.  (This is how I've made my blog books for the past 7 years.)  As far as I can tell you can't pick which posts to import and you're only allowed to import 500.  So when I imported I got 500 posts starting with my first one.  Doesn't quite make it into 2016 as I'm over 1000 posts.  After 500 I can manually import each post I want but it doesn't put it straight into the book.  It's complicated and I'm sure you are really not that interested so never mind... Have any of you, my five readers, ever used anything other than Blurb?

Christmas Break Adventure

We ventured to the zoo for a family adventure after all the Christmas festivities were complete.  We've never gone in the winter before and it was really nice.  Even though there are still hundreds of people there everyone is spread out enough that you feel kind of like you've got the place to yourself and you can take however long you want at each exhibit without feeling like you're hogging it.  The animals were out and pretty active too, which always makes it more fun!

The Last One

 We celebrated Christmas with Jeremy's family on New Year's Day.

I took mostly crappy pictures there for some reason, but we had a fun time and enjoyed Prime Rib that Grandma and Grandpa cooked.
Jesus, I think we have sufficiently celebrated Your birthday!  Thanks for becoming man for us.

Finished.

The Grand Hotel is now complete.

Call Julia for your reservations.

Birthday Christmas Hanukkah

We celebrated my mom's birthday,

Christmas

and Hanukkah (my uncle is Jewish) all at once.

Philip and Uncle Larry get along so Philip got to help light the Menorah.
Glad we got to see everyone!

Girl Cousins Lunch